Much of my time from 2008 to 2010 was spent taking courses from Athabasca University. I thought that it might be interesting to convert some of the essay assignments – such as this one – into blog postings.
One course was called Writing Creative Non-Fiction. This was what I handed in:
June 21, 1792
Local women, carrying baskets and digging sticks, stopped at the sandstone bluff where the forest trail emerged into the bright afternoon sun of the place known as Ayyulshun. This was a season to gather food and then relax in the sun reflected on the salt water, yet their eyes still made a precautionary sweep for war canoes. Tribal raids and slave taking were common coastal events. Immediately before them the tidal sand flats extended for a hundred yards out from the shore. They knew that clams waited there to be dug and steamed. At the water’s edge a couple of harbour seals basked with eye’s wary for hunters. But what was that strange sight the women saw on the far southern shore of the bay? Holding their hands up to shield the bright sun, they saw what appeared to be several great canoes with bare trees growing from their decks.
These were ships where explorers from England and Spain were meeting to rename the coast. Captain George Vancouver and his crew had already spent six weeks of 1792 exploring the northwest coast of North America. One inlet he named after his friend Sir Harry Burrard; that inlet would later become the main harbour of the city that was eventually given Vancouver’s name. Now on the longest day of 1792, Vancouver was surprised to come upon the boats of Spanish captains Galiano and Valdés. This was at the edge of the great sand banks which are created from the soil that the nearby Fraser River carries from the interior mountains. Twice a day the tide recedes to reveal a sandy expanse extending a mile from the thickly forested shore; and twice a day the fish-laden water rushes back to hide those same sand banks from human view. The Spanish and English captains anchored just offshore in the same area where great cargo ships would anchor in the coming years. The European captains met cordially and compared notes. Vancouver “was mortified” to discover that the Spanish had already explored much of the area where he was now doing his detailed surveys. In honour of this meeting, George Vancouver would mark the location on his map as Spanish Banks. Later map makers would give the name of English Bay to the outer harbour where they met. None of these “discoverers” noticed the native women digging clams on the eastern shore of the bay.
June 21, 1929
On the first summer afternoon of 1929 a young boy made a short detour to English Bay while walking home from his first grade classes at Lord Roberts Elementary School. He was my father, known as Milton, age 6 ½. He stopped at a pushcart vendor on the Beach Avenue sidewalk. He plunked down a nickel for a brown-paper bag that leaked the melted butter which the vendor poured from a kerosene-fired kettle. Milton walked across to the half-block of Morton Avenue – the shortest street in Vancouver. There he sat on the front steps of a wealthy family’s beach cottage; he shook the bag to get the last popcorn kernels and then licked the butter from his hands. From his perch – just as the native clam diggers did in the same spot – he shielded his eyes and stared into the sun reflected on the bay.
Life was good and the stock market crash was still several months in the future. His family lived in a nice apartment building and his father still had money to spend on the Hotel Vancouver dinners that were captured in family photo albums. Young Milton noticed supplies being delivered for the dance-hall on the short pier jutting from the shoreline bluff. Gentle waves pushed by the onshore breeze lapped against the creosote-coated pilings of the pier. The dance-hall staff prepared for the Friday night crowds that would soon arrive by streetcar.
A few years earlier, sand had been dredged to expand the bathing beach. Between the road and the shoreline, a large wooden bathhouse had been built. In it were change rooms, concession stands and Vancouver’s first aquarium. With all the industry in nearby False Creek – everything from sawmills to the gasworks – the water was noticeably polluted and anyone wishing to harvest for clams and oysters would now first travel well out of the city. Small boys still swam in these waters and occasionally a seal would pop his head up from the sea to discover what strange things the humans were up to.
June 21, 1969
I was seventeen years old in 1969. I was at the end of grade 11 and it was a time of great change. My parents had recently separated and, along with my mother and sister, I lived just two short blocks from English Bay Beach.
I delivered the Vancouver Sun in the afternoon. My route ran along Morton and Beach Avenues just across from the beach. Most of my customers were on the inland side of the street since the only beach-side residence was the eight-story Englesea Lodge which anchored the entrance to Stanley Park. I had more than a hundred newspapers in that short distance since the residences were largely apartment buildings ranging from six to sixteen stories. It was just three blocks from Denman Street to the park. Along Beach Avenue there remained only three of the big wooden summer homes that my father would remember so well.
On that particular afternoon it would take more than an hour to complete my route. I pulled my big stack of papers on a child’s wooden wagon. As I often did in nice weather, I stopped half-way to buy a paper bag of popcorn from a pushcart vendor. I sat on a bench and squinted into the afternoon sun. Between Spanish Banks and me a few ships waited at anchor before being loaded with wheat or coal in Burrard Inlet. To my left the old wooden bathhouse had long been replaced with a concrete version. Immediately before me, since it was low tide, I saw a few barnacle-covered rocks emerge from the sand. Among them were the stunted remains of creosote pilings from the long-destroyed dance-hall pier. I licked the popcorn butter from my fingers and finished delivering my route.
Summer 2009
Having moved out of the city, my visits to the beach at English Bay are now rare. The width of the beach sand was tremendously increased in the seventies and the last house replaced by concrete. The Englesea Lodge apartment building was knocked down and replaced by a patch of lawn. On warm summer afternoons, local residents gather to bask in the sun much as the seals once did on that same beach.
When I do get a chance to walk along that shore, I sometimes notice the dark shiny head of a seal pop up from the sea to look around. As always, the tide recedes twice each day to reveal the sand flats; and as it always does, the tide soon returns to hide so much from human view.
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