English Bay

I went for a wonderful dinner with my family on Sunday night, and as we were driving back from the restaurant, I snapped these pictures of English Bay in twilight. I wasn't sure if they would turn out, but when I uploaded them to my computer, I was pleasantly surprised. If you look closely, (click on them to enlarge them) you can see the full moon hiding behind the clouds. The pictures are quite dark, so I hope you can see them. I thought the bay looked rather mysterious in the twilight.

English Bay is my favorite part of Vancouver. It's surrounded by the West End and Stanley Park, North and West Vancouver, and Kitsilano. When I first moved to Vancouver, I thought English Bay was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and my daughter and I lived close to the beach for several years. In the fall, when all the tourists had gone home, we used to go to the beach and gather driftwood to burn in our fireplace.

English Bay is usually very placid, and there are several beaches along the bay that are very popular with Vancouverites and tourists -- English Bay Beach, Sunset Beach, Second Beach, Third Beach, Kitsilano Beach, Jericho Beach, Spanish Banks, Locarno Beach and Ambleside Beach. In the summertime they are all packed with sunbathers, and folks swimming, having barbeques and playing beach volleyball.

My photographs are very dark, so I have added one that I stole borrowed from the internet, so you can see English Bay in daylight. Occasionally Vancouver gets hit with typhoons that roll in off the Pacific Ocean. A couple of years ago many of the old growth trees in Stanley Park were decimated by a huge typhoon that slammed into them. It looked as if someone had gone through there with a giant lawnmower and mowed them down. It was devastating. When that happens, English Bay becomes wild, with huge waves. I remember the day my husband was killed in a plane crash, Vancouver was in one of those windstorms. I was a little bit in shock, and I went for a walk along English Bay. Branches from trees were flying, the waves were pounding on the store, and there was one other person out for a walk as well, an elderly gentleman. He said to me, "Young lady, you should not be out here in weather like this. Someone could get killed." The irony was not lost on me.

And yes, those are palm trees in that picture. Most people think of Canada as the land of ice, snow, sled dogs and snowshoes -- but Vancouver is 1,327 miles away from Anchorage, Alaska and only 799 miles away from San Francisco, California. In the winter months we are warmer than most of North America, and in the summer months we are often exactly like Hawaii. This is a picture I took last fall, on one of my visits to English Bay. Whenever I need to get rid of the cobwebs in my head, I go for a walk along English Bay. I could never live very far away from it, and for me it will always be home.