Northern BC and Totem Poles

Most of the past year has been spent close to home but there was one big exception. In early June I finally drove into the far north of British Columbia. I have often visited the center or BC but this was my first time driving up the Alaska Highway to the Yukon. I took a lot of photos and put a many of them online. 

After my trip I added more than 10 pages to my web site. You can access them at my Northern BC and Totem Poles index pages. The Alaska Highway drive was nice and I saw some great animals posing beside the highway. I was reminded once again just how big and empty my home province is. British Columbia is bigger than the combined area of California, Oregon and Washington states. The surprise and highlight though was the drive from Watson Lake south to Kitwanga and Stewart. The population was sparse, the weather was great and the mountains were simply awesome. I was constantly stopping in the middle of the to take photos. I think that the results were impressive. 

I also spent a couple days driving around the totem pole villages of the Kispiox, Bulkley and Skeena River valleys. Each town has an impressive collection of totems. Each town has a different style and manner of displaying their cultural heritage. So far I have only created 'under construction' pages to hold the results. 

I was lucky with the weather on most of my trip. I once worked in Kitwanga and I know just how dreary the weather can be in those mountain valleys. 

I am still doing research on the local totems. One of the best places that I have found on the net is from Sweden! The Cathedral Grove web site holds to some strange mystical concepts about large trees but they do an excellent job on BC totem poles.

Travel without immersion

I often think that travel was more fun just a few decades ago. At the time we did not realize just how lucky we were. Flights were certainly more expensive in real terms and fewer people travelled. I do think though that we have given up an awful lot. We can now travel with more safety and perhaps more fun upon arrival. The actual act of travel is now more isolating. It is much easier now to travel and never leave one's home comfort zone. 

 Some of my perception is due to my loss of innocence. 

In the seventies there were plenty of hijackings but I did not hesitate to fly when I got the chance. Few of the hijackings seemed to involve many lives lost. In any case, we did not have global 24 cable news to pound the stories into our brains. While there were some bad plane crashes we never saw History Channel documentaries illustrating the failings of pilots, aircraft maintenance and government incompetence. There were more than a handful of serial killers cruising the highways looking for their next victim but I rarely worried about my hitchhiking safety. I just did not know any better. When I was younger we might read about the horrible excesses of communist governments and African dictators such as Idi Amin but no one was producing Hollywood films about it all. If we heard about Iran the story was to glorify the wonderful jewellery and palaces of the Shah. Excesses in Cambodia and Burma where hidden in the smoke screen of the Vietnam conflict. 

Flexible plane tickets and stopovers 

When I first travelled across the Pacific I had an open ticket. It was possible to change the route and dates almost at will as long as there were seats available. Between Vancouver, Canada and Sydney, Australia I made stopovers in Honolulu, Pago Pago, Apia, Nadi, Auckland and Wellington. Of course one can still do such a trip but I suspect that the fare would be several times the more direct no stopover fare. 

When I first travelled across Canada for Expo 67 in Montreal we took the train. It was a great way to see the country and we met people from all across the country. It was educational for me to see how other travellers were thrilled to be in the mountains that I see daily. 

Travellers nowadays miss much of that thrill and sense of the country. Flying the red eye flight to the East coast one has no sense of actually being in Canada rather than a completely different land. One see so much more when travelling at ground level. 

Today's travel is much more like staying at home. 

Some things, such as cheap phone calls and international news have made foreign travel easier. I fear though that they also make it easier for people to travel without actually being immersed in the local culture. In the mid seventies when I travelled for months across Asia I only made one phone call home. It involved booking a time at the big city post office for my three minute call. The cost was high and confusion was abundant. 

For months at a time the only news that I got from Canada was a few mentions in the family letters waiting at Poste Restante. Modern tourist can talk daily on the Internet, watch CNN in their air conditioned hotel rooms and have the New York Times delivered to their rooms. I clearly remember sitting in a cheap Queensland hotel room listening to the local radio. They were switching between numerous locations around Eastern Australia as they played the daily horse raising results. I was amazed that they could bring so many diverse locations into one program. 

By 1984 I was able to stay up late in my rental apartment and catch the CNN Headline News from North America. The downside of all this news and information is that it is easy to travel without getting at all immersed in the local culture. If a Japanese tourist visits Vancouver and watches Japanese TV and reads Japanese newspapers and talks to Japanese tour guides can they say that they have really seen Canada?

French Trip 1969 web page -- London to Paris to the Moon

While I did many early travels with my family; in the summer of 1969 I went off to Europe without the parents. I certainly had companions but little adult supervision. We managed to have an awful lot of fun. 

This was a school trip organized here in Vancouver. I was a student at King George Secondary in Vancouver. Among other subjects I was taking high school French language lessons. A few of us were offered the chance for a summer month in England and France. I saved my newspaper delivery earnings, talked my father into making a contribution, and then fly off to Europe. I have created a new web page with photos of my 1969 Trip at www.NotSorry.com/travel-france-1969.asp. There was about 20 students and a couple of female teachers. Most students were from University Hill or Point Grey high schools in Vancouver. I think that we were all 15 or 16 years old.

The plan after flying to Heathrow Airport was to travel to Paris quickly and spend two weeks of French Lessons. Then we would be off to the French Riviera -- La Cote d'Azur -- after a tour of the Loire and Avignon. Finally it was a long slog across France for a couple nights in London before flying home. We travelled by bus and train and ferry. We stayed at school dorms and university hostels. 

The Trip Out

From Vancouver it is a long overnight flight across Greenland to London. From there it was another long day trip to Paris. Due to a Channel ferry delay we missed our train connection to Paris. I remember spending considerable time at the French Immigration office at Calais. The delay meant that most of us stood up all the way on a crowded train. We arrived exhausted at our suburban school dormitory after midnight.

Paris Streets and Museums 

The next morning was early wakeup time to head to the Champs-Élysées for a rather boring Bastille Day parade. There was a lot of military units, just a couple bands and few horses. There was a very big crowd though. They must have been 12 rows deep on the sidewalk. 

That night -- or perhaps the next -- we stayed out late to attend an outdoor Renaissance era music and dance concert beside one of the Parisien boulevards. The thing that we found the funniest was that they used original costumes complete with tears and worn patches. They must have been three hundred years old. The music was deadly serious and we were exhausted. The dancers never cracked a smile and the pace was glacial. After we left -- we couldn't wait until the end -- we rolled out on to sidewalk and laughed for 20 minutes. This was definitely one of the funniest events of my young life.

We had lessons from a French instructor named something like Mr. Ligne. He kept us entertained with his accent acquired in England we kept him with our Canadian hijinks. 

 We visited a number of museums. I loved the Louvre. The Victoire de Samothrace remains a personal favourite. What a great setting! I took my pictures with a Polaroid camera. Some of the detail is missing but it did capture interesting colours. We sang on the bus and travelled through the hot summer rains. We drank a lot of cheap wine and some Spanish students taught us about Sangria and Spanish dancing. 

 It was a great summer. I have returned to Paris several more times and I have some great memories. But the funniest and most fun ones were from the summer of '69.

New places that I simply have to visit

I have been thinking this past winter about places that I need to visit. Of course there are a large number of places where I would love to return. It is interesting and sometimes shocking to see the changes and meet old friends again. There are many other places where I could drop by and enjoy discovering. Today though I wanted to write about the small number of places that I have not seen but I simply must visit before I get too old to travel. 

 I have decided that this must-see visit list can be broken down to three areas: (1) Angkor Wat When I left Vancouver in 1974 I had a one way ticket that lead across the Pacific to Australia and Thailand. I planned a few weeks in Australia and a few days in Indonesia. My ticket ended in Bangkok but included a side trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia. I ended up spending at least two months in Australia and two months sailing from Bali to Singapore. While I was sailing the South China sea we listened on our shortwave radio. We heard the news about the fall of Saigon and I ended up canceling my trip to Cambodia.
 This past winter I have been reading a lot about travel in Cambodia. It seems that now is the time to go. There have been some great bargains on travel to Bangkok recently; and improving roads and tourist facilities have made the overland travel seem possible and interesting. At the same time, it looks like intense foreign investment is poised to turn the Cambodian coast into the next huge Cancun or Phuket in the next few years.
 [2020 Update: I finally got to Cambodia three years ago and it was marvelous. My Flickr photos are found here.]   

(2) Florence and Rome, Italy I have seen a bit of Italy but only a few hours in the far north. In the summer of 1975 I hitchhiked from Greece to France. I got the best ride of my life but it involved a 48 hour drive across Yugoslavia, Italy and Southern France. I clearly remember driving down tree lined secondary highways in an evening drive past the turnoff to Venice. I did not turn off.
 Many years, in 2000, I did a one night side trip to Milan. So I hope one day to return and taste some of the artistic and historic wonders of Italy. As visitors to my web pages know, I have enjoyed visiting many art galleries and seeing some fine art. I understand that Florence has some of the best. And Rome of course is the home of so much of what we consider high culture.
[2020 Update: I made a big Italy trip back in October 2010. Flickr photos are here.]  

(3) Giza and the Pyramids What can I say. Doesn't every tourist want to see the pyramids and visit King Tut's tomb? I must say though I was somewhat disappointed to recently discover that you can no longer climb on the Pyramids. I understand the reasoning but somehow that seemed the best reason to visit. I imagine climbing to the top and seeing the sun set over Cairo would be wonderful.
[2020 Update: Realizing that I can't climb the Pyramids dropped them from the heights of my Must See list].