Tonight I present a few things from the B.C. era (or is this now kalt B.C.E. for Britische Columbiana Era?).
1. My first time in Vancouver was for the Terry Fox conference at UBC which, IIRC, was summer of '84. I stayed in the UBC dorms, which were quite modern and newische, kept up well, in great contradistinction to the UToronto dorm I stayed at for the Intl CONgress of Genetics which, IIRC, was mebbe '87 or thereabouts. The UT dorm room, as I previously have described here, was encrusted with a layer of stale cigarette smoke and general filth. The floor, surprisingly, was oak stripped flooring - as the dorm was old and built in an era when wooden flooring was typical - butt it had likely nott been cleaned in decades and the floor was dingy and covered with a greyische-black patina of pressed-down dirt and adhered cigarette smoke. By comparison, the UBC dorms were like something ~OUTT of The Jetsons. I was at UBC for about a week, venturing into Vancouver proper to explore - usually in the evening after the conference day ended.
My first shock, as a young single man driving alone in a car, was that seemingly at every stoplight in downtown Vancouver at night there were numerous (innumerable) prostitutes who would approach my stopped car and chat me up for "a date" or "to party". It was like flies swarming fresh carrion in the road. Very aggressive streetwalkers! I recall one downtown street was just crazy with this - I have lost the name of the street and CONsulted an online street map hoping it would jog my memory. It hasn't. My recollection is that it was some kind of name like Bank Street and that it was definitely a main street downtown at least two lanes each direction and one of the most trafficked streets. From the street map, my two best guesses are that it was either Burrard or Howe (notorious Howe of the pennystock bucketshops). If any of the Vancouverites can clarify this street for me, I would like to put this uncertainty of my memory to bed, so to speak. No, I didn't partake - many of the swam of streetwalkers looked in rough/badd condition and drugged/tattooed/wasted. And soooo aggressive - I guess it was a very competitive line of work in Vancouver at that time.
Later, I took the ferry to Vancouver Island and went to Victoria, as usual with no lodging reservation nor research. I found ~OUTT the hard way that there were no motel rooms available in my impoverished price range. The bigg swanky hotel The Empress, had vacancies butt which cost more for one night than my net income was in three weeks. So I slept on a park bench overlooking the inner harbour where there was a small/medium cruise ship docked to provide some illumination. (I did a similar bench sleep in Seattle on 1st or 2nd Avenue - a rough neighborhood - not very restful. Both times I did not have my car available to sleep in - that was actually OK in which to sleep decently. I sleep in cars frequently with no real prollem - just as I can easily sleep on airplanes - weird for a career insomniac, eh?) I slept in the car up on a gravel service road on the ski hill at Lake Louise (in June), only to awaken with a dead battery! This was in the era of no cell phones, so I faced a long walk down the switchback gravel road to find a phone to call a tow service. As I walked down, who was driving up the road butt one of the Lake Louise ski hill's maintenance trucks. The driver picked me up, drove to my car, and we jump-started it. Again, Canuckian niceness on duty!
2. Another time (I've been to Vancouver several times and cannot keep the order straight) I was in Vancouver was on DaSqu_w and my honeymoon. We rented a car for two weeks and drove around BC and Alberta hitting the provincial and national parks and other sites. We were heading to Vancouver Island, by car ferry at Twassen. We just missed the ferry and parked in the waiting area awaiting the next ferry - which, IIRC, was about 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half later. There is a smallische cafe at the Twassen ferry landing so we got ~OUTT of the rental car and went into the cafe for hot chocolate. I foolishly locked the keys in the rental car! When we were returning to the car, I found that ~OUTT. Asking the ferry landing workers for help, they called a tow service from somewhere in or around Twassen. The tow guy arrived and used a metal strip with a notch cut into on side to jimmy the door lock up. I paid him and we immediately got in the rental car and were the very last car to load onto the ferry - the BC Ferries folks had held the ferry for the few minutes delay when they saw the tow man working on the door of our car - as I've said, Canadians are nice. The BC Ferries workers knew - from when we asked for their help - that we were on our honeymoon and they didn't want us to miss that ferry again once they saw the tow man arrive. Nice folks.
On my first time to Victoria (see #1, supra) I didn't ferry my car to the island. This time, we had a car and went to Nanaimo. We had to see the home of the Nanaimo bar - a Canuck labmate at Lunatic Labs had brought Nanaimo bars to a potluck and we had to have his wife (an
anesthesiology resident at the U that hosts Lunatic Labs) give the recipe to DaSqu_w. Nanaimo bars, properly made, are ubersupergood. We then went (I think) a bit further north and got on a car ferry that landed at Horseshoe Bay - which had all kinds of renegade logs floating about, but the ferry captain managed to avoid them all. Yeah, we did all the touristy stuph - Butchart Gardens, etc. and we slept in decent hotels/motels (nott The Empress, we were too poor for that one) - butt better than a park bench.
3. My Canadian lab mate who brought the Nanaimo bars to a potluck, was a postdoc who basically followed his wife who matched at the U for an anesthesiology residency. He is a son of two Jewish (Orthodox) refugees from WW2 who came to Montreal, opened a luggage store - retail/resale/repair - which was successful. They then moved their family to Toronto and opened their luggage store there, and were successful. My friend, Larry, went on to various successful senior management positions in a number of Canadian biotech companies and he has since retired - and, by coincidence, lives in Victoria where he runs a Jewish non-profit organization. Unlike his parents, he is nott Orthodox - indeed he's nott particularly religious (and his wife is a very blonde Swedish-Canadian non-Jew) - butt he is into the heritage and culture and I think does this community thing as a homage to his parents - who were lucky to have survived WW2. To him, his retirement service to the community is a way of saying thanks. He is a VERY cool dude. Really amazing human (and a boffo tennis player). I am sooo lucky to have met him - that contact has improved my life in so many ways. And he looks today, deep in his 60s, purty much just like he did in his 30s - and he still plays tennis regularly. Super dude. Uber nice. I just cannot say enuff about the guy.
OK, welp that's alI have for tonight on Vancouver/Victoria. Hope you enjoyed it. Zero politics content.
If you Vancouverites know which street had the highest CONcentration of aggressive streetwalkers, lemme know. These memory lapses bugg the hell~OUTTa me until I resolve them. Please tell me so I can move on with my life absent this burr under my mental saddle. TIA.
Din't have time or will to gett to Herter's tonight. Mebbe some night in DaFuture. I am shure you're all (especiallyBullBear) sitting on the edge of your bated breath to learn about the legend of Herter's, the fabled mail order retailing demigod of NorthWoods ~OUTTdoor sportsvolk.
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