A Vacation? From What? Post No. 8
One of the unintended consequences of retirement is that you are no longer able to take vacations. Your whole life is a vacation! Stay up late, sleep late, lose track of the day and date, go from one exciting leisure activity to the next! That is your life. Well, it could be ... if you didn't fall asleep around 10:00 pm most nights.
We recently drove from home in Alberta to Vancouver Island. If a vacation is a break from your normal routine, rather than an escape from a job, then this is it. Catching up with old friends (by which I mean friends of long-standing, not friends who are old), seeing new sights. We are new to long distance travel by electric vehicle, which is whole different post. Suffice to say that Vancouver Island is a lot further away than it used to be.
Victoria is as beautiful and as confounding as ever. It is the independent book store, artisanal bakery and independent coffee shop capital of Canada, with miles and miles of bike lanes and trails that are heavily used. A scene so vibrant that Chapters and Starbucks have all but given up. Local cars are required to have a bike rack, kayak rack or paddle board rack. If you have all 3 you can park anywhere for free.
It is also, with Vancouver, the epicentre of Canada's homeless crisis, since the unhoused quickly grasp the difference between Winnipeg or Edmonton and Victoria in January. The result is an apparently endless effort to do something, anything to change the status quo. The status quo involves several blocks of tents and other less reliable kinds of shelter pitched on the sidewalks and boulevards of Pandora Avenue, very near to the centre of downtown Victoria. This results in considerable tension between the occupants of the camp and local residents, businesses and visitors. There isn't a lot of panhandling, but open drug use and mental health issues are evident. Businesses are closing down, ambulances refuse to answer emergency calls without police assistance, bus routes have changed. I don't know if the situation is worse now, or better, but it is clear that there is no easy solution. If there was, the problem would already have been solved.
After a week or so in Victoria we landed on Salt Spring Island, where we have never been. We are just beginning to explore the island, but so far no sightings of Harry Manx, Valdy, Randy Bachman, Raffi or Robert Bateman. It is possible that some or all of these people no longer live here, or have died, but it's a pretty small place and if they're here, we'll almost certainly find them.
Tomorrow we begin our effort so see as many galleries, studios and craft shops as is humanly possible. Measured on the basis of art offerings per beautiful square mile, or per permanent resident, this has to be the densest place in Canada, if not North America. Ciders, goat cheese and farm produce of all kinds are everywhere, and almost every rural driveway has a sign advertising its product, or a stall offering something for sale. A place where the side hustle becomes the main thing. It's no wonder so many creative people gather here, where so many members of their tribe live and work. Luckily, there is gelato to keep us going.
