Dove grey harbor day
Blogging then some wandering
Find the Steam Clock! Now!
Yes, I realize that in the previous two posts, I appear to have jumped directly from Five Sails to Botanist.
Why?
Because the intervening day stubbornly refused to become a coherent narrative.
Between one Michelin starred restaurant and another, there was an entire day.
A day involving Bill Reid, a raven ring, a diving bear named Sabera, a housekeeping treaty, and one spectacular navigational failure.
Possibly mine.
Possibly Chad’s.
The jury remains out.
Let’s start with breakfast.
Or rather, let’s start with the challenge of leaving breakfast.
The Club Floor at the Pan Pacific turns out to be a dangerous place for anyone who enjoys treats, harbor views, and absolutely no obligations.
One can easily imagine spending the entire morning there.
Or the entire afternoon.
Or perhaps retiring permanently.
If you stay on the Club Floor, breakfast (and afternoon tea) is included. Instead of heading downstairs and having breakfast with the hoi polloi (which there are a fair bit of, as apparently this hotel is chosen by Regent, Seven Seas, Seabourn, and others to house their guests before heading out on their cruises), the buffet is curated and brought up to you.
Civilized.
Getting there at 7:00 seems to be the sweet spot. My window table overlooked the very grey harbor. I took my time; when I got up to leave, I noticed that many folks with towering piles of food had been eyeing my table like wolves. 🐺🥐☕️
Though looking grey and overcast, Vancouver existed outside the windows.
So eventually I gathered myself together and ventured forth.
My original destination was the Bill Reid Gallery.
Not because I needed anything.
Not because I planned to shop.
Because Bill Reid is Bill Reid.
Bill Reid Gallery is not just a gallery but also essentially a museum of First Nations art. Those of you who have visited our Indiana Jones house know that First Nations art occupies a rather disproportionate place in our lives.
It all started in Vancouver.
Years ago, on our tenth anniversary trip, H and I bought our first piece of First Nations art from Coastal Peoples Gallery.
A small dancing bear.
At the time, we were younger and considerably less financially sensible.
Or perhaps more financially adventurous.
Either way, we bought the bear.
Or rather, H pondered over the bear, picked him up, turned him around, stood him on his front paws, then his back paws. (These are called “two-position bears” and are carved to stand in either pose.)
Eventually he sighed and put the bear back down.
A few minutes later, while H was distracted elsewhere in the gallery, I quietly handed my credit card and bucket purse to the salesperson and mimed exactly what needed to happen.
A few days later, at our anniversary dinner on Salt Spring Island, I pulled out the bear and carefully balanced him on his back paw next to H’s champagne glass.
That bear became the beginning of an obsession. Oh, I mean a collection.
So while I was starting at the vaunted Bill Reid Gallery, I wanted to be sure to revisit Coastal Peoples.
Not to buy anything.
Just to visit.
Sometimes travel is about seeing new things.
Sometimes it’s about checking in on old stories.
The Bill Reid Gallery itself was fascinating. It’s really more like a First Nations art museum (with admission fee). I peeked in, but wasn’t really feeling like a gawk-and-stop, so I headed into the gift shop.
Not because I intended to buy anything.
Just a look-see.
Okay, until I found a First Nations octopus passport holder.
More accurately, the octopus found me.
For years my passport lived inside a blue cover from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
It was a perfectly nice passport cover.
Professional.
Respectable.
A little impressive, perhaps.
It represented a version of me that worked very hard to become the person who negotiated international agreements, earned credentials, and accumulated expertise.
This week, in Vancouver, I replaced it.
Not because it was worn out.
Not because I needed a new passport cover.
Because I wandered into a gallery shop and spied an octopus.
The octopus is Haida art—bright blue, impossible to miss, and infinitely more interesting than a school logo embossed on blue leather.
What struck me later wasn’t that I preferred the octopus.
It was why.
The old cover represented achievement.
The new cover represents curiosity.
One says, “Look what I accomplished.”
The other says, “I wonder what’s over there.”
And the funny thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve rejected the first version of myself.
The octopus didn’t replace the international negotiator.
The octopus stands on top of everything that came before.
The degrees.
The career.
The experience.
The miles traveled.
The losses survived.
The confidence slowly earned.
Perhaps that’s why it felt right.
An octopus is curious, intelligent, adaptable, and capable of getting into places it probably shouldn’t.
Which, come to think of it, is a fair description of my travel style.
Or my life.
Besides, I suspect future me will smile every time she pulls out her passport and remembers Vancouver.
The harbor.
The mountains.
The seals.
The eagle.
The day I discovered that “walk away from the water” apparently constitutes a complete set of directions.
And the moment I realized that the objects I love most are no longer the ones that remind me what I’ve done.
They’re the ones that remind me who I’ve become.
At this point, it was time to head for Coastal Peoples Gallery.
This should have been easy.
I had the address.
I knew where it was.
It was near Gastown.
It was near the Steam Clock.
Unfortunately, I also had Chad.
At some point Chad became convinced that Coastal Peoples was somewhere else entirely.
An office building, as it turned out.
This led to a period of increasingly confused text messages in which I attempted to explain that I was standing exactly where I had been told to stand and yet somehow was not standing in an art gallery.
Meanwhile, Chad attempted to reconcile this inconvenient fact with his growing certainty that I was in the correct location.
Reader, I was not.
Eventually I resorted to Google Maps.
There, glowing innocently on the screen, was Coastal Peoples Gallery.
Right where I had originally thought it was.
Near the Steam Clock.
The Steam Clock, by now, had become less a destination and more a principle.
I had gone so far the wrong way that Chad suggested a taxi. (He didn’t offer to flag one down or pay for it, though.)
His directions went off the rails at this point. When I realized I was heading into what could only be described as a “sketch” neighborhood (and no Victorian Steam Clock to be found), I resorted again to Google Maps.
Yep.
I was in Saskatchewan.
Eventually, after chastising Chad, who explained that somehow geography had temporarily bent in a manner that made South go North (dear reader: yeah, nope), I made my way to Gastown.
I never actually saw the Steam Clock.
But while standing inside Coastal Peoples Gallery, I heard it.
Which somehow feels okay.
If one spends an hour looking for the Steam Clock and ultimately experiences it as an audio installation, one should probably accept the outcome gracefully.
Once I finally arrived at Coastal Peoples, I found exactly what I had come looking for.
Not merchandise.
Memory.
The dancing bears were still there.
Not our dancing bear, of course.
That bear lives at home.
But bears like him.
The same feeling.
And amazing narwhals, raven masks, silver and gold jewelry.
A new silver Haida raven ring—H’s totem animal—somehow made it onto my finger.
The trip seemed determined to place old memories and new acquisitions side by side and see what happened.
And then there was Sabera.
A small diving bear, way down on a lower shelf. Almost out of sight.
The same size as the dancing bear H and I bought all those years ago.
At this point, Chad and I began what he believed was a thoughtful discussion about whether I should buy the bear.
He asked what I liked about her.
What I felt when I looked at her.
Whether she spoke to me.
Whether she represented something.
What followed was a surprisingly deep conversation about art, memory, and connection.
There was only one problem.
I had already bought her.
My American Express card had been handed over.
The paperwork was complete.
The shipping address had been provided.
The transaction had occurred.
I was not evaluating Sabera.
I was introducing her.
Somewhere during this exchange with Chad, voice-to-text transformed “the bear” into “Sabera.”
Chad confidently continued to posit whether bringing “Sabera” home would be the right thing to do (meanwhile, I was already walking back to the Pan Pacific, my slightly warm Amex in my pocket), and I had to stop.
Where’d the name come from?
I had originally sent Chad a photograph of the diving bear’s tag, with the artist’s information on it. This is because the salesman was cradling her like a baby, so I couldn’t send a photo of the genuine article.
Perhaps the name had been on the tag?
What followed was a “Who’s on First?” moment between Chad and me.
“How’d you know her name?”
“You told me her name.”
“No, I didn’t – was it on the tag?”
“You did.”
“When?”
“A second ago – you said I didn’t understand that you’d already bought Sabera. And if you’ve already named her, there’s no going back.”
”I didn’t tell you.”
”Yes, you did.”
”When?”
”Just a second ago.”
I pause, scroll back through the conversation – and discover the voice-to-text conversion.
Since this was objectively a better name though, it immediately became canonical.
I regret nothing.
By late afternoon I returned to the Pan Pacific.
This is where the day took an unexpected turn.
Housekeeping needed the room.
I needed to get ready for dinner at Botanist.
What followed was less a cleaning service and more a temporary treaty between sovereign nations.
“You take the bedroom. I’ll take the bathroom.”
And thus we achieved peace in our time.
While housekeeping conquered one half of the room, I occupied the other, attempting to transform myself from “woman who has walked all over Vancouver, perhaps by way of Seattle” into “woman who can slowly saunter into a Michelin-starred restaurant without a care in the world.”
The arrangement worked surprisingly well.
Once makeup, hair, and such were done, time to switch.
They did the bathroom.
I changed into dinner attire.
Everybody won.
Also, for those wondering: yes, I wore the same white button-down shirt from the night before.
And yes, it was still crisp and white.
Despite an unfortunate encounter with red wine.
Thank goodness for Tide pens.
Eventually it was time to head for the Fairmont Pacific Rim.
The hotel was already preparing for the World Cup. Soccer balls and jerseys in cases were everywhere.
I was ushered in by doormen wearing curious felt hats decorated with a spray of feathers that looked suspiciously like fishing lures.
The effect was Austrian.
Or Bavarian.
Or perhaps simply Vancouver deciding to be Vancouver.
And from there, you already know the rest.
The library.
The kitchen.
The champagne.
The scallop.
The card.
The cookies.
The people.
The thing I remember most about that day, though, is not any single destination.
It was the wandering.
The realization that some of my favorite travel days begin with a plan and end somewhere entirely different.
A gallery became a memory.
An octopus became a philosophy.
A sculpture became Sabera.
And somehow, in between Five Sails and Botanist, Vancouver quietly became itself.
As I write this the following morning, I am back on the Club Floor, looking out at the same dove-grey harbor.
In fact, I had to stop typing a moment ago because a seagull floated very very slowly past the window, scratching under its chin with one foot, eyes closed in obvious satisfaction.
He looked exactly like Bruno when someone finds the spot behind his ear.
I have no idea how a bird manages to look smug while flying.
Yet there we were.
Vancouver.
Honestly, that feels like an appropriate final image for this trip.
But reality is calling.
The suitcase needs packing.
The room needs vacating.
There is a train to catch.
And somehow I need to transport a zip-tied sword case, a carry-on bag, a puffer tote, and a spectacular bouquet of flowers across greater Vancouver without looking completely ridiculous.
Which means it is time to stop writing and start moving.
Nanaimo awaits.