Piles of memories

Andrea, Karenn and Ros on the West Vancouver seawall after lunch at the Beach House restaurant. We all remember life as young reporters at The Vancouver Sun. 

My friends in my favourite building. It's a tiny summer cottage turned into an art gallery.

It's the Beach House now, but to me, it will always be Peppi's -- my late friend Marilyn's favourite restaurant during the years she spent in B.C. I thought of her when I met three ex-colleagues in West Vancouver for lunch there on Wednesday.

 My friends, all retired and now in their 60s and early 70s, evoked memories, too. We all worked together in The Vancouver Sun newsroom in the 1970s and '80s, young reporters covering dull municipal council meetings, but more exciting things like elections, prison riots, strikes and terrible crimes too. When we get together, we can still recall the names of long-gone politicians and the outrageous antics of some of the photographers we worked with.

After lunch, we followed the route my partner John and I have often taken over the decades, walking the seawall east from Dundarave and stopping to tour a tiny beachfront house. Typical of the original summer cottages built in West Vancouver, it's now the Silk Purse art gallery. I always have to step inside because it's one of my favourite buildings, with its door opening just yards from the rolling waves, its windows overlooking the beach, its cozy window seat and fireplace.

Old friends. An old restaurant. A group of long-ago ambitious young reporters. A familiar seawall walk and an old summer cottage. It made me think of the layers upon layers of memories we pile up over the years. And what we lose when our people, and places, disappear.

The Silk Purse gallery is only yards from the ocean. It's quaint and cozy and beautiful. If I could live there, I would.

Piano in front of the window at the gallery, with fireplace at the side. Imagine watching a storm rage over the ocean with a cozy fire burning inside!

The cottage's window seat, looking out onto parkland. Perfect for curling up with a book.

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