Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, May 11, 2016
I awake to the sound of a gull and crows scrounging through my gear for food.
The gull thinks it has something, but it’s just a plastic baggie containing my pocket matches.
“Get out of here,” I scream. It obliges by flying away with the matches and landing out on the salt chuck.
So much for morning coffee.
Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, May 11, 2016
It is a calm sunny morning at Third Beach in Stanley Park and not even an introduced eastern grey squirrel is bouncing around for free peanuts.
About the only thing stirring in the corner parking lot is me, hauling my kayak off the back of my pickup truck and dragging it across the grass down a small bluff to the seawall to be hoisted onto the salty shores of English Bay.
Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, May 9, 2016
When we look out at the craggy industrial face of the Port of Vancouver, we see freighters from around the world, piles of sulphur and coal, grain unloaded from rail cars into silos, commercial float planes, tugs, ferries and gantries moving container cargo.
Much less obvious is the natural world that defies the odds and makes its home within the bustling waters and unyielding infrastructure of the inner harbour.
Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, May 6, 2016
One does not embark on a 10-day paddling trip without considering those who went before.
First Nations plied these waters for millennia in dugout cedar canoes described by the Bill Reid Centre at Simon Fraser University as the “single most important physical manifestation of Northwest Coast culture” existing at the “nexus between technology and living beings.”
Then came the Spanish and British in their sailing ships in the later 1700s,