Letter from North America: Part 4: Calgary

The final part of our holiday was really a family affair and this account concerns the two weeks (almost) that we were guests of my brother, Kevin, and his wife, Ann, at their newly-completed home on the outskirts of Calgary.

The house is set in a new community, surrounded by gently rolling hills for about as far as the eye can see. If there’s one thing Canada has lots of, it’s space. The space starts where the city ends and goes on seemingly for ever, or at least as far as the distant Rockies.

Kevin and Ann had recently returned from Chicago, where they’d been based for several years. They are enthusiastic about the work of the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and spent a lot of time and effort planning and building a house in his style.

When we arrived at the start of June, the house itself was complete. Landscape gardeners were building paths and laying out the grounds. Islands of trees and shrubs rose among the planned areas of lawn. Bringing in a garden team is a common practice in Calgary, where the growing season is short and the climate tends to dictate the pattern of life.

The team worked long days, often with bare torsos in the warm sunshine. They brought in heavy machinery to manicure the land into the gentle slopes needed to deal with the snow accumulation and run-off. Grown trees and shrubs were planted and the areas mulched; an irrigation system was installed and finally several large loads of rolled turf were trucked in to give an instant lawn.

Well, not quite instant! It took two days and half a night to roll out the sod. A digger would carry a palette of turf around to the workers, who lugged the rolls further. (Only specialist nurseries actually plant grass!) Everything in the garden has to be done and dusted in the short summer months.

Particular care was given to the building of a water-feature on a sunny patio at the corner of the house. Water bubbles out of the top of a large rock and tumbles down the side into a reservoir beneath a layer of river stones. A garden table, chairs and brolly were moved in once the feature was complete - to the evident satisfaction of the owner.

On the road, trucks equipped with a large, pyramidal apparatus grunted up and down bearing fully-grown trees. We walked up to a nearby property to watch them in action. Large triangular blades on this apparatus are used to dig a hole. The process takes less than a minute.

Then the truck carts off the soil and returns a little later clutching a tree in the grip of the same apparatus. The tree is lowered into the hole, the blades of the machine are withdrawn and the truck moves on to dig another hole. By nightfall, a bare patch of ground can be converted into a mini-forest. The process is quite extraordinary to behold.

REAR VIEW
The Benson house occupies two and a bit levels. The lower level, a walk-out basement, is given over to family visitors - three married children and 6 grandchildren in Calgary as well as more distant relatives.


The lay-out is open plan, with a spacious lounge, dining-room and kitchen/ kitchenette both upstairs and down. The lower lounge doubles as a mini-movie theatre. Our hosts live upstairs, which is the entry level to the house.

Kevin has his office one level higher in a tower, which rises from the centre of the house. The three levels are connected by a small elevator, wonderful for shifting furniture or suitcases, as well as stairs. A three-car garage - some houses have four - is integrated into the design.

We loved the house, as did the other visitors. I found it a little scary how soon we came to take its spaciousness for granted. The building is as comfortable to inhabit as it is pleasing to the eye, which is more than can be said for many of the mansions around it. The latest insulating methods have been employed to keep running costs low.

Our days in Calgary didn’t really have a pattern. Barbara and I generally tried to take a walk, often around the lake at the centre of the community, with a refreshment stop at the small shopping centre on the far side. Once or twice, we were joined by my sister, Catherine, who flew in from Germany for the family reunion, and later her daughter, Anita, who is completing her Master’s studies at Essex University.

ANITA

Kevin was caught up in the bureaucracy of his return from the US to Canada. The most complicated bit was migrating back his vehicles – three cars and an RV. Canada is hugely fussy about the condition of any such vehicles, which have to undergo any manufacturer recalls before their return.

Once the tax has been agreed and paid at the border, the vehicles are subject to two inspections – provincial and federal – before new licence plates are issued. The process is ponderous, drawn-out and largely dependent on the goodwill of the officials concerned for its success. It is also subject to deadlines. So we did a lot of running around to motor dealers and inspection stations, with numerous stops at Starbucks outlets. Spare hours were spent in large (Chapters) book stores, a real pleasure.

It would be fair to add that Kevin is a car enthusiast. His Audi R4 is the delight of his life (along with his wife, Ann, naturally). Ann drives a comfortable Mercedes and the diesel-engined Jeep is the family workhorse, often employed to tow a trailer that lives at a barn on a rural property some ten minutes away.


The trailer was hitched up during our stay to fetch a load of flat-pack cupboards/ drawers from one of Calgary’s big retail outlets and later to remove piles of cardboard wrappings to a recycling centre. I gave Kev a hand to put the cupboards together, and to line them up along the back wall of his garage.

My brother maintains a very-well equipped workshop. He and Ann often spend weekends away assisting an American car-racing team in which they’ve been involved for a number of years.

The rest of the Calgary family live within easy reach and often dropped in for a meal.

The “grandies” would occupy themselves with the collection of toys that are kept for the purpose. Parents and grandparents, when not involved in building models or playing games, kept an eye on proceedings and occasionally the peace.

We lived in style. Jones and I needed mobile phones to communicate across the vast bed that we occupied in the principal guestroom. (She was virtually invisible under the covers, as you can see.) A bottle of aged malt whisky awaited our evening attentions and the wine cellar was raided nightly for refreshments to accompany the meal that Ann generally cooked for us. Alternatively, Kevin would barbeque on the spacious upper deck that overlooked the back garden. Our part was to be appreciative.

The garden merges with a copse that fringes the rear of the property and slopes away to guarantee its privacy. A path winds down to a fire-pit, intended for roasting marshmallows or similar (on such occasions that the myriad mosquitoes permit).

Deer are to be seen wandering through the area and we twice spotted coyote nearby. The latter, whose eerie howls sometimes fill the night, have emulated Britain’s foxes in making themselves at home in urban areas. People are well advised to keep their cats indoors and to walk small dogs only on leads.

Twice we joined my niece, Penny (and husband, Mike) at the community “soccer matches” that involve hundreds of children in their suburb, including their two young sons. Up to age 10 or thereabouts, boys and girls compete together. Teams are colour-coded and coached by a parent volunteer.

The kids rush up and down the field with great vigour, cheered on from the side-lines. Goals are greeted with all the enthusiasm of a World Cup final. It’s a hoot. Before or after the game, or both, we'd gather at Penny's house close by for a light meal and a game of cards.

And so the days passed, melting one into another - like the snow that fell one night - until the Friday of our return. It wasn’t a good day.

On our way to the airport we ran into wicked traffic congestion – the result of several accidents – that extended our travelling time from 40 minutes to nearly two hours. Although we arrived 50 minutes before take-off, we found the flight closed and missed the plane.

So we had to beg an additional night’s hospitality (willingly conceded) from our hosts. We were able to rebook for the following day and had the unexpected and welcome consolation of an upgrade on the way home. The dogs were at Faro airport to meet us, along with our trusty house-sitters. And there, for the moment, our travels end.

Letter from North America: Part 3. Whistler & Coast

Mid-morning we signed out a rental car and threaded our way across the city, through Stanley Park and over Lion’s Gate Bridge in the direction of Whistler.
On a good day one should be able to reach Whistler in a little over an hour. But the road was everywhere being widened or repaired in advance of the 2010 winter Olympics. So our progress was slow. At times we came to a dead halt. We lunched in the mid-point town of Squamish, which seems to serve largely as a dormitory town for the area.

Mid-afternoon we pulled into the driveway of the Belle Neige B&B. We were welcomed by Sola, the Swiss Mountain Dog, and conducted by Myrna, the co-owner, to the very comfortable little apartment where we were to stay for the following three nights. There were delightful views over Myrna's garden and the valley below. Sola never barked, we were informed, unless there were black bears in the garden. The latter came for the berries but were not otherwise obtrusive. Happily, Sola never barked and we saw only birds in the garden.

A sign on the wall warned residents not to smoke. Canadians take smoking seriously. All sorts of buildings have signs warning the public not to light up within two metres of the doors. Our hotels informed us that substantial additional charges would be added to our bills if our rooms had to be cleansed of the effects of tobacco smoke.

The B&B was located in an area known as Alpine Meadows, about 5 kms from the actual resort at Whistler Village. Looking forward to a little exercise, we set out along a series of trails that wind their way through the area. They are used mainly by bikers, who whizzed past us. We needed a little help from passers by at intersections during a walk that took 90 minutes. It was hot, with hardly a cloud in the sky.

Whistler Village is pedestrianised, full of the usual food, clothing and equipment stores, all at ski resort prices. In fact we found prices generally in British Columbia to be much higher than those we were used to back home. At the top of the village were the gondolas to the twin mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb.

Skiers and snowboarders were still using the upper runs on Whistler – due to shut at the end of May. Runs on Blackcomb had already been closed for the season. But the few remaining winter sports enthusiasts were vastly outnumbered by mountain bikers, who were riding up in the gondola and speeding down the lower slopes of the mountain.

The next time we walked into the village, we took a much prettier route through the woods, past the float planes tied to the piers on Green Lake and around the Jack Nicklaus golf course. (A ball bounced off the woodwork of a bridge that we were crossing and splashed into the lake.) I loved watching the floatplanes take off and land. Anglers fished for the trout that populated the lake. Instruction boards informed fishermen that they needed licences, were not permitted to use bait and had to return any catches to the water. Fishing was for sport only.

Each evening we’d stop off at the corner café at the Alpine Meadows turn-off for a coffee or a beer. Around us the youth of the neighbourhood would gather, athletic young men along with their honey-limbed, strapless-top-clad lassies. Few arrived on foot. The preferred modes of transport were bicycle, skateboard and - for those who'd made some progress in life -a grunting V-8 pick-up.

One facility not to be found in Whistler is a laundry. The information centre told us that there was one 10 minutes down the road at Creekside. By sheer luck we filled up at a service station opposite a hostel in which the laundry was based. The bottom floor of the hostel was a diner. It was noisy and busy Waitresses scuttled up and down the tables with huge plates of eggs and fries. On the weekend, they told us, the lines stretched way back from the door. Jones and I shared a blueberry pancake. It was our introduction to this great American institution.

An hour north of Whistler lies the agricultural town of Pemberton, where Niki Madigan runs the old museum. Visitors are free to stroll around unescorted.

I was fascinated by the old machinery in the yard, especially the ancient McCormick tractor. Gold miners had once passed through the town on their way to the fabled riches further north. In one room was a giant carving of a mosquito, an insect that had tormented the miners. And there were plenty of the little bloodsuckers in the museum, anxious to feed on us.


We visited the Nairn falls, just south of the town, walking the two kilometres along a dusty trail to the river. Indians (now known as the First Nations) and miners had followed the same route, according to the information boards.

The falls themselves were thunderous rather than high. Huge volumes of water tumbled through a narrow gorge, swirling and frothing into the river below. A cloud of spray drifted across the cliffs above the falls.

After three days in Whistler, we drove south again, this time to the large ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay, just north of Vancouver. Our destination was an hotel in Gibson's Landing, across the bay on a stretch known as Canada's Sunshine Coast. There's no road access from greater Vancouver to this area. To travel north, you have to take a ferry (or two, depending on how far you want to go).

The terminal was an impressive affair. Two or three ferries could berth simultaneously. The bigger ones, serving Vancouver Island, were boats of several thousand tons, taking hundreds of vehicles into their cavernous maws. Vehicles were loaded (and unloaded) simultaneously from upper and lower decks, cars above and heavier traffic below.

Our ferry shed its load in ten minutes and reloaded in another ten. The voyage across the bay took 40 minutes. At the opposite terminal, the performance was repeated just as quickly. Most remarkably, the ferries had bridges and prows at either end, so that they never needed to turn around.

The Sunshine Coast is a summer playground, an area of beaches, bays, lakes, coves, rivers, trails and forests. The most beautiful houses are semi-hidden in the trees in little villages all along the coast. We spent a day travelling north as far as we could, short of taking another ferry.


One of the sights to behold is the Skookumchuk tidal bore - where narrowing straits force the tidal flows into a riptide wave. It's one of nature's minor wonders but well worth the effort nonetheless.

There's a coffee and bun house, built of wood and run by a Dutch couple at the start of the trail - and well worth a stop. The man of the house told us how he'd built the place with his own hands, a dream come true, as he put it. The coffee was excellent and the muffins even better.

To get to the straits, one has to trek an hour along a forest trail, hoping that the recently-sighted bear in the vicinity has taken itself off. We didn't see any bears, just a few other hikers.

The following morning, we were up early to catch the first ferry back to Horseshoe Bay and to return our rental car to the depot in Vancouver. From there we flew to Calgary for the last part of our holiday.

Letter from North America: Part 2: Vancouver

The odyssey continues:

After clearing Canadian immigration in Victoria – a lengthy process, given the crush of arrivals – we wheeled our bags around the bay to the office of Harbour Air, where we parked them while we went off to lunch in the sunshine. Victoria’s a cheerful place in a picture book setting, with a variety of restaurants to choose from along the waterfront. Boats, sculls and floatplanes busy themselves in the natural bay harbour. On a sunny day, the world's troubles seem far away.

With an hour to kill after lunch, we did a little shopping. Jones wanted paper in which to wrap some gifts. As we passed through a mall, she noticed that several mannequins modelling clothes were young women and not dummies. They were excellent, frozen in space and time for the occasion (for a few minutes at least) although I did earn a smile from one when I took a picture.

Back at Harbour Air, we checked in for the flight from Victoria to Langley (one of several small airports scattered around greater Vancouver). It lies just down the road from the home of Barbara’s nephew, Chris Jones (wife, Jane, and young children, Luke and Dave) with whom we were to spend the weekend.

I love Canada’s floatplanes and flying in them. Check-in is a breeze. There are no queues, no questions, no searches – none of the dreaded apparatus that has killed off the romance of flying. The operator weighs your luggage, takes your money and gives you a ticket. The airline’s small Beavers (which we flew last year from Prince Rupert to the Queen Charlotte islands) take four/five passengers.

The bigger Otters, which are amphibious, take up to ten. The Otter has small retractable wheels at the front and back of its long floats. The short flight to Langley offered us wonderful views of the suburbs of Victoria before passing over numerous green islands that dot the waters in that area. Tiny yachts heeled over in the wind while serious ferries ploughed their way between Vancouver and the islands.

Chris and Luke were waiting for us at Langley airport. They led us down the road to pick up a hire car and then took us home. Their house in the suburbs of Langley is fringed with a curtain of trees and backs on to the woods. A high wooden deck brings occupants almost within touch of the trees. These are home to racoons, coyotes and other denizens of the wild. You hardly know that you're in the midst of a great city.

We occupied the downstairs guestroom. So, for much of the time, did the family's lively cats
Maverick (Abyssinian) and Stefanie (Siamese). They were friendly and curious creatures, who were pleased to share our company and our bed.

The next morning we were joined by another of Barbara’s nephews, Bevan, who had made the 5-hour overnight flight from New York with his wife, Sion. The couple live in Princeton, where Bevan has worked for a number of years.

ON THE DECK
BEVAN & CHRIS
So it was pretty much a reunion of the European and North American Joneses. Our first stop was the South African shop in Langley for biltong and other essential supplies. The products of my childhood lined the shelves. I felt quite nostalgic. At the back of the shop three beefy Afrikaners conversed as they made boerewors (a spicy South African sausage) that was evidently much in demand.

CHRIS
A fourth, who confessed to having arrived from Pretoria 13 years earlier, served a flow of customers. Jones was delighted to find supplies of Pro-Vita biscuits. Rugby seemed to be the main subject of conversation among the shoppers(Canada were playing an Irish side that afternoon).

From Langley Chris led us an hour eastwards, past Harrison hot springs, to a lake on whose grassy banks we lazed away the afternoon. Small boats hummed around (only electric motors are permitted).

Canada geese conducted their goslings along the lake shore and the world seemed briefly at peace with itself. British Columbia is blessed with thousands - quite literally - of these little lakes, set beneath snow-laden mountains. On holiday weekends the roads are filled with huge caravans, hitched to muscular pick-ups, en route to such destinations.

On the Sunday we visited a small resort known as White Rock – from the large white “erratic” which some ancient glacier had deposited on the shore.

Mudflats, populated by a few birds and walkers, stretched out towards the distant ocean. A long pier offered access to the yachtsmen whose boats were tied up in the lee of a rocky breakwater.

Thus the weekend passed. Bevan and Sion returned to the airport for a red-eye return. Jane dropped us off the next morning at the Sky-train terminus and Chris met us in the city to convey us to our hotel. For such great hospitality we thank them.

We had two days to explore Vancouver and once again we began with a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city.

You soon understand why Vancouver is regarded as the world's most desirable place to live. It has everything – you can ski in its mountains, sail in its seas, bask on its beaches or gasp at the vast mirrored buildings that bestride the downtown area. A pity only that it is equally attractive to numerous vagrants who bum a living from the public.

On our second day in the city we visited Stanley Park, a thousand acres of wilderness on the door step of downtown. It was possible, we were told, to walk a 14 mile route around the perimeter. We planned a pleasant amble but it was hours before, heavy-legged, we found a link back to the road. It’s a brilliant walk, past the floatplane base, along the bay and under the towering Lion’s Gate bridge.

A relieving snooze later, we walked along to the city’s art gallery for a special exhibition of Dutch masters. The gallery, like many other shops and institutions in Canada, refused point blank to take $100 notes because of the amount of forgery that goes on.

With a couple of hours to spare the following morning, we made our way across the creek to the Granville Island market.
A little inflatable ferry, powered by an outboard motor, spends its day criss-crossing the water with passengers. This market, like the North Shore market we’d earlier visited, offers every variety of food, handicraft and clothing. It's an easy place to wile away an hour. Late morning we fetched a hire car and set off across the city for Whistler - of which more in due course.

Letter from North America: Part 1: Seattle

INSIDE SEATTLE LIBRARY
I had thought when we left Faro for a holiday in North America that I would not put up any further blogs until our return. But memories, like our pictures, are now piling one on another. So here is an interim account of our travels.

A useful place to begin is early on Wednesday May 20. We were at Calgary airport, heading for Seattle after enjoying the overnight hospitality of my brother, Kevin, and his wife, Ann, at their newly-finished home on the outskirts of the city. The pair are in the process of settling down again in Canada after spending several years in Chicago. They have taken great pains with the design and construction of the house in the Frank Lloyd Wright style. Of this, more later.

Kevin had fetched us from the airport on our arrival from Europe the previous afternoon and he ran us back in equally good humour. We took an Air Canada Airbus to Vancouver and, after clearing US customs and immigration there, a small Dash 8 on the short hop south to Seattle.

This is a 50-seater, high-wing, propeller-driven twin that made a welcome break from the big impersonal jets in which we’d spent most of the previous day.

It was Jones who had suggested a visit to Seattle. I'm very pleased that she did. Like Vancouver a little further up the west coast, Seattle boasts mountains, calm seas, lakes, stunning architecture and a temperate climate. The descent into Seattle airport brings great views of the city. We took a bus ride from the airport into town. A large woman driver slung our suitcases into the bus's cargo hold.


Really large people were much in evidence. One feels as though one has just arrived, not just in a different country, but on a completely different planet. I’m not knocking the gravitationally challenged - my own silhouette is not what it used to be - but I do like a seat all to myself.

We’d reserved a room at a Best Western hotel, a chain in which we'd stayed before. It was a surprise to find the entrance décor and public carpets distinctly shabby although the room itself was fine. We were later to discover at a much slicker (and more expensive) Best Western in Vancouver that each hotel in the chain is run independently, like a franchise.

To get to know Seattle, we booked ourselves on a three-hour tour of the city. Our driver and guide was Jim - late 30s and a bit loud.


JIM WITH HIS TOUR GROUP
He had about ten passengers including two Koreans, one of whom – Barbara said – hardly opened his eyes. The bus was built on a truck body with a rear suspension designed for carrying cement rather than people.

Every jolt went straight up my spine. Moving to a forward seat helped - a bit. Jim, an ex-taxi driver, was by his own admission new to the job. He had been working hard on his patter and found interruptions off-putting. Still, he knew his city and gave us a good introduction to it.

Jim’s declared aim - there was a sign at the front of the bus - was to coax generous tips out of his passengers. He declined to take our ($44) fares until the end of the tour, giving him time to demonstrate his worth. Bus drivers on subsequent tours that we took in Vancouver we equally concerned with their tips. Each left a biscuit tin prominently placed for the purpose, with a hopeful collection of coins and notes. In North America, tipping is a serious business. We got a run-down on rates for different services from an official at the tourist centre. Fifteen per cent is not considered excessive.


The following day we walked to the places that interested us most. One way and another, where-ever we went, we did a lot of walking.


TERRY AND RACHEL
The first of these was Seattle’s famous Pike Street market, a vast, throbbing food, handicrafts and what-have-you affair that sprawls across several storeys and streets. At the entrance to the market stands a brass statue of Rachel, the pig, named after a large porker who had done something distinguished. (I forget what.)



I bought a small, wooden "magic box" from a woman who made them and said she motored up 200 miles from her home town to sell them at the market. And she sold as many as she made.

INSIDE THE FIRST STARBUCKS
The numerous coffee shops in the area included the original Starbucks. We peered inside. I had planned to take coffee there but so had lots of other people so we found another coffee shop nearby instead.

This one was clearly patronised by jazz and art afficionados, as well as people who wanted to use the internet. I really like this picture of Jones framed against the pictures on the wall.

Our next stop was Seattle’s library. This is housed in a building, like the concert hall in Porto – designed by the same architect, Rem Koolhaas - that must be seen to be believed. The steel and glass structure rises at impossible angles like a contorted three-dimensional mirror. Visitors are welcome. We paused to support a fund-raising campaign by library volunteers (I got a t-shirt) and to admire the auditorium funded by Bill Gates - before taking a series of escalators to the top of the building.

Visitors to the upper floors of the library have the impression that they have been swallowed up by a vast meccano monster.(If you don't know what meccano is, you're too young.) The construction is tied together by a lacework of beams that is as much a work of art as engineering.

Our final stop was the art gallery, one of the best I’ve visited. We were lucky enough to arrive in time to join a guided tour of an exhibition of early American art. For the rest we just wandered. The gallery has an eclectic collection of all kinds of stuff, the overall effect of which is strangely uplifting. I just loved the place and was happy to go back inside when Jones wanted to point out something that I’d missed.

Our return to Canada was via a ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island. Long queues awaited us when we arrived at the ferry terminal at 6.30 on a Friday morning. We were able to avoid the worst of them, grateful that we’d been able to check-in the previous day when we dropped by to confirm our bookings. To our disappointment, the ferry was a smallish, high-speed catamaran, quite unlikely the large boat on which we’d made a memorable trip up the inner passage to Prince Rupert the previous year.

While the boat was comfortable, it offered little opportunity for passengers to move around or go on deck. The only deck space available was a section a few metres square at the stern where the wind soon drove the adventurous back to their seats. Our ferry was full because it was a long weekend and Seattleites were making the most of it. There wasn’t a seat to spare.

We were fortunate to be upstairs (away from the school groups below) and sitting opposite a young high-tech couple (Meave and Jean-Claude) with whom we fell into conversation and whose excellent company helped to speed the trip by. It was, they confessed, the first anniversary of their meeting via an online dating site. And thus ends the first part.