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I have a private custom, that I usually try to go on some kind of excursion on Canada Day. It's nearly always brilliantly fine, and there's something nice about going out to appreciate the bluest of blue skies and seas and the bright yellows and greens of the grasses. This year, I didn't feel particularly energetic, so I bundled Baggins in the back of the car and went to visit an old haunt: what we in my family called "Mad Jim's Beach" (don't ask), but which is now called Glencoe Cove Kwatsech Park.
This was one of those places, you know, that people in a neighbourhood know but keep quiet about. I was taken there first when I was visiting an old school friend who lived in Gordon Head. I took my parents, and it became a favourite place that we used to walk our dogs or go for picnics on a summer's day. I haven't been back in years. It's now a formal park, with signage and paths, and there are big luxurious houses encroaching over what used to be open fields. There were unusual wildflowers there, including the only known instance of a native cactus west of the Okanagan; it must have died out, because the signage doesn't mention it. There were still wild roses, though, and brodeia.
. 
There was also a random chair.
I discovered today, via the informational signage, that this had been a special place for the First Nations as well. Interesting that it was a "place" with an identity as such, and that people for millennia had recognized it as somewhere good. There is apparently a very fine shell midden there which has yet to be explored. I liked the overlap of this place from my childhood and for peoples back through history, on this day which recognizes Canada's 150 years of nationhood but on which we must remember those who came before us.
I think if I could travel in time I'd love to go back there or to other places I love here on Vancouver Island, and see them before anyone came, in the days when the fish were so plentiful you could lift them with your hands out of the ocean, and see the Gary Oak meadows as they were undisturbed.
So I took a selfie, with dog, to commemorate the day.
I drove home via the scenic route, which made me feel nostalgic for all the hundreds of times I drove that route with my mum, but also pleased because now I live along it. We were turned back by police at the Oak Bay golf course. I don't know why - I must check on Twitter - I think perhaps a fire. But it was lovely to drive through Oak Bay and find myself here in my lovely house in Fairfield, and the sun is still shining brightly through my sitting room window.
This was one of those places, you know, that people in a neighbourhood know but keep quiet about. I was taken there first when I was visiting an old school friend who lived in Gordon Head. I took my parents, and it became a favourite place that we used to walk our dogs or go for picnics on a summer's day. I haven't been back in years. It's now a formal park, with signage and paths, and there are big luxurious houses encroaching over what used to be open fields. There were unusual wildflowers there, including the only known instance of a native cactus west of the Okanagan; it must have died out, because the signage doesn't mention it. There were still wild roses, though, and brodeia.
. There was also a random chair.
I discovered today, via the informational signage, that this had been a special place for the First Nations as well. Interesting that it was a "place" with an identity as such, and that people for millennia had recognized it as somewhere good. There is apparently a very fine shell midden there which has yet to be explored. I liked the overlap of this place from my childhood and for peoples back through history, on this day which recognizes Canada's 150 years of nationhood but on which we must remember those who came before us.
I think if I could travel in time I'd love to go back there or to other places I love here on Vancouver Island, and see them before anyone came, in the days when the fish were so plentiful you could lift them with your hands out of the ocean, and see the Gary Oak meadows as they were undisturbed.
So I took a selfie, with dog, to commemorate the day.
I drove home via the scenic route, which made me feel nostalgic for all the hundreds of times I drove that route with my mum, but also pleased because now I live along it. We were turned back by police at the Oak Bay golf course. I don't know why - I must check on Twitter - I think perhaps a fire. But it was lovely to drive through Oak Bay and find myself here in my lovely house in Fairfield, and the sun is still shining brightly through my sitting room window.
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