Postcards

I wish I could send my British friends a postcard of the view from the Alex Fraser bridge at night. This is a picture of the bridge that I've half-inched, but you can't see the view from it.

On a Sunday afternoon we usually drive out to Surrey to see Kevin's parents. Surrey here is a city rather than a county. Likewise we live in the city of Richmond, which is not an area of London. Vancouver airport is in Richmond, and I would say that therefore it is like living in Heathrow, except that it's not. We are not overly bothered by aircraft noise - with the exception of some days at the Nature Park - and the area is certainly not heavily built up in the way that London and its suburbs are.
When you fly into Vancouver airport, sometimes the pilot takes a route that comes in low over the water, but often you come in over the city of Richmond and you can see the Fraser river and the main roads that link Richmond with Vancouver. At night, as I have said before, you can make out the illuminated pistes of one of the mountains, Grouse.

Richmond has something in common with Portsmouth, it is built on an island although you wouldn't really know it. Like Portsmouth, it has to be reached by a bridge over water. Richmond is in fact a number of islands, but the largest of these is Lulu. Before all the bridges were built and the place was settled, first nations would come to this island in hollowed out cedar trunks to pick cranberries and blueberries. I believe I am correct in saying that the highest concentration of cranberry cultivation goes on here in Richmond. All the growers have to sell to Ocean Spray, so you can see this as a co-op or a mafia, depending on your point of view.

Coming home from Surrey on a Sunday evening, we have to cross the Alex Fraser bridge. As we head down Nordel Way, we can already see the bridge and the line of car headlights, like bright insects crawling towards and across it. The main supports of the bridge have winking lights on the top, I presume to warn aircraft.
Then we arrive on the bridge and spread below us is the vista that I would like to send a postcard of. Grouse's piste, just as you see from the aircraft, lit up, seems to hang in the sky, stairway to heaven, the lights of Richmond, Vancouver and New Westminster spread out all around us, diamonds on a black velvet cloth. To our left the Fraser river itself, dark, sleeping. Sometimes the smell of cedar lingers over the bridge as it does over other bridges across the Fraser river.

But it's just that moment as we crest the bridge that never fails to get me and I think it's because so many times in the past as I saw the city lights spread out around me I'd have to think, 'and next week I'll be flying out.'

Alex Fraser links Delta and Richmond or New Westminster, other bridges link Richmond and Vancouver. Knight Street bridge is one of these on the east side of the city. When you cross this bridge, you have the mountains directly ahead of you. Again, often the smell of cedar from the paper making. At night the lights of the mountain draw you, but even during the day you feel the gravity of the mountains calling, getting bigger the further you go into Vancouver. Now the trees, laden with blossom line the streets, softening the edges. The houses here are mainly wood construction so the whole place has a different feel to it from cities in Britain.

However many times I had been here before, when I arrived in July, I would still only drive from our house to Richmond city centre on my own. Now I am beginning to know Vancouver more. I can drive downtown, get on the bus and know where to get off. I'm not a complete stranger anymore. Strange still, but not a stranger.
And on a Sunday evening when I see our part of Canada twinkling around me, I know I'll be seeing it again next week.