Three Things from Edmonton podcast: Episode 126: bridge lights, a stick of butter, flying home

 

Back from Vancouver with three things that left tracks of happiness and gratitude in the sands of time.

Three Things, episode 125:

                              

1. Bridge lights 

We got to Vancouver, got up to our hotel room, opened the curtains—and saw Dave Mowat standing there. Not the Dave Mowat, late of ATB Financial, but a way of seeing things like Dave Mowat sees things was out there over the Burrard Inlet to be clearly seen. The Lions Gate Bridge stood in the dark, its lights hanging like a garland of starlight. Or pearls. Memorably, Dave once likened the festooned lights on the First Narrows Bridge to pearls. He was doing a Pecha Kucha at the Horowitz Theatre at the U of A, pitching the idea of lighting the High Level Bridge in Edmonton. For the crowd, he pictured the Lions Gate at night. 

"There's a sense of dance of light, a dance with a bejewelled partner," he said, noting the bridge lights were nicknamed Gracie's Pearls.

Twenty months and a community-fundraised $2.5 million later, Edmonton’s landmark bridge got its own lights. They’ve done a lot of work over the past almost nine years. They’ve raised awareness for the spectrum of community causes. The lights have sent messages of condolence to communities near and far. I remember the April night a few years ago when the bridge was lit in Nova Scotian blue and white for the dead and the injured and those supporting the families after 22 people were murdered. The bridge does lighter work, too. The night after hometown hero Alphonso Davies won the Champions League in Europe, the bridge back home went red and white.

I remember overhearing the crew that rebuilt the upstream Groat Bridge once say that the only thing they regretted about the project was they didn’t put lights on it, like the High Level. 

It was heartwarming to finally get a few days away from Edmonton and get to the coast and be spirited back home at the speed of a bright idea.

2.  A stick of butter 

A stick of butter is what I went searching for one morning last week, along with a container of six eggs. We were in Vangroovy and didn’t need to buy more breakfast stuff than we could consume, which was a problem at Safeway because they were, I was told, no longer allowed to sell six eggs at a time, it was 12 or nothing, so, over to Whole Foods I went. The butter stick there was more than I needed, but I took it to the clerk at the cash register, Rhiannon was her name, and Rhiannon made small talk by complimenting my choice of Lactantia garlic butter, which was the first time I saw that yes, in fact, it was garlic butter and, no, in fact, I didn’t mean to buy it. She walked me back to the dairy section to see if there was a stick of butter butter, which there wasn’t, then refunded my money, then went to the bakery and sent me out with the six eggs, a wish for a good day and eight of those little butter packets on the house. 

Back at our suite on Robson Street, the butter played medium for a breakfast of poached eggs on toasted bagels lined with smoked salmon and topped with fresh dill, along with strawberries from Abbotsford, the first of the season, on the side. It was delicious. I called it Eggs Rhiannon. The organic bean counters at Whole Foods should know that Rhiannon’s kindness was why we ended up back at the store that evening for a couple of nice steaks, ka-ching!

3.  Flying home 

There’s always something compelling to see and consider and carry back with us from the university campuses in the cities Shelagh and I are lucky enough to visit. At UBC, we found a travelling exhibit called Hearts of Freedom: Stories of Southeast Asia Refugees. It was a reminder of a dramatic time in Canada, as Prime Minister Joe Clark’s minority government promised this country would welcome 50,000 refugees, the so-called boat people, who were fleeing their homelands on the TV news. That number would later rise to 60,000. One of the panels in the exhibit contained an account of an Air Canada flight attendant who remembered that her DC-8 had 198 seats, and 98 children, on one flight. Many passengers just wore thongs on their feet, she said. Some had a small carry-on bag. There was no checked luggage. That short sentence stopped me. There was no checked luggage. Everything they owned had been left behind, lost at sea or stolen by pirates. There was no checked luggage. 

In security at the Vancouver airport, I was ordered to open my expertly taped-closed bicycle box so Dragana, who ran the Fragile and Oversized Baggage desk, could ensure the bike tires were fully deflated, which she did, which they weren’t. Now, generally speaking, I am not good when uniformed security functionaries of any stripe tell me what to do. But this time, strangely, I held my tongue. I wasn’t even annoyed. 

After getting the bike right, I re-taped the box and checked it on the flight home.

Thanks for being out there, friends.