Inside Vancouver
Tales of the City: January/February 2010
published Jan 1, 2010
Volume 7 of an anthology of mini-stories that reflect the pleasures, frustrations, and idiosyncrasies of life in Vancouver
The Coda
Some years back, I took it into my head to join a choir. At the time Vancouver offered only a few secular options for a middling baritone, so I contacted the queen of voice, Chor Leoni’s Diane Loomer. My memories of the audition are mercifully dim, but I do recall the gracious way she paused at the keyboard of her piano, an imposing piece in a West Side home filled with lovely objects. I felt her looking at me, but I kept my eyes on my tennis shoes. “Not ready,” she said gently. “Not ready.”—John Burns
Kindness of Strangers
Midnight. SkyTrain. The woman to my right cries quietly on a man’s shoulder. When the train stops, he quickly exits. From the back of the car an older man, rugged and greasy, is also making for the door. Instead he stops, hobbles toward the woman, takes two red roses from his dusty coat, and hands them to her. Eyes swollen, she asks, “Why?” He smiles and tells her, “I bought them for someone else, but they were meant for you.”—Anja Konjicanin
Mortgage Helper
On paper it was promising: a bungalow in Grandview with three bedrooms up and a basement suite. The main floor needed some TLC, and the basement had a hotplate-and-laundry-sink kitchen, unfinished concrete floors, and a mould problem. We skirted tenants and layabouts to survey the various rooms. One door was closed; our agent opened it to reveal a mattress on the floor, an older man digging in his pocket, and a thin brunette struggling to get her scraggly tank top back on. The man handed her some bills, and she slipped past us. It was not the kind of mortgage helper we were looking for.—Valerie McTavish
Welcome Wagon
On the SkyTrain, I overheard a man asking a woman for directions. Turned out it was his second day in Canada. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Where are you from?” Saudi Arabia, he said. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “do you like our mountains?” A seated man with a key on a lanyard around his neck nudged the newcomer with his newspaper. “Here,” he said. “Take it. Everyone should do this: it saves the environment. Besides, you save the $1.50. You could buy something with that. A bowl of soup.” They both exited at Main Street, the Saudi still trying to return the copy of the Province. —Marcie Good
By Its Cover
At least once a day, I take my 100-pound German shepherd to the Ambleside dog park. One afternoon I was talking with a woman who’d brought along her daughter, who wore jean shorts, a tank top, and the pouty look of a teenager forced to do something with a parent. “Hey,” I said brightly, “is that Twilight you’re reading? My daughter loves those books.” Annoyed that I’d interrupted—and showing me the cover of the book—she replied, in a bored deadpan: “Actually, it’s A Comparative Study of Fascism.”—John Barrie
Recent Comments
Discussed
This stroller seemed less comfortable nautical baby, but for the first output is very feasible to use. nowadays everything is changing, innovation occurs. everything is automatic and the manual is rarely found.
cellophane bags | warnet.
