The True North

Canada is great. Perhaps we’ve even got a bit of that residual pride from the Olympics…not that we shouldn’t have it anyway. And while it never occurred to me to wear red on any other Canada Day, this year I just felt out of place in my black and grey ensemble. Somehow this Canada Day just felt more…Canadian than some from my youth, though that was tempered a bit with all the public displays of drunkenness. Thanks, losers at Steveston Village.

So, like I mentioned, we (the in-laws and Marty and I) headed to Steveston Village for the first of July.







First up, a sea-creature lunch. The line-ups to the restaurants along the boardwalk were filling up quick, so we headed upstairs to the ghetto-inspired interiors of the Charthouse.





The food was completely unremarkable, but the views were much more passable.





After lunch, we headed down to the wharf again, this time to examine the various forms of sealife on display. Ew. And we ran into Jen and Chris! A wah wahhhh?







Like I said, we ran into Yin and Schatz who we schpatzered (totally wrong spelling, I’m sure) with for a while, and then who directed us to the big salmon bake over yonder some blocks. Though we had already eaten, we were also interested in seeing some salmoncide (ha ha – my term for salmon suicide, remember?) Turns out there was a massive street party two blocks over so we joined the revelers.





Ha – we saw the cops busting the teenage set for underage drinking. The funniest was when some kid was so cut that he thought he’d try to take a sip from a beer while the cops stood there, waiting for him to pour it out. He got cuffed. It was sweet.


Burn salmons! Burn!

The fire was so hot, just standing 10 feet away nearly melted my face off. It didn’t help that suddenly the weather decided to be warm and roast me anyway. Blech. The salmon bake happened to be in front of a Japanese pavilion thing wherein there was – imagine my luck (jk) – a bonsai competition! It was fervent and heated and I frankly didn’t care much, but I took a picture because I like bonsai trees.


Kind of a crappy pictures, isn’t it? Yeah.

It got hotter and I got desperate-er, so I convinced the team to head to Garry Point Park to steal some breeze off the water.




Yayyyyyyy!



We sat here for only a short period before it was time to move on again – Marty and his Dad are not lingerers. That, or it could be that we were worried about the crying boy throwing dirt around yelling, “WHY AM I ALWAYS CRYING! I CRY EVERYDAY AND NO ONE ELSE DOES.” I’m not trying to sound insensitive as this child clearly had some issues, but I am kind of terrified of flying dirt. Did I mention that I’m OCD when it comes to keeping things pristine? I had my camera out and I’m not into dirt in the lens, thanks.

The point was full of all kinds of visitors, kites, and sights today.










hXc

On the way back, we saw that the Gulf of Georgia Cannery was free for Canada Day, so we took the opportunity to delve into the bowels of fishy history.






See? Expensive cameras take blurry pictures too.


Oh yum! Now where’s that can of tuna I was about eat. Lalalalalalala~


Fly fishies! FLYYYYYY


This is totally my favourite place to relax too…on a bed of fishes. Yessir.

After the 4,000 mile hike back to the parked car (okay, I’m exaggerating. Unbelievable, I know.), we headed up to Crescent Beach for a picnic. Isn’t this just the nicest Canada Day anyone ever had?









My shoes left hiragana in the sand. Oh, those Browns people make such hip shoes.




Yay Canada!

Any Canada Day would be incomplete without some sub-par fireworks. I still contend that if they really want to impress me, they should set them all off at once and make my life. We brought some lawn chairs this year to avoid being poked in the butt for 20 minutes by the sharpest grass in existence. Yikes!



And so my symphony of fire begins:


”BANG”

”POW”

”BOFF”

”BAP”

”KA-BLAM” (Okay, these are really the visual sound effects from the 1960’s Batman TV shows. I’ll stop now.)





HAPPY CANADA DAY CANADIANS!