It's been a long time since I did a post that is indulgent to read, so while I am recovering from the flu, I will try to describe the family holiday to Canada.
First I should explain that my mother did not come along, in line with her long-held conviction that she's done enough trans-Atlantic travel.
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THE FLIGHT from Berlin to Frankfurt was not so exciting, except insofar as a police escort led black diplomatic vehicles (one of which bore the flag of India) onto the tarmac before we boarded the airplane.
Flying from Frankfurt to Vancouver, I watched the 2011 German film Der ganz große Traum over the shoulder of a pixie-haired woman, Gi.'s seat mate, who seemed to be a Canadian schoolteacher. And I received my vegetarian dinner with great ceremony, before everyone else's lunches rolled down the aisles.
I was happy with the dinner. But I began to feel nauseated soon afterward, which I hypothesized might be the consequence of eating the whole mini-tub of vegan margarine with my bread roll instead of just taking half. So I could not face the tempting-looking vegetarian breakfast when it landed on my tray a few hours later, with a vegetarian moussaka and a mango-flavored fruit bar. J. kindly ate it for me.
The film was a rather ham handed critique of early 20th century educational philosophy and Prussianism. Daniel Brühl plays the hero: an independent-minded, idealistic young teacher who liberates his pupils by teaching them soccer.
I was convinced the film was scripted by a man: one of the scenes has the mother of a pupil accidentally walking in on Brühl's character naked; besides the implausibility of the scene as written, I'd argue that the filmmakers frame this as a 'God's gift to women' serendipity, rather than as an awkward-for-everyone thing as it would be in real life. (Maybe I was reading the film too subjectively; besides I was reading the subtitles instead of listening to the original audio. But I'd argue it doesn't matter if someone is conventionally good-looking or not – it's sexiest to respect other people's boundaries.)
I also enjoy the irony of soccer being celebrated as a vehicle of social progress, since of course it's often linked to reactionary politics now.
It was a longish flight at 9 hours 51 minutes, 10+ kilometres in altitude.
It was a sunny day and I wrote in my notes that over Greenland there was "some clear visibility." But since I had a middle seat, it didn't make that much of a difference.
*
WE LANDED in Vancouver in the early afternoon. Canadian customs were not as gruelling as expected, but like everything else it's highly automated now and required finding and operating the correct stripped-down analogue of a telephone booth.
We found our luggage too, as advertisements for American voter registration and Canadian for-profit universities played on the screens above the conveyor belts.
Then we headed out of the Arrivals terminal, across the familiar interior drop-off lane where taxis etc. throng past and a security-vested crossing guard wrangles traffic, to find our rental car. It was a bright white, spacious, four-door minivan. And it was parked at the back of a parkade on the airport grounds, right below a small lot with Royal Canadian Mounted Police cars, flagpoles, and nearby a Japanese hot dog stand. (We would come to regret the 'bright white' part.)
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| Exit tollbooths at Vancouver International Airport's parking lots. Behind it, the dark blue banners show Indigenous art. All rights reserved (as for all other photos). |
Inside the airport itself, it is much as it ever was, indoor waterfall at the passport controls and all. But at the exit, a new building was being put up, and signs acknowledged that the airport partly stands on Musqueam territory.
The banners were the first sign I saw that many Canadians are reconsidering the history of colonialism since the Kamloops Residential School graveyard news broke in 2021.
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| Taxi cab and skyscrapers, somewhere around Vancouver. |
As we entered dense Vancouver traffic, new real estate loomed everywhere without rhyme or reason.
Greyish? bluish? in the hazy, moist Vancouver air, skyscrapers and white bridges rose at diverse parts of the metropolis (I couldn't tell apart Delta, Surrey, Richmond, ...) north of the highway.
Even at the highway: Our minivan pulled alongside a plot or two of undeveloped land with dense forest and perhaps a white bindweed flower tumbling alongside the asphalt; then, at the next street intersection, we saw rezoning and land development posters on its fence.
It was clear that, like in Berlin, the pressure on the housing market is intense.
Long freight trains, wagons patterned in Gauguin colours, and industrial yards with neatly stacked shipping containers for rebuilding, testified to the economic power of British Columbia's Lower Mainland.
It was frankly a relief to turn off those highways, landing in a remoter, more agricultural stretch as we left Vancouver to the west.
We began to approach Hope along river floodplains funneled by the dark mountains: their crests formed the dramatic curved shape of a roller coaster track.
WE REACHED THE FRINGE OF MOTELS, a weatherboarded white church steeple, and fast food restaurants on the south side of Hope, and turned into the specific Inn where we'd be staying. It was straight out of a rural American film, and I was delighted:
A two-level, wrap-around, white-and-blue painted pair of buildings, a narrow ridge of roof protecting the balcony. An office with a fluorescent OPEN sign. Red geraniums, a few garbage bins, surrounding a parking lot. In the parking lot, amongst other vehicles, there was a dusty white pick-up truck with a buggy whip. Hydrangeas, boulders, and gravel decorated the parking lot where it met the Old Hope-Princeton Highway.
A lawn chair plus white plastic tub was placed beside each motel room door, for the cigarette smokers, whose ashes wouldn't do harm dropping into the sand at the bottoms of the tubs. A mountain rose steeply behind the motel.
It was warm enough to sit outdoors. A lady in her forties or fifties was alternately observing the scene, smoking, and bowing over her smartphone in her chair.
She helped us figure out how to use the electronic room keys, when we had trouble slotting them in the key readers. 'Don't keep them in your pocket with your smart phone,' she suggested. 'It'll demagnetize them.' She also asked me later if I was 'taking care of the boys,' and confided that she was on her way back home to Vancouver Island.
LATER my brother Gi. and I went shopping at the Save On Foods across the highway. – It's a grocery chain owned by one of Canada's billionaires. More to the point, it's open later than some other shops.
There I got ginger ale, orange juice boxes for my morning iron pill routine, mandarin oranges, a Ritter Sport hazelnut chocolate square, and a four-pack of blueberry muffins. The bakery section had closed already, but there was still plenty to look at, starting with the Halloween/Thanksgiving-themed floral arrangements with chrysanthemums etc. outside the entrance.
It was fun to 'get the lay of the land': the organization of the aisles, which brands were in stock, and what the prices were. Much like Roman military camps, British Columbia grocery chain stores seem to have pretty much the same layout, regardless of which chain they are.
THE SUNSET was abrupt, because of the mountains' "tall slopes blotting out evening sunlight" (my notes).
After dark, the brothers and I walked over to the A&W. We ordered burgers, onion rings, fries, and soft drinks, and ate them outdoors on the wire tables beside the hallway. It was quiet, only the occasional passerby drifting quietly along the sidewalk. Even the trucks on the highway came by rarely.
The thought of sleeping alone in a motel room, alongside a highway with lots of strangers passing by, was not terribly appealing once I saw what it would be like. I was pretty safe; but many women and girls have gone missing along B.C.'s highways. Given the remoteness and lack of surveillance, I could understand how.
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