Between The Bridges – December 4

Last week I counted ten Christmas trees shining through apartment windows along our seawall. “Already”, I thought. Then I started to notice lights everywhere: lights on boats, lights in windows, lights on balconies and lights on bicycle wheels. I even saw a skateboarder who had outlined his body in a string of lights and rolled like a cutout along the seawall. Festive lights were everywhere brightening up the dark clear nights that typified our November.

Magical holiday lights can be found too around Granville Island daily from 4 - 10 pm now until January 3rd. 

Take a stroll down Railspur Alley and you’ll find huge coloured bulbs traversing the lane, and across from the Granville Island Hotel an ordinary tree transformed when covered with musical notes.  

You will find, again, the silver tree inside the gated Ocean Art Works; the golden tree near the French bakery across from the market and the magical star which dominates the plaza on the north side of the market.    

Perhaps we are craving light during these final dark days of the pandemic. Enjoy an evening walk on our seawall and on the island.  As we look forward to a new year these lights can fill us with optimism and hope:  a vaccine on the horizon and a renewed appreciation for each other and times together again.

Take What You Need, Leave What You Can:

OPENING A FALSE CREEK SOUTH COMMUNITY FRIDGE DOOR

In the spirit of the season, Beth Dempster, together with a group of students from UBC’s Masters of Education for Sustainability are testing out a “community fridge” at the Convivial Café. The fridge is part of a program to help address food insecurity and food waste in False Creek South. Take what you need and leave what you can. Fridge offerings or donations can include fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, sealed and unopened dairy (and dairy-alternative) products, and food prepared in certified kitchens (but please, nothing past its best before date).

In giving over a generous shelf of Convivial’s drinks fridge to welcome food donations and help meet the food needs of some of our neighbours, Beth is continuing her dedicated service to our community. 

To take part in this community resource - a pilot until Christmas Day -  stop by during Convivial’s open hours. For feedback or questions about the Convivial fridge, please contact Beth at the cafe or at *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*. For feedback or questions on community fridges in general, or resources to start your own, please contact: *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*.

Julia Gellman (resident of the neighbourhood), Kelly Chessman, Kelly Davies, and Erica Ellis are community educators, committed to sustainable food systems and civic engagement. Their program is a graduate program with CityStudio, to collaborate with the City of Vancouver on sustainability challenges at the municipal level. The idea of a community fridge - also being implemented elsewhere in the city - fits well with their program and interests. 

Last week’s article about the mystery leaf artist started lots of speculation about who might be behind the rake bombing. Between The Bridges’ investigative team reached out to the enigmatic raker on Instagram, and got the scoop:

My name is Nik. I do live nearby and I pass through the neighbourhood regularly on my bike or walk to work. 
 

This is the first year that I’ve done this, but I’ve had the idea bouncing around in my head for well over a decade. I think it took the combination of good weather conditions and the constraints this pandemic has placed on our options for engaging with the city to get me out there and give it a try. I got a bit of a late start though, and only had a few mornings to make some designs; in all I managed to try it out in six different locations. I see the work this fall as being a kind of proof of concept and have plans that are a little more ambitious for next year! 

Why?
Why is a more difficult question. I think it’s mostly just a creative outlet, imagining something and then wanting to bring it into being, combined with a strong desire to interact with this fleeting seasonal beauty in some way.  It also has a social component. I really like the idea of people coming across one of these interventions and hopefully having a moment of pleasant surprise. So far the response has been much better than I expected, with a lot of friendly encouragement from passers by. I also enjoy the fact that, like fall itself, the designs are completely ephemeral, and begin to change or fade before they are even complete, often being no more than faint traces within days. 

What else do you do? I see on your Instagram profile you're also a designer.
I am a designer by trade and an artist by training.

We had a couple people suggest you were dressed up as a gardener when you were raking. Is that true?
I love it! While I didn’t dress up as a gardener, I did try to get an early start, so that most of the people who discovered the designs wouldn’t know how they came about, or who was responsible. I think that the mystery is a big part of the fun.

The Co-op housing lease report is now expected to be released in the new year, likely February, as City staff continues to engage with the Co-operative Housing Association of BC regarding lease options. There have also been discussions with the City, CHFBC and VanCity to see what type of lease framework would work for potential lenders. We'll keep you posted as soon as we know more.

With this issue, Between The Bridges, having discovered  a number of bird fanciers among our local residents, is starting a new feature to share your pictures, answer your questions and intrigue your curiosity about our avian neighbours.

Heather Point resident Lora Roy captured this photo (above left) of a rare and handsome visitor to the Charleson Park pond and has asked friends what it might be. The Regatta’s Michael Nagel, one of the intrepid reporters on our new “Bird Beat”, identifies it as an immature/juvenile Trumpeter Swan.  As he notes, “the trumpeter swan is the heaviest living bird native to North America. They are winter migrants and like open grassland as a preferred habitat, although they are also seen around bays usually close to shore.”

Lora and others have also been curious about the large white and whitish birds recently seen grazing comfortably among our resident gaggles of Canada Geese. Michael notes that while it is not unusual to see crows, gulls and ducks mingling with the geese, these more notable visitors are migrating juvenile Snow Geese.
 
“Generally, lone migrating birds are sometimes found in groups of other birds for a number of reasons.  Individual birds get detached from their families on their breeding grounds or they become separated from their families during migration flight or stops during migration for various reasons. In such cases, they latch onto similar species with similar feeding habits for safety,  rather than being exposed to predators as a lone, single target. 
 
“Snow Geese are somewhat smaller than Canada geese at about 3.5 kilos, and they and individual Greater White-fronted Geese sometimes mingle with Canada Geese. Both ducks and geese are sociable animals who do not like living alone.”  

Even in non-Covid times, mental health is an issue for many of us, but now it is much tougher to keep a positive outlook. A recent Angus Reid study found that people are twice as stressed by fear and uncertainty about health – their own and others’ – as well as concerns about employment and finances, and the social isolation that comes from physical distancing. 

We are grieving the loss of active lives and social connections, but we can’t fully mourn and pass through the mourning stages because we don’t know when or how this will end.

While accepting sadness and frustration, we have options for lifting our spirits:

We are blessed to have professionals in our neighborhood who understand how to help us find inner strength. They can help with counselling, art therapy, massage and other healing practices for dealing with symptoms such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, or trauma as well as other mental health issues.

 

Up the steps on Leg-in-Boot Square at number 659A lies a hidden mecca of professional health and wellness offices offering these services:

These are our neighbours, assisting us with any uncertainty, offering help to build new scaffolding, new routines, in Covid lives.

If you’re concerned about the proliferation of Stuff dominating our lives, homes and planet, and understand that the most important R in the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle trilogy is the first one - Reduce - there’s a place for you in the Buy Nothing Project.

Buy Nothing is an international network using FaceBook to link people together in their own communities in a truly sharing economy. It has a few simple rules: 

Buy Nothing: Give Freely. Share Creatively. Post anything you’d like to give away, lend, or share among neighbors. Ask for anything you’d like to receive for free or borrow. Keep it legal. Keep it civil. No buying or selling, no trades or bartering, no soliciting for cash. We’re an adult-only, hyper-local gift economy. We are not a charity or community bulletin board.

There’s a Buy Nothing Fairview group of almost a thousand members living within its established boundaries from West 16th to the Seawall, Cambie to Burrard. However, the voluntary administrators think that number is getting a bit too large for true community interaction. Mindful of the project’s mission statement that true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors, the Fairview group is planning to “sprout”, that is, to divide into two new groups. How and when this is done will be reported here as soon as it occurs.

Meanwhile, you can follow the lead of other False Creek South neighbours and join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1332530093467453/.

Brenda Bailey, the recently elected MLA for Vancouver False Creek, has been appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Technology and Innovation.  Brenda was previously a tech entrepreneur, founding two tech companies including Silicon Sisters, the first female owned and run video game studio in Canada, creating video games for women and girls.

"Local Prodigy" ran a headline in the January 1985 issue of The Creek, above a photo of 15-year old False Creek Co-op violinist, Ramsey Husser. The ensuing article then noted his exceptional talent for playing and for attracting an audience. 

“Last January” it reported, “Ramsey had the chance to buy a very fine old instrument but no money. So, with admirable courage and spirit he played an impressive benefit recital to earn money to buy the violin.”

The concert proved so lucrative that Ramsey went on to hold another to purchase a bow of equal quality. The two, violin and bow, did him well playing in Victoria and a solo engagement with the Roanoke Symphony in Virginia.

Ramsey began playing at age 4. His mother, Kathryn, who still lives in the Co-op, said that she and his father, both trained musicians, noticed very early on that Ramsey was gifted. At 9, he became a pupil of Sydney Humphreys of the famed Purcell String Quartet. He went on to achieve a number of awards and the year before the article appeared, he was the youngest member of Canada’s National Youth Orchestra. At 15 he was concert master of the Vancouver Youth Orchestra as well as a teacher of students.

Since The Creek article, Ramsey has studied in Indiana and at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where he also played in that city’s symphony. His mother writes: “At Peabody he met this beautiful young French cellist from Montreal. They fell in love. She graduated and returned home where lo and behold a string opening occurred with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (OSM in French). He went up, auditioned and won the spot which was a titled chair w/tenure. (He was the youngest at age 23 to ever do so.) He and Annie married a few years later and have two lovely grown daughters, a dog, a cat and a bird! They live in Boucherville and he has become quite competent using French.”

Ramsey Husser is now the MSO’s Second Assistant Concertmaster. Creek residents were once treated to an impromptu concert if they happened to be walking by the Co-op when the young Ramsey Husser practiced. To see him play today, go to: https://www.osm.ca/en/watch-and-listen-2/ and https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2686170008327560.

“You asked for photos”, wrote Susana Banks (Heather Point), whose walks often include taking photos such as those she kindly sent us. 

Thanks to Susana for the photos, and also for her welcome comment that this newsletter “helps to stitch the neighbourhood together in a very healthy way."