Emi's lunch diary

Okay, here we are at Auntie Carrot and Uncle John's favourite lunch place, the Savary Island Pie Company in West Vancouver on Sunday. The adults seem pretty happy that we got a table by the window and a high chair for me. I'm just waiting for the action to start.

My mom Aya has brought along a portable keep-Emi-happy kit -- a colouring book, crayons, Sharpies and stickies in a plastic bag. Auntie Carrot supervises over her glasses. We're both ignoring the muffin for the moment.

Mom and dad ordered me a grilled-cheese sandwich, but the colouring book is way more interesting. Auntie Carrot took this picture of me ignoring the food while my parents eat and talk.

Mom says it's time to go. More adventures ahead!

My parents wrap up my leftovers to take home; I think they will enjoy the grilled cheese sandwich later. 

On the way to coffee (Uncle John says Savary's coffee isn't up to his standard, so we're going to another place), the adults all start laughing at this truck. The driver seems pretty happy; he laughs too.

At the coffee place, I get hot chocolate instead. It's thick and creamy; like a warm milkshake. Auntie Carrot took a picture showing that  I like it a lot.

After chocolate, we go for a walk in the rain. Mom and I have a good time in this puddle.

Auntie Carrot looks horrified at something my dad is showing her on his smartphone. Something about a tower at Science World where my dad thought he'd lost me. They wouldn't let adults into the tower so I had fun all on my own.

Here I am in  the little train in the park. It doesn't move, so mom makes choo-choo noises to make it seem like we 're going somewhere.

My favourite part of the whole day. I ride on mom's back while she runs along the seawall, making bucking motions every few steps. I'm sure it's just like riding a horse, and it doesn't tire her out at all.

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See how energized mom looks! I think everybody had a good time taking me to lunch, especially Uncle John, who entertained himself by taking all these pictures of me! 

Rubies, roses, love

Virginia Woolf was so deeply impressed by her half-sister's engagement in 1896 that it formed her standard for love for the rest of her life. In her memoirs, she said new engagements always gave her the feeling of : "My Love's like a red, red rose, that's newly sprung in June,"  Mere affairs, or unofficial arrangements, didn't do it for her.

 Auntie Eve, centre, after her marriage to Uncle Len. Here she's surrounded by me and my siblings, with her own first child in the middle. Left to right, Diane, Betty, Auntie Eve, Victor, Larry, Brian, Carol. We are at Grandpa and Granny's place at Sylvan Lake, Alberta.

Virginia Woolf was 14 and recovering from a nervous breakdown after her mother's death when she first saw someone fall in love. From behind the folding doors of her family's London drawing room, she watched her half-sister Stella blossom during her engagement to a persistent young suitor called Jack Hills.

It was "so intense, so exciting, so rapturous" that it amounted to a vision -- "my first vision then of love between man and woman," she writes in her memoir, Moments of Being.

"It was to me like a ruby; the love I detected that winter of their engagement, glowing, red, clear, intense. It gave me a conception of love; a standard of love; a sense that nothing in the world is so lyrical, so musical, as a young man and a young woman in their first love for each other."

Woolf's description evoked the fizz in the air the summer that Uncle Len introduced us to the beautiful young woman who would become our Auntie Eve. We were staying at our grandparents' cottage at Sylvan Lake, when he brought his intended there to meet his parents. The newcomer had long blonde hair, usually pinned up; she had a German accent, and she was from somewhere "back east" -- all of which made her an exotic bird in a flock of wrens. But it was the fact that she and my uncle were to marry that turned the atmosphere electric.

Love! Marriage! I was young -- probably under 10 at the time -- and hadn't encountered many engaged people before. I knew nothing of the mysteries of marriage, but there it was -- a peculiar excitement that seemed to go with the idea of two once-strangers joining forces, joining families, to begin a new life.

For Woolf the novelist, her intense feelings around Stella and Jack were something to explore in her work. In To the Lighthouse, Paul and Minta, two young people visiting the Ramsay family at their summer beach house, become engaged, provoking different reactions in those around them.

The eldest Ramsay daughter Prue, naive and being schooled for marriage, keeps looking at them over the dinner table "as if the sun of the love of men and women rose over the rim of the table-cloth and without knowing what it was she bent towards it." Her mother, Mrs. Ramsay, who had brought the couple together, has a sudden sense of being past it: "They had that -- Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle -- she, only this -- an infinitely long table and plates and knives . . . . She had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of everything." Lily Briscoe, the rebel who does not want to marry, is drawn to the "emotion, the vibration, of love" even as she condemns it as the "stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions."

The excitement around the first flush of love is no predictor of how things will turn out: in the novel, Paul and Minta's marriage is a failure. In real life, Woolf's beloved half-sister died of peritonitis three months after her marriage in 1897. In my own world, the engagement of my aunt and uncle turned into a long and happy marriage that lasted until Uncle Len's death in 2015. I had only a glimpse of their beginning, but their engagement was a hint of the grown-up mysteries ahead. To me, they'll always be my Stella and Jack.

Uncle Len several years after his marriage to Auntie Eve, with baby Thom and Victor.

Auntie Eve's glamour shot. We always admired her blonde hair.

A 70-year-old drama

My grandparents' truck was hit by a drunk driver on June 6, 1944, triggering a drama that continued into the next year. I do not know whether this is the truck involved, but this family photo would have been taken at about that time. Left to right, my Uncle Frank, my mother Frances, and my Uncle Len. All helped on the farm during the war.

Granny and Grandpa Allen at about the time the incident occurred, with their first grandchild, Alan Halvorsen.

The war in Europe was raging at the time my grandparents were fighting in court over the truck accident. This photo was taken before my Uncle Joe left for the war. From left to right, Frances Allen, Frank Allen, Kenny Winters (a neighbour), Len Allen, Joe Allen, Ernest Allen.

I imagine my grandparents' lives as sedate and non-eventful, focused on the rural realities of weather, crops and animals. Aside from the fact that they went into Red Deer at least once a week to see the latest movie, this seems mainly true. The little daily diary kept by my mother's mother, Granny (Edith) Allen, is mainly about farm and family events, with plenty of reports about snow-blocked roads thrown in.

But every so often, she records a drama that seems out of keeping with the 1940s rural Alberta I imagine. One of these began on June 6, 1944, the same day as a much bigger drama, the beginning of the Allied invasion of Europe. Granny duly notes the world event, and a prayer service in Red Deer's city square to mark it that afternoon. But later in the day, there's this:

"Coming home, a car of drunks ran into us on the highway. . . . Smashed the left wheel, axle, fender and light. We had to stay in Red Deer all night. Other car very badly smashed. Girl had face cut."

Someone took them home from Red Deer, but on June 9, Grandpa bicycled into town to bring the truck home "minus front fender and lights." Three days later, my grandparents were shocked to get a lawyer's letter "demanding payment for damages to the drunks' car that ran into us on the 6th. He wants $400 for car and other expenses. We are pretty worried about this."

On June 19, they talked to police, who told them they didn't have to pay anything. So they hired a lawyer, (Granny calls him only McLure) "to write a letter to the other fellow and tell him we will have nothing to do with it and if he insists we will carry out a counter claim for our damages."

Over the next few months, as the war raged in Europe (where their son, my Uncle Joe, was fighting) and the regular cycle of farm work continued, the little truck incident simmered along. Not having a fender was a pain. When Uncle Frank drove back from Red Deer in heavy rain one day, Granny noted the truck was "in a terrible state. . . the mud splashed over everything."

On Oct. 2, they got another shock. They received a notice "that the other man -- Eugene Westergon -- was going to sue us for $590 damages." So it was back to the lawyer, and the worry continued over the next few months as they monitored the war news, greeted two new grandchildren, packed overseas parcels for Uncle Joe and celebrated Christmas.

On Jan. 24, 1945, the case finally made it to court, with Grandpa attending an examination for discovery at the courthouse. "He was questioned by lawyer Marx of Edmonton under oath," Granny noted. "McLure questioned Westergon. Clerk of court took evidence down in shorthand."

Finally, on March 1, Granny and Grandpa went to Red Deer for the trial, which began at 11:45 a.m. on Thursday and ended at 3:30 p.m. the next day. "Trial quite interesting," she wrote. "We won out with judge allowing us $735 damages and costs to be paid by other fellow. All four occupants of Westergon's car had served previous jail sentences for robbery and assault and police were trying to track them down for dope-traffic."

A drunken car crash. An aggressively unrepentant perpetrator. Robbery, assault and dope-trafficking. It all sounds very modern -- nothing I would have imagined even existing in quiet little Red Deer 70 years ago.

Moments of Being

Reading Virginia Woolf's memoirs about her summers in Cornwall as a child reminded me of my grandparents' cottage at Sylvan Lake, Alberta. The cottage was built by Grandpa Allen. I liked the screened-in porch for meals at the left, and the bay window in front.

Left to right, Grandpa Allen, Granny Allen, Aunt Louie (Granny's sister) and Uncle Tom.

Our family at the cottage: Left to right, Betty, Carol, Diane, Larry, Grandpa, Granny, Brian, dad. I guess mom was taking the picture. 

Walking across the Burrard Bridge in a certain week of the spring, I smell Sylvan Lake, Alberta. Something in the budding trees carries the scent of my grandparents' property on the lake, with its backdrop of trees, its cottage just feet away from the shore, its little array of outbuildings and most important -- a dock to jump off all day long.

My family only spent a week there every summer, but its sights and smells, the feelings it evoked in dryland prairie kids, lasted a lifetime. So I wasn't surprised to learn that when Virginia Woolf was 57 and urged to get on with her memoirs before she was too old, her first and most important childhood memories involve the beach house in St. Ives, Cornwall, where her family spent every summer.

"If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills -- then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory," she says in Moments of Being, writing about waking up in St. Ives the morning after the family's arrival from London.

"It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St. Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach, and then breaking one, two, one, two, behind a yellow blind. It is hearing the blind draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out. It is of lying and hearing this splash and seeing this light, and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be here; of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive."

Another memory, of walking down to the beach, "still makes me feel warm; as if everything were ripe; humming; sunny; smelling so many smells at once," she writes. "The gardens gave off a murmur of bees; the apples were red and gold; there were also pink flowers and grey and silver leaves. The buzz, the croon, the smell, all seemed to press voluptuously against some membrane; not to burst it; but to hum round one such a complete rapture of pleasure that I stopped, smelt; looked."

It would be hard to compete with Woolf in any description of Sylvan Lake. Suffice it to say that  it had its own sights, smells and sounds that still return to me at odd moments, like crossing a Vancouver bridge in the spring.  I'm reminded of the comment Woolf put into the mouth of her mother-figure Mrs. Ramsay in  To the Lighthouse: "Children," Mrs. Ramsay said, "never forget."

Vacant city

Bars on the gate, the doors and the windows gives the impression that this west-side home just might be empty. Or whoever lives there is very security-conscious.

"No trespassing" signs and warnings about video surveillance pop up in many homes in the Kerrisdale and Arbutus Ridge area. It doesn't make for a friendly-feeling neighourhood.

Two big new houses replaced a modest one and a pleasant garden on a corner lot in Dunbar.

This is the kind of new house common in the Dunbar and Kerrisdale areas. So often, there's no sign anyone lives there.

When city council increased the allowable square footage of houses in 2009 by 17 per cent, the disparity between the old houses and the new ones became dramatically apparent.

 

This is what some of the older big houses looked like. The city has launched a character home zoning review to propose ways of saving some of the pre-1940s houses from demolition. 

One of the picturesque smaller old houses that wouldn't likely survive if it was sold. Places like this (and my own house) are known in Vancouver as "bulldozer bait."

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson confirmed something last week that I've been suspecting for awhile: The population has actually fallen in some of my usual walking areas. Citing the latest census, he said the population in Kerrisdale fell by 800 between 2011 and 2016, in Arbutus Ridge by 700; and in Dunbar by 300.

Probably not coincidentally, these are areas where whole blocks of older houses have been torn down and replaced by huge new ones. In many such blocks, there is eerie silence, barred doors, permanently closed blinds, "no trespassing" signs, and warnings that the property is under video surveillance.

The mayor was using the falling population to make the point that densification is needed everywhere in the city, including single-family neighbourhoods like mine. In the Globe and Mail story, he blamed NIMBYs (the not-in-my-backyard crowd) for fighting development that would presumably have filled these blocks with happy families.

No mention that his council in 2009 increased allowable home sizes by 17 per cent, or that just after that, home demolitions soared an average 80 per cent a year (between 2009 and 2015). At a time when the homeless population keeps rising and young people making good salaries can't afford to buy a house here, who is really to blame for these silent blocks?

The squirrel war

I've been battling squirrels ever since I started putting food out for the birds this winter.  They've put up a good game, and I admit to a sneaking admiration for their problem-solving abilities. On Saturday morning, John photographed this black squirrel heading for  the remnants of a suet cake.

And...he's got it in his mouth. The suet is in a red mesh bag attached to a buddleia branch by green string. 

Now for a good gnaw! Notice the bird on the sidewalk beneath. 

The feast from another angle -- one paw holds the bag in place.

Now he's perfectly balanced on the branch, with both front paws free to hold those goodies!

Do not feed the squirrels, says the B.C. SPCA's website. They're "nature's ultimate gatherers," and quite capable of surviving on the plant material around them -- seeds, berries, leaves and twigs. Feeding them can attract rats, annoy the neighbours and ultimately be dangerous to them.

I read that little lecture just in time. I was beginning to soften toward my backyard squirrels, wondering why I should feed birds and not them, especially when they're so darn interesting. While the birds' greatest accomplishment is finding the bird seed and not getting eaten by the cat, the squirrels are out there problem-solving.

When I dangled a suet cake from an apple-tree branch by a string, the squirrels whirled the string around the branch until the cake was solidly trapped against the limb. Then they feasted.

When I moved the suet to a flexible buddleia branch, they were temporarily stymied. The branch was too thin for them to run on, and bent over, it put the suet out of their reach. But once the birds started whittling the suet down, the delicate balance was lost, and the squirrels were back to whirling and feasting.

That cake of suet is almost gone, so I give it up to them, whatever the SPCA says. But the next batch has gone straight up on very tall, very thin branch of the witch hazel tree. I'm pretty sure they won't be able to figure that out!

The nearly finished suet cake dangles from the buddleia.

The new suet cake, attached to the witch hazel, awaits action. 

The scene of the battle: The bird feeder on the left, with its hot-sauce-coated seeds to discourage squirrels, and the suet on the right, supposedly out of  their reach on a bent-over witch hazel branch. 

A lament

Despite the controversy over the massive number of houses being torn down in Vancouver, I notice remarkably little graffiti or outward signs of protest as I walk past all the demolition sites. But one day last summer as I passed a doomed house I had always treasured for its country feel and fine trees, I noticed some words scrawled on the construction sign. They were so faint I recorded them in a notebook: "Getting tired of seeing orange fencing and marble walls instead of white picket fences and bushes," they read. "F--- this." When I walked past the lot on Friday, I photographed the new house being built there. I don't know whether the walls will be marble or not, but it's so big, there's not much room left for even bushes on the site.

 Vancouver's  old homes are disappearing fast, and not everyone is happy about it. This photo was taken  last summer, before someone scrawled a sad message on the construction sign.

The orange sheeting in the windows is protection against asbestos for demolition workers. 

I always liked the big trees and country feel of this place.

What the lot looks like today. According to the sign, it's a dream home. 

There's not much room left on the lot for trees or a garden. Most new houses are built to the maximum allowable size. 

This house is in a different area of the city, but I was interested that someone had bothered to get a front-gate plaque engraved that reads: "No realtors, No salespersons."

Feeding birds

After a couple of months of backyard bird-watching  this winter, I've invested in yet another attempt at bird feeding. This is my new bird feeder, which is supposed to get around the pest problems that come with bird seed.
  

This was the makeshift bird feeder I put together to get the birds through the worst of the ice and snow. It's a pie plate tied to an umbrella, which protected the seed from precipitation. It worked surprisingly well.

Squirrels would climb down the handle and plop themselves in the tray to have a good feed. I'd move the umbrella to peripheral branches to make it harder, but they always found a way.

Near the bird feeder is a lump of suet in a mesh bag. If I put it on a thin enough branch, the squirrels couldn't get at it. 

Anyone who's ever tried to feed wild birds knows about two other things: squirrels and mice (and maybe rats).

I've been through this cycle before. First, the initial enthusiasm (birds! nature!) Next, the expensive squirrel-proof bird feeder that is emptied by squirrels in half an hour. Then the clincher -- the growing evidence of rodents feasting happily on fallen seeds every night. I know all this, so when I decided to feed the birds this winter, I vowed it was temporary. Once the snow was gone, so would be the bird seed.

But I'd forgotten how a bird feeder brings a garden alive. How many more birds there are flickering through the trees and singing on the branches. How they dive-bomb the seed tray, like mini-airplanes doing touch-and-go landings, all jostling for their place in the queue. How squirrels can hang upside down by their back feet to reach a seed tray, or dangle from it by their little front paws when things go awry. Sometimes there are birds dive-bombing and squirrels dangling all at once; what a pity to miss all the action.

After advice from Wild Birds Unlimited and Mr. Google, I now have a little wooden bird feeder that holds a gelatinized roll of bird seed covered with pepper sauce. The gelatin prevents the seeds falling to the ground for the mice. The pepper sauce -- supposedly unnoticeable to birds -- is anathema to squirrels. We will see how it works.

The new bird feeder in the witch hazel tree. It has a little roof to keep the rain off, and a little floor to catch seed. I left the umbrella up for awhile to protect it from precipitation.

Little birds like this have been among my visitors this winter. The illustration is from a bird book.

Spring, interrupted

We thought we were done with all this, but on Tuesday, the snow was back. When I went out early to take a picture in the back yard, John couldn't resist photographing me coming back in with snow on my bathrobe.

The view from the front steps on Tuesday morning. Fortunately, the snow didn't stick around long. Photo by John.

Mr. Darcy on the back steps, looking out at the snow. He seems to disapprove.

What I was photographing in the back yard. This scene is starting to look familiar.

On Monday, I dismantled the makeshift birdfeeder I'd set up to see the birds through this most unusual of Vancouver winters. The gardeners came and aerated, limed and fertilized the lawn. On my walk, I photographed a pink rhododendron in bloom, and a drift of yellow crocuses under a big boulevard tree.

In other words, after two prolonged spells of snow, ice and cold this winter, we were settling nicely into Vancouver's typical early spring.

But on Tuesday morning, we awoke to fat white flakes drifting down. The grass and trees were white again; the birdbaths were frozen and covered in snow. For the third time this winter, in a city that sometimes has no snow at all, we were back in a Christmas card.

According to The Vancouver Sun, this has been the city's fifth snowiest February on record, with 36 centimetres compared to the month's average snowfall of 6.3 cm. (The record year for February snowfall was 1949, with just over 60 cm.)

Unlike our previous snowfalls this winter, which have stuck around for weeks, we were back to green by noon. Temperatures are rising, and spring quickly resumed after this little interruption. But after a winter like this, we should expect surprises. The Sun story noted the latest date Vancouver has ever had snow was April 19, 2008.

On Monday, it was a different world altogether. This rhododendron was blooming on a boulevard, with plenty more buds to open.

The sunshine made these crocuses glow against the green moss at the base of a big tree. 

More crocuses, looking happy in the sunshine. 

On Tuesday, after the snow melted, I photographed these hellebores blooming against a backdrop of snowdrops. In the foreground, last year's brown leaves.