Strolls that stimulate

A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water: Exploring Vancouver’s Shores
by Bill Arnott

Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025
$24.95  /  9781834050201

Reviewed by Marianne Scott

*

Bill Arnott is one peripatetic fellow. Travelling by ship, plane, bus, car, and on foot, he’s taken us on a 13-year voyage following the trails of the Vikings. He’s shared seasons with us on Vancouver Island and in the Okanagan. His most recent focus is a local “walk-about” in A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water: Exploring Vancouver’s Shores. Residing in Vancouver, he’s chosen to explore his local surroundings, wandering from the Spanish Banks to the North Shore, to Howe Sound and the Port of Vancouver, and to Granville Island and Stanley Park among other city parts.

What I like about Bill’s books (I call him “Bill” because his writings are so personal I feel I know him) is that he just doesn’t put one foot after another on pavement: his meanderings are more comprehensive. With an observant eye he sees his environment—unlike many whose observations are diminished by worries or screens—Bill absorbs all that envelops him: trees, paths, birds, plants, a passerby, a building, a person to commune with. He then describes what he’s noted, photographed or discussed, eloquently sharing these experiences. It’s not just a travelogue: the books demonstrate that Bill researches the places he plans to visit, then afterwards, he does more homework adding historical bits, perhaps some geology or a local myth. Or he connects the item to a previous experience that provides wider context.

He describes the process of knitting together his perceptions this way: “What started out as a few simple walks near my home has expanded like a rising tide, gathering pebbles of people and places, like insights of flotsam and jetsam. Only these bobbing bits hold connection and sensory learning.”

When walking around Vancouver’s shores, he delves into the Indigenous antecedents to much of the built environment. Thus, he provides many original names bestowed before Spanish and British seafarers followed the customs of colonizers by naming places after themselves, crew members, saints, patrons, royals, admirals, and aristocrats—most of whom never set foot in North America. He also describes his leisurely visit to UBC’s Museum of Anthropology—where he’s the only guest in the Arthur Erickson designed-building. He sketches a wall of draped, wool blankets festooned with painted paddles styled by “a different carver and Nation.” “It takes no effort at all to imagine those paddlers pulling, a drum beaten to song,” he muses.

For Bill, the shores naturally encompass the water. He participates in a diving trip, first training in a pool, then submerging his wetsuit-clad body into Howe Sound after traversing the Sea-to-Sky Highway, on which he gives a construction précis. After submerging, Bill doesn’t just spot marine life moving about, he witnesses “strands of kelp [that are] gently swaying their interpretive dance, jellyfish doing the side stroke, and starfish in purple spread-eagling on undersea rock. A sea cucumber lies flopped on the reef….” It’s this kind of language that brings an otherwise ordinary dive alive.

While underwater, he also inspects a 28-metre steel tug, the Granthall, a wrecked ship built in 1928 for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. This artificial reef demonstrates that life will colonize any surface that’s available: sponges and something that makes Bill think of “cauliflower or brains.” He peers through the portholes and imagines passengers sitting down to supper. “It feels like Atlantis,” he writes, “life from the surface, submerged.”

He moves on to Squamish, which got its start as the southern terminus of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway around 1910—but he explains that it’s also edged by the Squamish Nation, or Skwxwú7mesh Úyxwskwúmixw. He notes how tectonic action and glaciers have scoured and speckled the fjord with isles. And he recalls how he once completed a hazardous and uncomfortable white-water rafting experience on the Squamish River—in swimsuits only.

Burrard Inlet, Vancouver’s largest natural harbour, exposes its industrial base—shipping terminals able to supply the world with potash and coal, lumber, logs, wood pulp, paper, grain, canola, barley, wheat, flax, and rye—many of these products sustaining the economies of our Canadian Prairies. The Port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest, is located here where “the cranes… do their slow waltz with freighters.”

Back on foot, Bill follows False Creek’s south seawall. At the False Creek Harbour Authority, he finds a gangway leading to the fresh fish market selling spot prawns, salmon, and tuna. Hoping for an easy meal, gulls screech in chorus. In the Harbour Office, manager Turk explains to Bill how once salmon fishing could sustain a family but today’s fisherfolks must diversify and fish for ling cod, halibut, and prawns as well. He meets a fisherman on the dock and gets a tour of fishing boats with stern-driven spools for nets, and some that still have angled fishing poles to catch tuna and salmon. Walking along, Bill discovers Seraphim “Joe” Fortes who once lifeguarded on the Creek; he was a Black Caribbean immigrant who arrived here in 1885, and defying the prejudices of the age, patrolled the area as a Special Constable of the Vancouver City Police.

On a hot, calm day, Bill cannot resist a paddle on False Creek. He rents a three-metre, tangerine kayak, which in his description has the gear to become an outrigger or a canoe in case he capsizes. While paddling, his keen eye observes the many details a less curious person might miss—a red boat on a beach while the owner drinks a coffee, another canoe rental place offering Voyageur canoes that resemble early fur traders’ birchbark vessels, complete with prow embellishments of wolf, beaver, and bear.

When he points toward Habitat Island, shaped like a kayak, he explains that the islet was built up “to welcome in nature.” He quotes BC Parks: “Deep layers of soil have been added to the area to provide nourishment for new trees to grow. Boulders and logs commonly found along the coastlines in this region of British Columbia provide a home for plants, small animals, insects, crabs, starfish, barnacles and other creatures.”

It sounds like a recipe for habitat restoration and may make us think differently when we see a beach cluttered by driftwood and other natural materials.

No one walking alongside Vancouver’s waters can skip Granville Island. Maybe because the Public Market and its industrial history is too well known, Bill skips a visit to its yummy fare (I would have liked reading his descriptions of the goodies there) and instead meets Margaret Gallagher of CBC’s radio show North by Northwest, and together they stroll through the area while discussing the Perfect Day walks. They view Giants, six concrete silos turned into people with painted, brightly coloured clothes. Sculpted by Brazilian brothers Gustavo and Otávio Pandolfo, the installation is part of the Vancouver Biennale that focuses on fresh-air urban museums. They reconnoiter other public art displays and discuss how their lives have been influenced by the numerous ferries connecting parts of Vancouver—especially before some of the bridges were constructed.

There are other parts of Vancouver that Bill wanders through and documents, illuminated both by personal musings and by the history and lore that enlivens his prose and the city. The text is illustrated with black-and-white vintage and modern photos, and includes images of beaches, older buildings, a floatplane and some terrific Bill Reid sculptures. Maps show whence Bills wends his runners.

A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water is an excellent example of the mix of observation, reflection, interpretation, and rich language that brings Bill’s books onto the best-seller list time after time.

*

Marianne Scott is an award-winning Victoria-based writer who has specialized in marine topics since she and her husband, David, sailed from Victoria to French Polynesia in a 35-foot sailboat. Marianne has written for many marine and other publications in Canada, the U.S., and Australia and is a long time volunteer at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. She authored Distilleries of Vancouver Island: A Guided Tour of West Coast Craft and Artisan Spirits (Touchwood Editions, 2021), co-authored Vancouver boat-builder Ben Vermeulen’s memoir, Before I Forget (2015), authored Ocean Alexander — The First 25 Years (2006), and wrote Naturally Salty — Coastal Characters of the Pacific Northwest (Touchwood Editions, 2003). [Editor’s Note: Marianne Scott has reviewed books by David Giblin, Peter Freeman, Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones, M. Wylie Blanchet, John Dowd & Bea Dowd, and Ron Holland for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster