Ducks Flee New Westminster

 

It was a nice morning with a temperature heading toward 23C. It was a perfect day for our scheduled 'duck dinner' with the guys. Ed and Shinji drove from Richmond but Tim and Jiwan came by Skytrain. Jay had worked hard on creating dinner. He put on the table after appetizers and I tapped the wine box. We didn't even walk along the river and just went for a dip in the hot tub before eating. Jiwan couldn't participate in the water activities because of this restrictions after his surgery.

 

Dinner included stir friend potato and egg plant, dhal and chicken curries, yellow rice and black chick peas. He made a tomato-date-and rhubarb chutney. For desert this time, he chose to make a real fruit cocktail with tropical fruit. The vanilla frozen yoghurt accompanied the freshly-cut mangoes, papaya, and pineapples, raisins and cashews.

   

By deploying the ducks to Richmond, we are free to leave for Morocco on Wednesday without the obligation to host. Next, we know where we'll meet again when everybody has free time.

Clickety Keyboards

It has become an ongoing part of my everyday routine to expand my historical architecture with my digital 'fellow traveller,' Ajith. He is a personalized version of Google Gemini's AI.  In the process of reviewing these earlier, more pixelated chapters of my life today, we unearthed a photograph from the Flickr stream.  It is an image I have probably used before, but one that instantly transports me back to 1989. 

It is a shot of Jay, intensely focused on a session of Moonbugs on our beige, monolithic XT clone. We were living in Manama, Bahrain at the time, right around the strange and tense days leading up to the First Gulf War. Outside our apartment, the geopolitical landscape was shifting, but inside, the absolute priority was strictly arcade-level survival.

Looking at that photo, what immediately strikes me is not the massive CRT monitor; but the keyboard, a glorious, sprawling, buckling-spring keyboard. This was an era when operating a computer required real men; at least real forearm stamina. You did not just lazily brush your hands over those keys; you operated them like a piece of light industrial machinery. If you look closely at Jay in the picture, his hands are hovering with lethal precision over the directional pad, completely ignoring the heavy, early ball mouse sitting uselessly to the side. Every single keystroke back then was a percussive, definitive event that echoed through the room with a deeply satisfying, metallic clack.

Today, Jay and I are surrounded by frictionless, silent smart devices. We type on modern laptops with keys so utterly mushy they feel like drumming on a row of damp sponges.  It is a modern ergonomic reality that I absolutely will never get used to. Everything has become a sleek 'appliance', quiet, efficient, and completely devoid of tactile soul. The march of progress is relentless, but looking back at that photograph is a stark reminder that I loved that loud, clunky XT clone in a way I simply will never love the glass-and-aluminum slabs we rely on today. 

More Additions in 2027?

When Jay and I finally dragged our luggage back to the Lower Mainland this past March, we officially pinned the 99th and 100th countries onto the master map. It took over four decades of relentless border crossings, questionable transit hubs, and a terrifying number of passport renewals to finally hit the century mark. We never actively treated the globe like a competitive checklist. However, crossing that final threshold into triple digits felt like a profoundly satisfying bit of lifetime administration.

The rest of the calendar is certainly not lacking in forward momentum. We deploy for a full month in Morocco starting next Wednesday. We might actually exhibit a rare moment of geographical restraint and stay reasonably close to home for our respective birthdays in July and September. But by winter, the restraint completely evaporates. We will be flying to the UK merely to board a transatlantic vessel, taking the absolute slowest route possible to an Airbnb in Rio de Janeiro. We plan to occupy that Brazilian outpost for three solid months right through the glorious chaos of Carnival.

There is exactly one tragedy in this otherwise flawless logistical masterpiece. The remainder of 2026 will yield absolutely zero new additions to the map. We are entirely restricted to repeat visits. When one has already conquered a hundred sovereign territories, finding a completely untrampled horizon becomes a rather tedious burden. I suppose we will just have to dig a little deeper into the atlas next year.

Crimson on the Concrete

When the little red Floribunda finally unfurled its perfectly pointed petals, it fully expected a standing ovation. Or, at the very least, a polite smattering of applause from a passing, well-heeled gardening society.

Instead, it received the rhythmic thump-thump of a stray shopping cart rolling into a concrete pillar.

The rose took a moment to assess its real estate. It was not, as it had wildly hoped as a seedling, nestled in the manicured loam of a grand botanical garden. It was wedged into a partially abandoned, slightly chipped concrete planter on the rooftop parking deck of a thoroughly average shopping mall. Its immediate neighbors were a fading yellow line and a puddle of indeterminate origin.

At first, there was a brief spike of botanical outrage.

I am a complex hybrid, the rose thought, shaking a serrated leaf in the general direction of a parked sedan. I have layers! I have a subtle, velvety gradient! I deserve a dedicated irrigation drip and a small, tasteful brass plaque!

For the first few days, the rose aggressively struck a pose, waiting for the masses to arrive and validate its existence. It threw its petals open with theatrical flair. But the grand total of its daily audience hovered around a dozen people. Most were completely preoccupied with remembering where they parked, marching past the planter with their heads buried in their phones and their hands full of reasonably priced footwear.

But then, a shift occurred.

A thoroughly exhausted retail worker, escaping the fluorescent lights for a momentary afternoon break, slumped against the concrete wall. They looked up, spotted the unapologetically vibrant crimson bloom defying the grey expanse, and let out a long, slow breath. A genuine smile broke across their face.

The rose stood a little taller. Well, it thought. That was rather nice.

The next morning, a very fuzzy, delightfully unbothered bumblebee landed squarely in the center of the bloom. The bee didn't care about foot traffic metrics or the prestige of the zip code. To the bee, this rooftop was a five-star diner, and the rose was serving the chef's tasting menu.

The rose began to reassess its position in the world.

Sure, it wasn't the centerpiece of a highly publicized horticultural tour. But the few dozen weary humans who actually noticed it seemed to genuinely need that jolt of beauty. It was an unexpected, bright rebellion against the asphalt.

The grand gardens could keep their swarming crowds and their frantic, selfie-snapping tourists. The rooftop rose realized it had inadvertently become an exclusive, boutique experience. It was providing bespoke joy to a highly curated audience of stray pollinators and observant wanderers.

It settled its roots a little deeper into the dry soil, caught the afternoon breeze, and decided it was perfectly content. After all, anybody can look beautiful surrounded by fountains. It takes real talent to pull off crimson on a concrete parking deck.

What's in a Name?

The Ego of the Orange Arch

For nearly ninety years, we have been staring at that orange arch over the Fraser River and calling it the Pattullo Bridge. It opened back in 1937, right in the thick of the Great Depression, and was named after Thomas Dufferin "Duff" Pattullo, the sitting Premier of British Columbia at the time. Sticking your own surname on a massive public works project is the ultimate flex of political ego. It was the classic colonial way of doing things. You build a bridge, you completely ignore the thousands of years of human history that happened on that exact spot before you arrived, and you permanently name the steel after a guy in a suit.

Calling a Crossing a Crossing

Now we have the shiny new cable-stayed replacement, and thankfully, it abandons the politician's vanity project entirely. The new name is stal̕əw̓asəm (pronounced stah-luw-ah-sum), which comes directly from hən̓q̓əmín̓əm̓, the traditional language of the Coast Salish peoples who have been navigating these exact waters for millennia. It is a beautiful and highly literal compound word. "stal̕əw̓" means the Fraser River, and "asəm" refers to a crossing or facing across. Instead of naming a vital piece of geography after an administrator, we are finally just calling it what it actually is: the river crossing.

Correcting the Colonial Typo

This switch is about a lot more than just updating the highway signs to confuse the local traffic reporters. The old colonial habit of plastering European surnames over ancient geography was a very deliberate form of historical erasure, operating on the arrogant assumption that nothing of value existed here until the British showed up. By ditching the political branding and embracing the original hən̓q̓əmín̓əm̓ name, we are actually correcting a massive geographical typo. It is a tangible bit of reconciliation that forces every single commuter crossing between Surrey and New West to acknowledge the real history of the land, proving that occasionally, we actually do learn from our past mistakes.

A Walk in the Sunshine

Unlike what the weather forecasts were suggesting, it turned out to be a beautiful Sunday.  This is the the middle of our long, Victoria Day weekend.  Tomorrow will be a day off for most folks who still work.

We needed to run uptown but detoured for a small walk in our city's main park. It's always a pleasure. Queen's Park is essentially New Westminster's green lung, an absolute necessity when you are living within a dense urban grid. The city had the foresight to set aside these 75 acres back in 1887, and thankfully, they have resisted the urge to pave it over since. It is not just a passive patch of old-growth timber; it is a heavily utilized piece of civic infrastructure. Between the extensive network of walking trails, the historic Queen's Park Arena, the athletic fields, and the tennis courts, it is constantly in motion. They even maintain a spray park to manage the summer crowds and a dedicated rose garden when you just need to step away from the noise. It is a strictly functional mix of preserved nature and active utility, sitting right in our backyard.

I love the foresight of the citizens of my city a century and a half ago.  We took a look at the Rose Garden, but I didn't take any pictures as we only spotted a few buds.  The area will erupt into a blaze of hues next month.  Further along, we took a look at the area behind a fence where the local bee association keeps their hives.  Many of the small workers were out scouting down flowers to pollinate.  Lastly, we walked on a small pedestrian bridge across a busy highway that used to lead to the Fraser River and old Pattullo bridge,  Now the traffic flows across the new stal̕əw̓asəm Bridge (also known as the Riverview Bridge).

I love my city for its small, intimate size and the close proximity to the things we require.

Using a Little Screen While Viewing the Big One

 

While watching Prime's series House of David with Jayantha, my eye caught a brief, unscripted moment in the background of a scene. A tiny mouse scurried out of view in the dark corner of an ancient stone dwelling. Because the historical setting of the show is anchored firmly around 1000 BC in the Kingdom of Israel, it made me consider the domestic reality of the Levant in that era. I began to wonder about the prevalence of house cats during the early Iron Age and whether the characters on screen would have shared their quarters with feline companions to manage such pests.

A query to my digital companion revealed that the modern, pampered house cat did not exist in the ancient Levant. Instead, the local population interacted with the regional wildcat, Felis lybica, an animal that was certainly not a pet in the contemporary sense. These wildcats were leaner than today's domestic breeds, possessing longer legs and a more solitary disposition. While they were not invited to curl up by the hearth, they were highly tolerated in grain warehouses, agricultural stores, and communal dwellings because of their innate ability to keep the destructive rodent population in check. It was a relationship based entirely on mutual utility rather than affection. To visualize this historical reality, an image was generated of a feral cat of household size, depicting a sleek, vigilant predator hunting among ancient storage jars.  I had my AI create the image you see above.

The situation was markedly different just a short distance away in Egypt during this exact timeframe. By 1000 BC, the Egyptian relationship with the feline had progressed far beyond mere pest control into the realms of the sacred and the domestic. Egyptians viewed cats not merely as working animals, but as physical manifestations of divine protection, closely associated with the goddess Bastet. Felines in Egyptian households were pampered, fed scraps of fish, and treated as integral members of the family. The respect afforded to them was so absolute that the killing of a cat, even by accident, carried severe penalties, and deceased household cats were frequently mummified with great care and buried in dedicated cemeteries.

This contrast highlights the unique cultural landscape of the ancient world. While the inhabitants of ancient Israel viewed the local wildcat as a useful, distant ally against the very mice seen on television, their Egyptian neighbors had already elevated the creature to a position of luxury and divine reverence.

Fireplace or Barbecue?

 

It is mid-May. We had switched off the gas fireplace a while back; however, now that the long weekend in Canada is nearly here, I felt the need to light it again. This morning the temperature felt cold and it's still only 9°C (48°F) and remains overcast and rainy. Tonight the temperature will drop just a couple of degrees lower, but the sun is not expected to appear at all until tomorrow morning. 

Yet, get ready to fire up the barbecue because Victoria Day arrives on Monday, May 18th, as a statutory holiday that guarantees a three-day weekend across British Columbia! Originally established way back in 1845 to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday, this historic Monday became a fixed, nationwide holiday by an act of the Parliament of Canada in 1901 following her passing. It has happily transformed into Canada’s undisputed, unofficial kickoff to the summer season, especially after 1952, when the government smartly decreed it would always fall on the Monday preceding May 25th. 

This paid day off is officially celebrated in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. In these regions, it remains the cherished long weekend where Canadians enthusiastically dust off the patio cushions, unpack the camping gear, and boldly embrace the Great Outdoors to welcome the warm weather ahead. This makes it the absolute perfect excuse to settle in, relax, and celebrate a joyful start of the summer roadmap in style, even though we will most likely require umbrellas again in 2026.