Dear Veda,
As you know we traveled to Vancouver, Canada last week. On our return, as I was searching for photos to send you, I was reminded of Ammamma's beautiful letters to you while she was in the US during this summer. Inspired by those, here is an attempt to give you a glimpse of our trip 😀.
We started our journey early in the morning last Wednesday. We flew from Washington DC to Toronto and then to Vancouver. The flight to Toronto took only about an hour; from there to Vancouver was a longer flight of about 5 hours. On our flight from Toronto, an elderly lady sat next to us. For most of the flight, she was quiet, although about an hour before landing she initiated a friendly conversation and asked us if we were going to visit Vancouver for the first time. When I said yes and we were flying from Washington DC, she exclaimed, “Oh you are Americans!”. We talked for a while, she showed us mountain peaks (Canadian Rocky Mountains) as they became visible from her window side seat, told us about weather in Vancouver, attractions in the city and suggested a number of places to visit outside the city. She said she was born in Vancouver and moved to Toronto during her college and has been living there since then. Interestingly, her husband is of Indian origin, from Mumbai, and she talked about her visit to Mumbai in the 1970s, soon after her marriage, and how much she enjoyed the old-style, slow paced life there at that time.
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| Toronto from the sky |
As you may have noticed in the above map, Vancouver is located on the West coast of Canada, in a province named British Columbia. Provinces are similar to the ‘States’ in India and US. Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories as you can see in the map below. Vancouver is one of the major cities in British Columbia, while Victoria is the capital of British Columbia.
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| Canada Provinces |
After landing in Vancouver, we hired an Uber taxi to get to the hotel. Although our elderly friend from the flight had told us about metro trains from the airport to the city, seeing the cold and windy weather outside, we were not in a mood to explore that option. By the time of our return, we had become experienced metro riders! And we took the sky train from the hotel to the airport. The metro trains are called Sky Trains there, a fancy name, as the metro trains were mostly riding on raised rails above the normal roads.
Our taxi driver was an Indian - a friendly middle-aged Sikh man wearing a black turban who greeted us in Punjabi-accented English. Soon Valiyachan and he started talking in Hindi. Our driver moved to Canada about 50 years ago. Now most of his extended family is in Canada. He told us about a Punjabi Market that was previously in Vancouver, now relocated to a suburban town called Surrey.
During our 3-day stay there, we took a taxi a number of times, and each time, except once, the driver was a Sikh man! Only once we had a non-Indian driver; his name was Omar, we thought he must be from Iran or Turkey.
Not only Indians, immigrants from other countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka are all substantial in the city population, and so are the restaurants from those cultures! We were of course not adventurous enough to explore eateries other than those of Indian cuisine, but we could smell the food aroma from those places filling the city streets.
The weather there was cool and cloudy. Autumn was in full swing with cool breezes and deciduous trees carrying yellow and orange coloured leaves. Autumn season is typically September through November, following the warm summer months of June, July and August and preceding the winter months of December, January and February. We had read that it rains a lot there, especially during autumn and winter. Anticipating the rain we had carried two small umbrellas with us, although thankfully it did not rain at all during our stay there.
Another thing that struck me about Vancouver was that it is so far from the Earth's Equator, about 49 degrees North; about 10 degrees north of Washington DC and about 36 degrees north of Bangalore! Just that I was so far north on the globe was a special feeling! Despite the high latitude, the weather there is not as cold as you would expect. That is due to warm ocean currents in the North Pacific Ocean that makes this region’s winters comparatively milder. Have you heard about ocean currents? Ocean currents are huge conveyor belts of water moving large amounts of water. They are driven by ocean surface winds, affected by Earth’s rotation and in some cases salt content in the water. You will learn more about those in Geography classes. If you are curious, you can view a chart of various ocean currents here.
Our hotel room was on the 15th floor of a 16-storey building. A large grayish white bird was seen sitting on our window shade every morning. It was least bothered by our movements and attention, so we could capture a few photographs. Valiyachan discovered from Google search that it was called Thayer's Gull. It is a type of sea bird, with webbed feet, and large wings. They spend the warm summer season in the Arctic islands of Canada and migrate to the southern Pacific Coast of Canada during winter months. Later, we spotted many of those birds in the waterfront area of the city.
Another interesting encounter was on our trip to Surrey, the suburban town with a majority of Indian population. We set out to explore that area, hoping to visit some Indian shops and eat some good Indian food. We took the metro or the SkyTrain (as they are called there) from a station near our hotel, and happened to get down at the wrong station! At that station we met a very friendly metro customer service officer - and surprise - he was also Indian! After learning that we were off to Surrey, he not only gave us instructions to get there, but came with us on the metro! Soon he was chatting away with Valiyachan in Hindi. He too came to Canada many years ago from Punjab, and worked as an ice road trucker. Do you know what they do? In northern parts of Canada and Alaska, during winter the lakes and rivers freeze and they are used as roads to deliver goods by trucks. Ice road truckers are drivers who drive on roads made of frozen water! It requires special skills - to drive on ice-roads and is very dangerous. 
Thayer's Gull outside our window
Similar to Sky-Trains, they have Sea-Buses that ferry people across the bay from one side of the city to the other. Vancouver is a coastal city and the city is spread across a number of adjacent islands. Despite the strange name, Sea-Bus, it is just a big boat with large glass windows on all sides, that shuttles people across the bay. You can see photos we took from our ride below.
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| View of the Bay from Sea-Bus |
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| Sea-Bus in Vancouver |
There is a lot more to see and experience in Vancouver, the majestic mountains of the Canadian Rockies, monumental carvings by Native Americans known as Totem Poles (see below a model of that showcased in Vancouver airport), hanging bridges, rope ways and hiking trails and so on … saved for the next visit 😀
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| Models of Totem Poles at Vancouver Airport |
With love and hugs,
V&V
