I questioned whether we'd pull off the move to B.C. with a 14-foot Uhaul trailer, but we did it!
Well, once we sold or gave away two-thirds of our earthly possessions. That and a solid week and a half of packing, two straight all-nighters' worth of cleaning and painting, address changes, tearful goodbyes, and an eleventh-hour BBQ move (thank you, Tom Hannam), before handing the keys back to our landlord and finally hitting the highway around noon on July 31, bound for Vancouver via Penticton. There, Auntie Barb and Uncle Bob wined us and dined us while Finnigan (our cat) eyed Tika (Barb's dog) suspiciously and flirted with disaster on the deck of their seventh-floor condo (closest I've come to coronary arrest in years). As coincidence or the Universe had it, it was also our one-year anniversary, so we celebrated with spirits from not one, not two, but three Okanagan wineries! Delish!
Retaining enough presence of mind to hire two movers, we arrived in Van on the afternoon of August 2 and let them do all the dirty work. Thank God. Vancouverites would have read about a double murder next morning had Mel and I tried to unload everything ourselves. Good thing we didn't realize at the time that the unloading would prove a cakewalk compared to the unpacking, or the headline would have read "murder-suicide". I tell ya, the math has to get downright Euclidean when downgrading from 1300 square feet and a basement to 650 square feet and no storage space. Boxed in, wiped out, and feeling like two players caught in some nightmarish hybrid of Tetris and Tron, we spent ten claustrophobic days trying to position furniture we had no room for, and nick nacks we could now admit we had no use for. When the dust finally settled, the tenants of 1122 Haro Street had inherited 22 moving boxes, four boxes of books, a coffee table, and an unopened box of Feline Pine cat litter. The vultures picked it all clean in three days.
But we were in Vancouver! And nothing says "welcome to your new home" like a sunny afternoon at Kits Beach.
That and morning coffee at Granville Island Market. And a Locarno Beach reunion with old high school friends. And fish and chips with Auntie Betty at Rocky Point Park. And receiving a warm reception from my academic advisor and the head of my department at Vancouver Film School. And the fact that "downtown" is a mere step out the front door and around the corner.
And something happened to Vancouver since I lived here last. (Actually that's a lie, I never lived in Vancouver. I lived around it, close to it, but never in it.) It seems cleaner, quieter, safer than it was in 1992. We've been out on the street nearly every night till midnight or later (everything is open late), and have felt completely comfortable every time. It's like Paris that way. Yes, we know anything can happen (we shoulder-check instinctively), but I feel safer here than I did in Calgary. As big and busy as it is - as many times as car horns honk, all-night partiers sing, and eyes avert my gaze -, there is an unexpected sense of community here, a politeness that seems to go beyond the simple Canadian stereotype into something more inclusive and intentional; an informal social contract that goes something like, "You watch out for me and I'll watch out for you. Let`s all work together to keep it clean and safe, and we'll get along just fine. And by the way, I hope you're not going to leave your cigarette butts on the street."
Maybe it's a post-riot thing, or maybe it's just me. (I've determined to smile at or say hi to the people I pass on the street. Call my Paullyanna.) I'm sure time and familiarity will give us a fuller picture, but I don`t believe it will give us a wildly different picture. Maybe it's just a West Coast thing, and I get that it's not for everyone. The laid-back, health-conscious, beach bum, can't-smoke-in-the-park thing might drive some people crazy. But as far as we're concerned, we're home. And we love it!
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