Comfortably ensconced in the Fairmont Waterfront property in downtown Vancouver, I had the morning free, awaiting an Alaska-bound afternoon embarkation aboard Holland America Line’s MS Zuiderdam.
The day dawned warm and sunny and my concierge suggested this was an ideal day to borrow one of the hotel’s complimentary bicycles to cycle around the city’s sea wall and 1000-acre Stanley Park, a slice of coastal rain forest in the heart of one of Canada’s largest cities.
Taking a turn through Vancouver’s Gastown I found myself perched under the statue of Captain “Gassy Jack” Deighton, a former river boat master who founded the city of Vancouver in 1867. An inveterate entrepreneur, “Gassy Jack”, earned his sobriquet from his smoothly persuasive manner. Purchasing a hogshead of whiskey, he visited a local lumber mill and offered the workers all the liquor they could drink if they provided free labor to build a saloon. This feat was accomplished in 24 hours but it’s not recorded where the lumber came from or if he paid for it!
Cycling past the nearby chiming steam clock, jetting steam into the air on the quarter-hour, I mentally noted that this was yet another, likely unintentional tribute to the city’s founder. In any event, though the official name for the early settlement was Granville, “Gastown” was the moniker that stuck.
Biking on, I passed the modernistic Canada Place, temporary home to cruise ships visiting Vancouver, most of them Alaska-bound. Taking a slight detour I indulged my weakness for Art Deco by visiting the Marine Building, a nautically themed architectural masterpiece of that style, completed in 1930.
Next I rounded Coal Harbour, once a gritty industrial area, but now home to the Royal Vancouver Yacht Squadron. Adjacent is Deadman’s Island, a former Coast Salish native burial ground, since WW II home to a military base designated HMCS Discovery. (There is an interesting parallel on Canada’s east coast. Halifax’s Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron is adjacent to another Deadman’s Island which was the final resting place of many POW’s from the War of 1812.)
As I approached Brockton Point I admired a large collection of Northwest Native totem poles, then passed around Brockton Point and spotted what I thought was a copy of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid perched on a rock, gazing pensively out to sea. But no, it was Elek Imredy’s Girl in a Wetsuit, Vancouver’s funky answer to its European counterpart.
At Prospect Point I admired the Lion’s Gate Bridge, built by Guinness Breweries (more booze!) in 1938 to provide access to their North Shore development, the British Properties, now one of Vancouver’s most posh neighborhoods.
Next I passed the site where the S.S. Beaver sank. This arose, not from any natural disaster or hazard, but in a panic-stricken effort by the crew to turn the vessel around and return to dock when they realized they’d left their liquor supply behind!
At Siwash Rock, a picturesque sea stack, I sweet-talked a resting jogger into snapping my photo. Completing my circumnavigation of the park I headed back to the Fairmont Waterfront for breakfast at Herons, its award winning signature restaurant. (I couldn’t help notice that my breakfast honey came from Chef Dana’s apiary located on the hotel’s roof!)
Cruising out of Vancouver? Why not start your voyage with a bicycle ride?
IF YOU GO…
Fairmont Waterfront, Vancouver BC
Photo Credits
All photos by George Burden – All Rights Reserved
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