Monday 30th June Vancouver

We had a free day today, up early and we walked to the ferry to visit Granville Island Markets. Granville Island is a peninsula and shopping district and is located across False Creek under the south end of the Granville Street Bridge. The peninsula was once an industrial manufacturing area, but today it has large public market, an extensive marina, a boutique hotel, the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Arts Umbrella, False Creek Community Centre, various performing arts theatres, the Arts Club Theatre Company and Carousel Theatre, fine arts galleries, and variety of shopping areas. There are two zones remaining from the Island's industrial heyday: a machine shop and concrete plant. Granville Island also plays host to a variety of buskers throughout the year. There was a jazz festival on the island the day we visited.

Since its redevelopment in the 1970s, Granville Island has maintained a community of craft studios, including: a glassblowing studio, two co-op printmaking studios, a fine-art print studio, a luthier, a master saké maker, various jewellers, the B.C. Potter's Guild Gallery, the Crafthouse Gallery, the Circle Craft shop, art galleries, boat builders, a wood co-op shop, woodworkers studios, and a farmers' market. There are fifty permanent retailers and over one hundred day vendors in stalls on a rotating schedule.

Granville Island Brewing Co. is also the name of a beer company which originated on Granville Island in 1984, but whose main base of operations was moved to Kelowna, British Columbia some time later. In 2009 it was purchased by Molson's Brewery and continues to brew small batches of its varieties at the Granville Island brewing original site, and offers beer-tasting and tours of their brewing facilities. They sold some interesting souvenirs here, including a hession bag to carry half a dozen beers in.

We had lunch inside the markets (too many sea gulls outside pooping over everyone) and then took the Ferry to Yaletown and strolled along the waterfront until we reached Canada Place. Canada Place was first opened during the 1986 World's Fair and is built on a pair of former Canadian Pacific Railway piers with the longer term goal of serving as a cruise ship terminal and trade and convention centre. It is a building situated on the Burrard Inlet waterfront of Vancouver, and it is the home of the Vancouver Convention Centre, the Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel, Vancouver's World Trade Centre and Fly Over Canada . The building's exterior is covered by fabric roofs resembling sails. This area was full of activity because the press was setting up for festivities for Canada Day. We saw the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Cauldron which is located on the Jack Poole Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre . The Cauldron will remain in its present location as permanent legacy of the Games in Downtown Vancouver. The Cauldron itself is beautifully made, I love that it looks like it is covered in ice and crystals. The setting is stunning, right on the tip of the beautiful West-coast, where the ocean meets the land and the Mountain Range behind it all.

We continued our walking adventure of Vancouver and passed through historical Gastown which was Vancouver's first downtown core and is named after "Gassy" Jack Deighton, a Yorkshire seaman, steamboat captain and barkeeper who arrived in 1867 to open the area's first saloon.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s Gastown was centre of the city's drinking life (there were 300 licensed establishments the twelve-block area of the former Granville) After the Depression Gastown was a largely forgotten neighbourhood of the larger city and fell into decline and disrepair until the 1960s. It was a continuation of the Skid Road area with cheap beer parlours, flophouse hotels, and loggers hiring halls. A riot between the hippies and the police in 1971 over marijuana has gone into legend, the incident now made public on the Woodwards building, a throw-back to the more serious Post office riot of 1938. Today Gastown is a mix of "hip" contemporary fashion and interior furnishing boutiques, tourist-oriented businesses, restaurants, nightclubs, poverty and newly upscale housing. There are law firms, architects and other professional offices, as well as computer and internet businesses, art galleries, music and art studios, and acting and film schools.

We also saw Gastown's most famous (though nowhere near oldest) landmark which is the steam-powered clock on the corner of Cambie and Water Street. Built to cover a steam grate, part of Vancouver's distributed steam-heating system, the clock was built as a way to harness the steam and to prevent street people from sleeping on the spot in cold weather. Its original design was faulty and it had to be powered by electricity after a breakdown. The steam also powers the clock's sound production as whistles are used instead of bells to produce the Westminster "chime" and to signal the time. The clock does not keep good time and the chimes go off at random intervals. But it was certainly worth the visit.

We then walked back to our hotel to meet our tour guide, Sharon Sawatzky, who was a Canadian who lived in Winnipeg.