Victoria - 8. If Adults had Summer Camp

Colleagues of mine live around the world, and two like-minded writers, Kathryn and Cornelia, live not far from Victoria in Nanaimo and Hornby Island – in the only two Summer camps for adults left.

Most Canadian children have experienced going away for a week or more in July or August to a Summer camp where you live in wooden bunkhouses in the ‘forest’; swim; work at crafts in the ‘craft hut’; eat meals in the ‘mess tent’ together under the mosquito lights; hike; and have late-night camp fires talks before falling asleep in a cool, pine-scented night.

That is Hornby Island, for adults. Although the bunkhouses are now organized into individual homes and cottages, the islanders live the life we all enjoyed in the Summer. There are artisans working in every medium; community-organized film nights; theatre; yoga; the tack shop (the ‘Co-op’); and long sunset walks through woods.

“Turn right at the only 4-way,” she instructed.

We turned left, but found our way to Seawright and Porpoise anyway.

“It’s the Bee cabin.”

Three bright bees lined the entrance, symbols of a boy named ‘Gert’. Drummer the dog (half coyote) beat the bass ground, and two small blonde girls howled after him towards a beach lined equally with the communing rock flows and log jams.

There are too many drift sculptures to choose from – the most useful already nicked.

Warm coffee and pulled-pork couscous air signal dinner.

We talk. We talk. We droop. We sleep. Light jabs at our eyes. Loud whispers announce another hike. Craft shops. Yoga. Camp awaits.

Kathryn’s home in Pacific Gardens is a sustainable co-housing apartment complex near the historic fishing harbor in South Nanaimo. The complex is a colourful set of self-owned apartments or flats which each open up onto common gardens and dining spaces. Each resident has time set aside for tending the vegetable gardens, and once a week they meet together in the ‘mess tent’ area for potluck dinners, and sometimes other get togethers like yoga or walks and talks. Very civilized. The original group of residents (some have come and gone since then) actually organized to hire a contractor to build the complex all on their own (rather than going through a real estate agent or developer) which is wonderful. Light is everywhere, and whether you are looking inside or outside at Pacific Gardens, you feel as if you are in a tropical resort. Children run down the centre of the indoor arcades where couples sip coffee and others talk long into the night air.

Victoria - 7. Big Wood and Big Data

Tracy Smith’s Victoria Scavenger Hunt has occupied my skeptical children for four days now, so I would just like to share it with readers here. Smith is a technical writing expert, and web content designer, based in Victoria and Waterloo, but she is also a physically active, outdoors enthusiast and fan of the arts. Her Victoria Scavenger Hunt is a ‘local version’ of what to see in the centre of Victoria, and it takes children from the Wharf seals to Terry Fox, and from the Bug Zoo to the various petting zoos. Even for an adult, it’s a wonderful entry into a world that is definitely not in all of the tourist brochures.

This morning, we decided we had had enough of the urban harbor, and drove out of the city towards Sooke and Mystic Beach, Juan de Fuca trail in the middle of what B.C. is known for – big ferns and big wood, and also, as we soon discovered on the trail, big moss. There is something really soothing about being in the envelope of green. Your blood pressure decreases, your breathing slows, and you have time to think, to daydream, to rest. This is a popular trail. It has the hanging bridges you see in movies with deep ravines; mile-long sidewalks carved out of a single tree; big waterfalls; big mussels; and when we reached the end of the path; a rope swing over the sea.  Did I mention big trees?

We ate our lunch along the beach alone, and as we ate, a family of seals watched us on the incoming tide.  This reminded me of a Gaelic song, ‘Suilean Dubh’, dark eyes, and as I sang it, they tilted their heads. “Come home with us,” they called. ‘I would love to,’ I thought. It was a ‘mystic’ place – quite, serene, full of earth’s declining beauty. Something we all need to see and give thanks for.

Since our day was already full of ‘big’, and it was π-day, we took in the University of Victoria’s ‘Big Data PechaKucha’ presentation on the way home. ‘PechaKucha’ is a new Japanese computer science movement towards rapid presentation. For example, Astronomers now deal in ‘petabytes’ (PB), 1,000,000 gigabytes (GB)! That’s big data. And research labs working in social networking can now identify which person is at the top of the food chain in any one social network, like facebook, in seconds simply by entering that data. Petabytes about our lives is collected daily, examined quickly, and decisions made for us in seconds. Like the mystic trees on Juan de Fuca, the thought is overwhelming (only not in  a calming, soothing way at all)!

Victoria - 6. Water Wharfs and Skinny Lanes

When I was a child, I always wanted to live in a Dr. Seuss book – the strange trees and plants; colourful skinny little houses; and the landscape-fused environment. Walking to the end of Superior Street in Victoria, B.C. today, I ran into my Dr. Seuss.

I saw the Seuss houses floating on water through a vantage point in the shrubs – red blue, purple, yellow wee houses that could only be born of a cartoon.

Remember ‘water beds’? Imagine a whole set of $300,000 houses floating on barges – upright house boats. Fisherman’s Wharf village is a child’s dream. There are friendly, hand-fed seals that greet you, chip shop owners, and the water people. The atmosphere is fantastic. I was there on a quiet, rainy day, and was able to watch several groups of children in that hour feeding the seals (and seagulls) fish.

The boat docks are closed off to the private, and having worked at docks in my student days, I know that boat owners are offended by strangers walking along their slips; it is like catching a stranger in the shower. I was surprised that the water houses do not have the same ‘roadway’ security. It must be a little like living in a zoo during the tourist months. Even when I was there, people were poking in windows, and walking up and down small walks. If someone put their face to my bedroom glass, I would probably scream! It must be an alternative type of living indeed, but then, what else can one expect from Dr. Seuss?

 There is also an 'underwater garden' downtown Victoria too, where one can walk down 20 steps into an underwater glass room and have a look around the Pacific harbour of Victoria. Again, the underwater room was fiction enough for me, but the steps down, were a science fiction tunnel for any good movie opening:

Fan Tan Alley, also created by Seuss (or so it seems), is just five feet wide, and home to some of the most intriguing little boutiques and shops in the city. The alley is in Canada’s oldest ‘Chinatown’ (second oldest in North America after San Francisco). Most of the founding families originally immigrated from Guangdong province in South China. Some highly well educated and rich, influential Chinese families settled the block, and the Victoria Museum has a fascinating exhibit on these original peoples’ stories. The common greeting in the alley is, “Excuse me, excuse me, I’m sorry.” Be sure to say it with a goofy smile, otherwise the other Seuss shopper will know you’re an outsider for sure!

Victoria - 5. Urban Life Along the Water

Sea planes, sea taxis, fish shacks, and houses that float are the urban sea life in coastal Victoria. Even though it is March, the harbour walkway is still busy with tourists, travellers, and Vancouver work commuters, with seas planes taking off and ferries coming in.

The municipality’s artistic dolphins, the world’s ‘smartest animals’, line the historic downtown water walk (in other cities it is cows and pigs), and you know where you are based upon the dolphin there – the mosaic or the animated?

Here, there are some of the best ‘fish and chip’ shacks in the area. The day we visit, ‘Red Fish, Blue Fish’ is busy with lunch until 3p.m. when they swing their wooden shutters closed, and the eaters waddle away.

At the B.C. museum, located between the provincial parliament buildings and the Empress hotel (from the exterior stone it is difficult sometimes to tell which is which), we sit on the third floor in the aboriginal and indigenous peoples’ exhibit listening to taped stories of ancestors speaking. The room is dark. There are masks in front of us in the case, and as each voice comes on, a mask lights up. If you are a storyteller, a writer, a person who remembers listening to your grandparents’ stories, sit here. The voices are mesmerizing, and the stories of greed, love, creation, and betrayal are the sparks of novels.

Hand-carved canoes and home entry-ways made of totem poles stand in front, and we walk through a bear, a seal, and a white man to head down the escalator to the urban view once again.

Victoria - 4. Ideafest University

People probably do not realize that most universities have lectures, panels and workshops most weekends, if not daily, open to the general public. If you are in need of some intellectual stimulation, but are not interested in enrolling in a full course or degree, then these [often free] seminars can be inspiring.

The idea sessions that I attended, because of my own interests, were focused on creativity. Rita Wong, a poet and environmental water activist from Emily Carr University in Vancouver had just completed a series of poems and visual word watersheds based upon American Sandra Steingraber’s Living Downstream framework. Wong invites everyone to “listen to what’s around you; to be open to what you are connected to on the ground and through the air; and give back.” For Wong, the catalyst for creation begins with one’s environment. We are connected to the ground we walk on, so we have to be open and aware of this connection. How the connection changes, “what it says”, will provide the content for ideas.

For example, Wong says, “what if the sidewalk were to break open? What would be hiding underneath? What if the English language cracked open? What languages, words would pop through?” Like many West-coasters, Wong is fascinated by indigenous Canadian culture and language (although she has learned neither fluently). She feels strongly that endangered, indigenous languages should be restored and preserved (but is not sure how to do this), so her poems evolve out of this need.

If you are attending talks in British Columbia, you will often hear the speaker give thanks to the Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, or the Coast Salish whose land is here. It is a gesture of thanks to the first known, continuously living people in this part of the World.

Ideafest also featured ‘the future of games’ day, and I was most captured by a “Games without Frontiers” workshop led by David Strong who said, ‘journalism may be saved through gaming.’ Gaming, and the stories behind the games, is a growing industry in Canada, and each new game constructed requires a story writing team, and those stories are getting longer and longer with more sustained playing time. Strong thinks that gaming may be one alternative way to tell our stories. Is gaming a new forth of truth sharing?

“Is there still potential for human activity?” was the question debated, or discussed, at an evening panel in the science building. Five ‘creators’ in their various fields discussed how “an artist cannot live outside of her time and experience” (Jennifer Stillwell); “communal creation can still be distinct if not completely independent from its cultural connection” (Victoria Wyatt); and how ‘all art involves some form of plagiarism’ (Lee Henderson and Jonathan Goldman). Goldman, for example, said, “Shakespeare took all of his ideas from someone else, but his genius [his creativity] was in the execution of the idea.” Most of the panelists agreed that it is impossible to sever the artist from the world s/he lives within; all new ideas evolve from somewhere. What makes something creative is the sustained work and thought that goes into refining the idea until it is unique.

“The roots [to creativity] are children,” George Tzanetakis said, “they don’t have panels about creativity; they just do it.” During Picasso’s life, he was always struggling to find the essence of the child artist within himself too.

Let’s find our child. Go home, find what you most loved to do at five, ten, twelve, and do it!