, originally uploaded by inklake.

Caught this with my iPhone.  Phenomenal sunset last night behind “We” by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. Part of the Vancouver Biennale on English Bay above the appropriately named Sunset Beach.

Abandoned lift on Grouse Mountain looks more like a sci-fi gate into a new dimension. Covered in heavy frost from all the snow-making equipment.

Came across this photo online this afternoon. It was taken by Paul Bednar, a ski instructor from the Skischule I taught with in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.  I still remember the rush of fear and adrenalin I got as I looked over this cliff myself years ago.  Believe me, when I did it, I did not hang my ski tips over the cliff face.

Here’s the note he posted with the photo:

There was a t-bar at the top of the Zugspitze (elevation 2962m/9718 ft). Once you got off the lift, you could sidestep up another 50 metres or so to a small break in the rocks that formed the border between Germany and Austria. At that point, you could just stand there with your skis still on and look down the cliff face onto the town of Lermoos, Austria.

In other words, one slip and you’re in Austria, almost 3,000m below.

Note the very old-school Völkl’s.

We Gathered to Say Haw’aa

Celebrating, 25 years later, the Haida blockade that helped win a crucial fight to save forests.

By Caitlyn Vernon, Today, TheTyee.ca

Think back 25 years. Picture the way forestry used to happen along the coast of British Columbia. I remember driving past clear cuts that stretched from river bottom to mountain top, hillsides looking completely shaved of all life. Massive piles of log debris obstructing streams, preventing salmon from spawning. With increasing speed, the ancient trees that had taken thousands of years to grow were being mowed down for timber and toilet paper.

But not everyone was just standing by. On Meares Island off the west coast of Vancouver Island, the First Nations joined forces with environmentalists to stop logging. And on Haida Gwaii a campaign had been in the works since the early 1970s to protect the southern part of the archipelago. It was called the South Moresby wilderness proposal.

As a kid in the early ’80s I had the poster of Burnaby Narrows on my wall. It seemed this iconic image from South Moresby was everywhere at the time — the bright sea stars and abundance of rich intertidal life illustrating the beauty of the area and raising awareness of the need to protect it from logging.

Read the entire article here.

If you’re thinking about heading out for a walk this weekend, you’re probably planning on a few hours, tops – and likely on pavement, or at very least a well-worn path.

But when Russian émigré Lillian Alling went for a walk in the 1920s, she strode clear across North America – through dense bush and over steep mountain passes – with nothing but the clothes on her back and an iron pipe for protection on her way from New York to British Columbia, then north to the Yukon.

Complete article here.

Stunning commitment to original work from the Vancouver Opera.  Here is another example of their innovation.

What a sight: The second storey of the Vancouver Art Gallery, usually stark and pristine with priceless works of art, is filled with stuff. It would not be unfair to call the items, spread out on the floor across three large rooms, junk. But these things – pop bottles, cans of Raid, bits of outdoor carpeting, socks – were a treasure to one woman, and as such have travelled to art galleries around the world in a monumental installation called Waste Not.

Song Dong at the VAG

 

This installation is the work of Song Dong, a noted Beijing-based conceptual artist. Consisting of more than 10,000 items, as well as the frame of the tiny house where he grew up, Waste Not serves as a memorial to his father, Song Shiping, and a tribute to his mother, Zhao Xiangyuan. There are strong echoes here of both the Cultural Revolution and of China’s new consumer culture. And there’s an environmental message too: Nothing in Zhao’s life was thrown out, or went to waste.

Full article here at the Globe and Mail.