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Even as my brother and his SO wound their weary way back across a continent and an ocean to the United Kingdom (currently enjoying – by all accounts – much the same sweltering incalescence as are we here in Victoria) I thought I might have one last rummage through the picture box to see what further delights I might be able to muster, with a view to weaving a final gentle evocation of these few weeks past.
In other words – here are some more photos!
Tags: British Columbia, Fuji x10, Holiday, Photo
“…because no great story ever started with someone eating a salad!”
Unattributed
There are those – and I very much count myself amongst their number – who hold that chief amongst the many attractions of the Okanagan valley is its burgeoning viticultural industry. Certainly – to my mind at least – no sojourn there is complete without taking the time to visit a winery or two (or more!) for a tasting.
Though wines have been made in the region since the 1850s the current boom dates back only to the 1980s when the provincial government – in the face of competition from the Californian wine trade triggered by the North American Free Trade Agreement – started to offer grants to landowners to plant vitus vinifera. There are now more than two hundred wineries along the Okanagan valley and the industry is booming.
Though the wineries are small and their produce often not available outside the province – let alone outside Canada – the quality of the wines is astonishing and they have garnered an ever growing number of awards both in the Americas and internationally. Some of my favourite wines come from the aptly named ‘Golden Mile’ between Oliver and Osoyoos.
Here be some pictures from our recent visit:
Tags: British Columbia, Food & Drink, Fuji x10, Holiday, Photo
I know not whether it was because neither of my parents could drive a car – with the result that the very great majority of our travel during my childhood and adolescent years took place upon the railways – or because my brother and I experienced during our first decade the last gasp of steam traction on what was at that time British Rail… but both he and I have a considerable fondness for the beauty and power of the steam locomotive.
In a way my first introduction to Canada came through the railway magazines that my father collected from his early life right up until he passed away. I gazed in awe at the black and white photographs of enormous North American steam engines hauling trains of apparently endless length through the staggering Rocky Mountains. I recall also being astonished that there could be a place on this earth called ‘Hope’ – and when it came to spiral tunnels and avalanche sheds… my eyes bulged and my jaw dropped in disbelief! Could I ever hope(!) to see such wonders?
Well here I am – of course – and the opportunity during our trip to the interior to visit the Kettle Valley Steam Railway – all that remains of the Kettle Valley Railway – was too good to pass up. Images by means of the usual agency…
Tags: British Columbia, Fuji x10, Holiday, Photo
A day with my brother in Wells Gray Provincial Park.
The park was created in 1939 by – and subsequently named for – Arthur Wellesley Gray, the then BC Minister of Lands. Gray’s nickname – ‘Wells’ – was adopted as part of the name.
The park contains many impressive waterfalls, including the Helmcken Falls, Dawson Falls and Spahats Falls.
Herewith some snaps. My apologies should you encounter any problems accessing them. I did not really bring with me all of the equipment required to guarantee the successful uploading of everything that I captured.
Tags: British Columbia, Fuji x10, Holiday, Photo
To Edmonton for a long weekend – on an excursion with two objectives. The first of these – and the subject of this post – was a visit to long-time friends who previously lived in Victoria. It was lovely to see them and they spoiled us rotten – plying us with all manner of sweetmeats and tinctures and laying on the most excellent and generous entertainment (even if the price thereof was having my a*se kicked at street-hockey by our friends’ ridiculously talented six-year-old progeny).
With my Canadian experience limited thus far to British Columbia (it is a very big country!) all that I really knew about Alberta beforehand was that it was flat – relentlessly flat – and that this is not the best time to be in oil! This first visit confirmed that it is indeed flat (with impressively big skies) but also that there are numerous other places of interest in and around Edmonton – a fact to which these photographs will attest.
At Elk Island National Park we had the truly magical experience of being able to get up close and personal with the splendid herd of plains’ bison. It was possible – if only for a fleeting moment – to gain some sense of what this country must have once been like.
It is also possible to get a sense of the past at Fort Edmonton Park, where the history of the city is brought to life in a series of recreations of the townscapes of different eras.
There is so much to see at Butchart Gardens that I thought the gentle reader might indulge me were I to share another batch of images from last Saturday evening. Hope you don’t mind…
Last Friday was not the first Canada Day that I have enjoyed in the country (I arrived for a visit on July 1st back in 2012) but it was the first such that I have experienced here as a resident. We duly made a weekend of it.
Sidney spreads its celebration over two days and features a firework display on the night before Canada Day itself. At the last minute we decided not to attend – both being somewhat weary from our busy weeks – and reasoning that we could probably see the display from our windows anyway – which we could. We thus also saw the results of the ‘computer glitch’ that fired half the display within the first ten seconds – followed by a lengthy pause before the rest of it carried on as it should have. Glad we didn’t venture forth for that!
Our dear friends in Saanichton hosted a barbecue for the day itself which was lovely for all sorts of reasons – not least of which was meeting his father (a most redoubtable gentlemen) for the first time. At the end of the evening they announced that they had some spare passes for the following night (the Saturday) for Butchart Gardens. Summer Saturdays at Butchart mean live music and – yes – more fireworks… so we did get to see some after all.
The traffic queues to get into and out of the gardens on a summer Saturday night are all too reminiscent of some of those in the UK. If, however, one has a boat conveniently moored in a nearby marina – as do our dear friends – one can sail the short hop across Brentwood Bay and up to the Butchart back entrance off Tod Inlet. To my great delight this was indeed the plan and we duly puttered our way over in style.
Boats – music – picnics on the lawns – a stroll round the fabulous illuminated gardens – fireworks! It doesn’t get much better…
Here be a handful of random images:
Tags: Boats, Celebration, Fireworks, Friends, Fuji x10, Photo, Summer, Victoria
There are so many parks, trails and other good places to walk scarcely a stone-throw from our neighbourhood that it will be a considerable time before we have visited them all even once. Bear Hill is pretty close to the centre of the peninsula – about half way between Sidney and central Victoria. The Girl and I ‘yomped’ up it last weekend – Fuji x10 in hand. Here be snaps!
If you expand the panorama by clicking on it you will get a good idea of the vista from the top of the hill.
I experienced an interesting echo of Britain’s colonial past this recent long holiday weekend. The occasion was my first visit to the excellent and hugely popular Victoria Highland Games.
That this was the one hundred and fifty third such informs us not only as to their date of origin but also as to the continuing popularity of the event. As was our colonial forebears’ wont around the globe the original intent of the festival would have been to recreate a much loved element of UK cultural life to ease the longing for home of the expats upon whom the empire depended.
Here – a century and a half later – I found myself standing on a grassy slope in Topaz Park, looking across a greensward teeming with pipers, drum majors, highland dancers, heavy lifters and hammer throwers (caber tossing was on a different day!) toward the smoky Sooke hills in the background and experiencing suddenly the strongest recollection of sitting on the grass bank at the Pitlochry recreation ground in Perthshire back ‘when I were a lad’, watching the proceedings of a ‘Highland Night’.
It worked a hundred and fifty years ago… it works now!
Some pictures…
In the clan society section I found that my own – Clan Donnachaidh – has made a reappearance after some years missing from the west coast. I signed up – naturally!
Tags: Celebration, Fuji x10, Memories, Photo, Scotland, Victoria
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes'”
Marcel Proust.*
For each ‘new’ garden (Canadian: yard!) that one inherits there is a marvelous, scary, joyous voyage of discovery – lasting a year – during which time is revealed all that lies concealed within. This earlier post told part of the story of our garden; the images below testify to the fact that there is never (thus far at any rate) a dull moment therein.
* What Proust actually wrote was:
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is; and this we can contrive with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star.”
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