The Point Grey Road beach walk
  
- one of Vancouver's hidden secrets

Vancouver has an incredible shoreline creating a watery border for more than 80% of the city's circumference.  On the North and West side there is Burrard Inlet, English Bay and the Georgia Strait.  Vancouver's South shore is the mighty Fraser River's North Arm.  Today we walked along some of Vancouver's most expensive real estate along Point Grey Road. 

It was a two heron day, as we spied a heron first along the water front, then on top of a house - something I  had never seen before.  Many of the houses look unassuming from along the roadway as the many cars quickly drive past, but from the beach walk you can private swimming pools, enormous glass windows, reflecting pools, incredible verandas.

Along the walk we met a 9 week old black lab puppy, and an older dog who was born on the beach 6 years ago.  We met Claude, a transplanted Quebecois who had just set up a balancing stone sculpture.  Claude looks for incredible and interesting shaped rocks that appear to defy gravity, as he balances them on top of each other.  He said that he taught some people how to balance rocks over on the Stanley Park side of English Bay, but he doesn't like the rocks over there as much as the South shore. 

"The rocks speak to me, and tell me what to do," he says.  Claude appreciated my comments that he seemed to give a presence to the rocks and allow them to express their spirit, and asked if I was a philosphy teacher or artist.  He picked up a two-fist sized rock, put it on a large sandstone boulder and encouraged me to find the balance point.

We walk past Hastings Mill House, the oldest house in Vancouver which was built in 1865 and was the last remaining building left after the fire of 1886.  Threatened in 1929 with demolition due to redevelopment at its Main Street site,  it was moved to its present site and opened as a museum and heritage site in 1932.  I hope we can manage to do the same for the 1915 Kogawa House and save it from demolition and turn it into a literary and historic site as the childhood home of Joy Kogawa which was confiscated during the internment of Japanese Canadians during WW2.