Point Grey Road Waterfront Parks

Point Grey Road Waterfront Parks
by Joie du Soleil

View of Burrard Inlet from Point Grey Road Park

Several small park sites line Point Grey Road in Vancouver, from the western end of the street, above Jericho Beach, and heading east, all the way to Trafalgar Street in the Kitsilano district. Thanks to the Vancouver Park Board, and many concerned citizens, these public “mini parks” were created to allow everyone to enjoy the views along the waterfront. If they had not been created, expensive mansions would have lined the whole of Point Grey Road, hiding the water’s edge and preventing people from enjoying the seaside. The “parklets” provide welcome breathing spaces between the existing houses, and are a part of what I call the “Treasures of Vancouver”!

Views from these six parks include English Bay, West Vancouver, the Vancouver city skyline, the Coast Mountains, Stanley Park, and the shoreline.

Looking east towards downtown Vancouver, houses along Point Grey Road

Possibly a Blue Spruce tree—look at all those cones!

The rainbow’s end is adorning “Sleeping Beauty” mountain’s neck:)

We are so blessed to have Bald Eagles living right in our city!

“SEASIDE BIKE ROUTE”, one of the many safe bike routes for cyclists. Well, “safer”, anyway!

“Park-goer” admiring a very old ornamental cherry tree

To sum up, here are the names of six small parks along Point Grey Road:

Jean Beaty Park: 3393 Point Grey Road, at Waterloo Street

Point Grey Road Park: 3215 PGR, just east of Blenheim St.

Volunteer Park: 2855 PGR, at Macdonald St.

Margaret Pigott Park: 2743 PGR, just east of Macdonald St.

Point Grey Park Site at Stephens St.: 2699 PGR, at Stephens St.

Point Grey Park Site at Trafalgar St.: 2601 PGR, at Trafalgar St.

Thought for the day:

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

—John Muir (1838-1914) Scottish-American naturalist

COVID-19: The New STI (Socially Transmitted Infection)

FEEL FREE to SHARE this informative article by Dr. Davidicus Wong, who is not only a first-class physician (founding chair and lead physician of the Burnaby Division of Family Practice), but also an excellent writer and communicator of essential information on health.

Positive Potential Medicine

There is a growing and alarming complacency in communities across Canada including BC. 

Our self-congratulations and comparisons to the worst case scenarios unfolding in the US is like being a C+ student comparing himself to the kids who are failing. It’s not the time to stop studying, skip classes and start experimenting with drugs.

In recent weeks, we’re already seeing a potential second wave in the pandemic and it’s not just because we have opened more businesses and public facilities. Many individuals have forgotten about the effectiveness – and necessity – of social distancing and are just plain confused about “expanding your bubble.”

Birthday celebrations and other house parties, gathering in large crowded groups, playing contacts sports and meeting up with friends at restaurants and coffee shops without physical distancing or masks are contributing to the accelerated spread of COVID-19 infections in the community.

I have spoken to patients who…

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Doug Hepburn Imparts a Lesson on Life

As a teenager in Vancouver in the 1960s, I was fortunate enough to have former world champion and World’s Strongest Man Doug Hepburn guiding my training in the Olympic lifts, especially the standing press, his own inimitable forte. I also enjoyed many opportunities to listen to Doug philosophising. Here’s a short video of an interview during which Doug imparts an important lesson on life.
 

Immortal God of Harmony

More than once I have heard someone say, “I like classical music, but I can’t stand Bach!” This is rather like saying, “I love sculpture, but I detest Michelangelo,” or “I love cosmology, but I have no use for Einstein!” To get an idea of just how important to the world of music Bach was and is, consider the following statements by other composers and musicians.

“Study Bach. There you will find everything.”
– Johannes Brahms

“Bach … the immortal god of harmony.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven

“Oh, you happy sons of the North who have been reared at the bosom of Bach, how I envy you!”
– Giuseppe Verdi  

“And if we look at the works of JS Bach – a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity – on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered. And in his works we will search in vain for anything the least lacking in good taste.”
– Claude Debussy

“Any musician, even the most gifted, takes a place second to Bach’s at the very start.”
– Paul Hindemith

“If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach…”
– Aaron Copland

“When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.”
– Dave Brubeck

“Bach is the supreme genius of music… This man, who knows everything and feels everything, cannot write one note, however unimportant it may appear, which is anything but transcendent. He has reached the heart of every noble thought, and has done it in the most perfect way.”
– Pablo Casals

“I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can’t think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that — its humanity.”
– Glenn Gould

The Master of masters himself, however, simply says, “I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed … equally well.”
– Johann Sebastian Bach

Now I invite you to relax and listen to the Sarabande from the English Suite No. 2 in A minor, as performed by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

 

 

 

 

 

No One Before Kimura, No One After

The name “Kimura” likely doesn’t mean much to most North Americans, but to Doug Rogers, the most successful Canadian judoka (exponent of judo) to compete internationally, the name was magic. The saying in Japan is “No one before Kimura, no one after.” In other words, Kimura was the greatest competitive Japanese judoka ever. In Doug Rogers’ words, “My teacher is the best there ever was!”

Masahiko Kimura September 10, 1917 – April 18, 1993

Rogers went to Japan in 1960 to study judo at the Kodokan, the world’s judo Mecca. Four years later he represented Canada in the Tokyo Olympics — the first Games in which judo was included — and won the silver medal in a very close final match against Japan’s supreme technician, Isao Inokuma. After the Olympics Doug trained under the direction of Kimura — he became the only Westerner Kimura had ever taught — and in the summer of 1965 he took part in the All-Japan University Championships, helping his team to victory. He was the first non-Asian foreigner to take part in this tournament, and he was also named the tournament’s best fighter. One can only speculate about how good Rogers might have become had he stayed in Japan for a few more years. Kimura wanted Rogers to remain in Japan and continue to train under his direction, as he felt that Doug could become the best judoka in the world if he did so; but Doug had to consider seriously his future, and he decided to return to Canada and begin working toward a vocation. As it turned out, he got married and helped raise four children while enjoying a full career in Canada as a commercial airline pilot. He still found time, though, to win a gold medal at the 1967 Pan-American Games in Winnipeg. (I was there, too, and won the silver medal in the middle-heavyweight class in weightlifting. I remember seeing Doug walking down the hallways of the athletes’ residence, but I didn’t know him on a personal level. He was certainly an imposing figure at six feet four inches and 260 pounds, a fine-looking athlete.)

 

Canada’s Doug Rogers competes in the judo event at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, on his way to a silver medal win in the over 80kg category. (CP Photo/COA)

 

Fortunately, in 1965 Canada’s National Film Board produced an excellent little documentary on Doug’s judo odyssey: Judoka, which can be viewed online at YouTube.

As for Kimura, here are just a few relevant statistics concerning his life in judo:

* height 170 cm
* weight 84 kg
* promoted to 4th dan at age 15, after 6 years of judo
* at age 18, the youngest ever to be promoted to 5th dan
* promoted to 7th dan at age 30
* at his best Kimura performed 1000 pushups and practised for nine hours daily
* lost only 4 matches in his entire career, all in 1935, the year in which he turned 18 years of age
* easily defeated Brasilian Jiu-Jitsu co-founder Helio Gracie in a challenge match in Brasil
* trained in karate, in particular with his friend Masutatsu Oyama, founder of Kyokushin karate
* his osoto-gari (large outer reap) was performed so powerfully that many opponents suffered concussions and lost consciousness, prompting some to request that he never use this technique against them

 

Small wonder Doug Rogers declared, “Kimura is the greatest fighter Japan ever produced,” and that they say, “No one before Kimura, no one after”!

 

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NO Enbridge!!

Vancouver “No Enbridge” Rally (photo: Zack Embree )

Today I attended the “No Enbridge” rally at Science World in Vancouver. Below are my Facebook message of this morning regarding the gathering, followed by my brief sketch of the event, which was but one of more than 130 held across Canada as part of a Defend Our Climate day of action.

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Today’s “No Enbridge” rally at Science World at 2 p.m. is expected to draw a large number of concerned organisations and BC citizens. ForestEthics Advocacy’s Ben West puts it this way:

 “The Enbridge pipeline is not only one of the most irresponsible schemes ever proposed in this province, it also has become a symbol for so much more. This is about the power of people over giant, arrogant corporations that have too much influence on our governments. It’s about the rights of indigenous people and healing the wounds of past injustices. It’s about taking a stand to stop the ‘gateway to global warming'” (Georgia Straight, Nov. 14, 2013).

This view is consistent with that of West Coast Environmental Law, BC’s legal champion for the environment, an organization that provides legal information, guidance, and support to those working to protect the quality of BC’s water, lands, and air:

“For decades a federal moratorium has protected British Columbia’s sensitive northern waters from crude oil tankers. All that will change if currently proposed oil pipelines are built from the Alberta tar sands to the coast of BC’s Great Bear Rainforest.”

You can read more on this important issue at West Coast Environmental Law. And if you live in or near Vancouver, you might just want to show up at Science World today. It’s as much your and your family’s concern as anyone else’s; so don’t be afraid to become involved.

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After posting the above message, I travelled with my family to the rally. As it happened, a substantial crowd turned out for the event. According to The Vancouver Sun, “Thousands of protesters gathered in Vancouver’s False Creek area on a chilly, windswept afternoon on Saturday to protest the Enbridge pipeline proposal.”

First Nations speakers were joined by representatives from Vancouver City Council (Andrea Reimer and Adriane Carr), ForestEthics (Ben West), MLAs (Robin Austin and Spencer Chandra Herbert), MPs (Murray Rankin and Nathan Cullen), and many other groups, including secondary school students, all expressing their commitment to the ecological integrity of the West Coast and their unyielding opposition to the proposed Enbridge oil pipeline, much to the delight of the thousands of individuals of all ages who had gathered to listen and to voice their own dissent.  Hopefully the momentum generated by this event will continue to build and carry the citizens of BC on to victory — a victory over corporate greed and political irresponsibility, which would be a significant one for all Canadians, not only in terms of protecting BC’s coastal environment, but as a reminder that citizen protest is not only a right, but an effective means of expressing the will of the people.

(It is worth remembering that neither the provincial nor the federal government was elected by a majority of voters, although each is a majority government: in the most recent elections the BC Liberals won 44.4% of the vote [58% voter turnout]; the federal Conservatives, 39.6% of the vote [61% voter turnout].)

The photographs below suggest the way things were this afternoon. (To enlarge a photo, simply click on it.)

An elementary school student’s sign.

The view along the quay.

Some came by sea in kayaks.

Focussing on the speakers.

The signs tell a story.

The main message!