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Published: July 17th 2008
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BC Parliament House
Catherine out the front of British Columbia's Parliament House in Victoria. We haven’t put anything up for a few weeks now, mainly because we have been working a fair bit and have been essentially living the lives of shift workers. We’re keeping the bar staff at our local wondering why we are so weird - rolling in at about midnight, dressed from head to toe in black (our work uniform requirements), carrying backpacks, dark bags under our eyes, ordering a couple drinks and then wandering out the back service door and into the back alley (we live on the other side of the alley).
We’ve had a few firsts for us in the past couple of weeks. July 1 is Canada day, which is pretty much like Australia day with people enjoying free festivities, dressed in red and white, holding Canadian flags , sporting fake flag tattoos and drinking way more than you they should on a school night. We also stumbled upon what is apparently an annual event on 1 July as an alternative to Canada Day - Cannabis Day. Cannabis Day is run by the pro legalisation mob (the US are currently trying to extradite a couple of its senior figures for running a cannabis seeds business via mail)
The Dinghy Dock Pub
Lok and Catherine at Canada's only floating pub. Food, beer, water and a glorious view of the sunset over the harbour - superb! and is a celebration of all thing marijuana in the park out the front of the Vancouver museum. It was quite a celebration of Vancouver’s liberal views to see people smoking, selling cookies, joints and weed at makeshift stalls, and a raffle held with the major prize being a pound of weed, all occurring in front of a cultural institution in the middle of the Downtown. This all occurred with a heavy police presence making sure things stayed peaceful and safe, but not enforcing any cannabis related laws on this particular day. We had to work on Canada Day afternoon, so we were very well behaved.
Canada Day also seemed like an appropriate time for our first try of one of Canada’s signature dishes, Poutine, which consists of a big bowl of fries with a dressing of cheese curd and gravy. Sounds disgusting, looks disgusting, but tastes pretty good. Anything that has zero nutritional value and consists of nothing but fat and carbs has to be good.
On 6 July we caught a Ferry across the Georgia Strait and spent 3 days on Vancouver Island, or ‘the Island’ as the locals call it, two days in Victoria which
The Raven and the First Men
A huge yellow cedar carving by BC's most renowned First Nations sculptor, Bill Reid. The handcrafted gold jewellery that was stolen from UBC earlier this year was also the work of Bill Reid. is BC’s capital and one day in Nanaimo. Victoria is a lovely little city on the water, much slower and quieter than Vancouver, with an obvious nod to Britain both in terms of architecture and culture. We went on the free tour of Parliament House (BC only has one House of Parliament, so essentially a majority Government can rule the province without having to do deals with the opposition or independents in an upper house), had a meal and a few drinks with Victoria’s beautiful people at the Sticky Wicket, and enjoyed the Harbour under long and beautiful sunny days. We stayed at the Ocean Island Backpackers in Victoria, which has a check-in time of 3pm, which is pretty late to start with, but when our room wasn’t ready for another hour after that, we had a bit of a late start to our stay. There are probably better places to stay in Victoria, so we wouldn’t recommend it as a first choice.
Arriving in Nanaimo by bus in no way shows off the town’s best assets. Coming in through the back of the town and down in towards the derelict bus terminal with sheets of iron falling off,
The Ferry Ride Home
Lok contemplating a return to work that afternoon on the ferry ride from Nanaimo to Vancouver. crumbling stone retaining walls, and the remnants of industrial infrastructure that hasn’t seen a dollar of investment since the death of the coal mining industry half a century before, is a case in point as to why the gateway to a City is so important. At that point in time, we were wondering whether one night there might be one night too many. We grabbed our bags and trudged up the hill towards downtown, fearful of what the standard of our accommodation was going to be in a place that seemed to have peaked a century earlier. To our surprise and sheer delight, we walked into the newly renovated Painted Turtle Guesthouse to see a smiling and welcoming face and checked into our simple but well appointed room. Fear number one alleviated, but what were we going to do in a former coal mining town for the day? Fear number two was allayed when we went on a little expedition through downtown Nanaimo and down to the marina and harbour. Downtown Nanaimo is very small and quaint (although the broader Nanaimo region apparently has a population of about 76,000 people), and is quite pretty if you stay between the water and the freeway - this area has seen some new money in the past 50 years whereas everything on the other side of the freeway that we saw appears to have missed out. Whoever looks after tourism in Nanaimo should definitely encourage people to arrive by water or sea plane. Fear number three - what to do for the evening - was sunk when we took the small commuter ferry across to the Dinghy Dock Pub which is reportedly Canada’s only floating pub. It was great to sit down to a nice meal and a few beers while completely surrounded by water and watching the sun set over the harbour. If we were in Nanaimo a week later, we would have been there to see the ‘world famous’ Great International World Bathtub Race. We did however get to try a Nanaimo Bar, which apparently originates from Britain and was sent by families to their loved ones working in the coal mines. Think a layer of brownie then custard and chocolate and you get the drift - very tasty but with the nutritional value of a mars bar. With so many islands in close proximity to downtown Nanaimo that are only accessible by water, we would have loved to had more time in there and used it as a base to go out exploring all of the sparsely populated islands and interesting sites in the area. Maybe next time...
We’ve also been to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, which is best known for its collection of items from the First Nations people of British Columbia. We took a tour of the Museum which we highly recommend as it provided a lot of context and understanding about the different First Nations cultures for these two ignorant Australians.
In other news, one of Canada’s favourite daughters, Celine Dion, was recently voted as inflicting the world with the worst cover version ever with her duet of You Shook Me All Night Long with Anastasia. If you haven’t seen it, we implore you to check it out (
&feature=related). Try not to cry with laughter as Celine Dion plays air guitar and attempts the Angus Young duck walk, all within the first 30 seconds of the performance.
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