New York City - 2017 - Part 3

We started late this morning. 

I don't think we ever really recovered from that hangover yesterday, and we didn't get back to our hotel until about 3 in the morning last night, so the lay-in this morning was necessary for our basic functions. 

When we finally emerged from the hotel, it was feeling much better than we had and it was with the satisfaction that we've made the most of our time so far. Today would be a much more laid back experience - we don't have any pre-booked things we have to rush to get to at a specific time, though we are meeting up with my friend Sarah, who lives here, later on this evening. 

We headed to our local coffee shop, Little Canal, for caffeine and breakfast - we've been here every day and I could easily see being a regular if I lived here. It's honestly the perfect coffee shop, with a short menu and good coffee. 

Today we decided to head back over to Brooklyn and go to the Flea Market in Dumbo. 

As an aside, I've just googled "why is it called Dumbo" and like so many things here, it's a freaking acronym. There's a million of these that I've never even thought of because the acronym has become much more ingrained into the pop culture zeitgeist that the actual name itself:

• SoHo: South of Houston Street.
• NoHo: North of Houston Street.
• NoLita: North of Little Italy.
• DUMBO: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
• TriBeCa: Triangle Below Canal Street.

I refuse to say "FiDi" for the financial district, I don't know why but the sound of it irritates the shit out of me. 

Sweet holy lord, I just looked up a map of manhattan neighbourhoods and it's actually bonkers.

This whole map is so interesting to me, because these funny little neighbourhoods didn't just appear already planned out. It took hundreds of years to get to this point, and there's a million notable things that happened to make Manhattan what it is today. Like you can see the chaos from the early settlement down at the lower tip of the island, and then they must have quickly realized that the expansive growth of the city required some planning and a grid later on. I'm going to sound like an absolute nerd, but I fucking love etymology.  

Anyway, I digress. 

We caught the subway over to Dumbo and had a wander around the flea market. 

I thought I would buy more here! I got Mallory a couple of teeny tiny books of mystery stories - like they were only  2.5 inches by 3 inches in size - and I grabbed myself, because I'm SO cool, a buffalo head nickel to add to my foreign coin collection. And there were a million other things that I would have immediately impulse bought, but I was mindful of the fact that I was also going to Colombia and suitcase space was a premium.

Since it was a bit of a grey day and we felt like a walk would do us some good, we decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and snap some tourist trash pictures. 

The world has changed all around it, but Roebling's erection still stands!

I think our unflappable energy from the last two days was maybe starting to wane a bit. It's probably the lingering effects of our accidentally alcohol based first night at Pianos, or possibly even the desaturation of the outside world brought on by the overcast day, but it felt like we were persevering through something as we crossed this bridge. 

Maybe we just needed fuel. 

Jenna grabbed us some kind of delicious fruit dish from a food truck on the manhattan side of the bridge which we inhaled as we continued to walk towards the subway, but we knew we needed something more substantial for lunch. 

We decided to head to the Chelsea Market and grab something to eat since our final stop of the day was walking The High Line, a decommissioned, above-ground subway line that they decided to turn into a green space walking path. 

It's actually incredible how this city carves out green space in such a densely populated area. I mean besides Central Park, which is actually massive, there are little squares and parks all over the city, but there's also trees planted in every corner, crack, and sliver of land that can accommodate them. 

We leave tomorrow for Canada, and even though we're tired and could be perfectly happy with a bodega sandwich to take back to the hotel, we heard about a pop-up restaurant way up in Washington Heights that demanded our presence. 

We obviously had the cheesecake. 

It's rare that you visit somewhere so famous and it lives up to your expectations, but NYC is exactly as you think it would be. The accents, the monuments, the weird little events and businesses, the food, the sheer amount of walking - nothing has disappointed. 

As we drove back to Canada, I thought about how New York was never on my bucket list of places I absolutely needed to go in my life, but I swear it's at the top of my list of places I've been. 

Things between the US and Canada are tense at best and it's easy to generalize Americans as their disappointing stereotype, but I swear that New York is different, the people are different. They don't suffer fools, they're not going to let something slide that they don't believe in and they loudly denounce wrongdoing. 

I don't plan on coming to the states while he who must not be named is in office, but I will make New York an exception to this rule. 

New York City - 2017 - Brooklyn

Day 3 dawned with the lingering effects of our regrets. It was a slow, nauseating, headachy start to our day, and we may have left the hotel much later than we anticipated. 

We had planned to go have a delicious breakfast somewhere in Manhattan before catching the train over to Brooklyn but instead, we couldn't even think about food and decided to just jump right to our next activity. 

There are a lot of people who are maybe not excited by dusty old things, or art things, or exhibitions of artifactual things and if you ARE a person who is excited by these types of things, it can often be difficult to find a partner in crime to geek out over them as much as you do. 

The last time Jenna went to New York, her other friends were not only unexcited at all the museums and art available to see in the city, but they actively complained the entire time they were in the Natural History Museum, much to Jenna's irritation. I think as we were planning what we'd do here, finding our mutual enthusiasm for the dusty old things came as a great relief knowing that no one would be counting down the minutes until we could leave certain places. 

It also meant, that knowing we were on the same page, and that Jenna is the omniscient human yellow pages of all the things going on, that I didn't really look into many of the places we were going to before hand. I just trusted Jenna and followed her expert lead. 

So, when we got to the Brooklyn Museum and went through a dark entrance to see The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, I almost fell to my knees in shock. 

This was on my list of top ten artworks I wanted to see in my lifetime, and suddenly there it was. I first heard about it in my misguided year at art school when I was 17, and remember feeling so changed learning about it. I'd never seen something so huge in scale, so intricate in it's details, and so complete in it's vision.

The installation requires an entire room. it's a triangular dinner table where each place setting represents a famous woman in history and the plates are decorated to artistically personify their vagina. 

We were moving along each side of the table in a queue so there wasn't much time to admire each place setting or just sit and take it all in for an extended period of time, but I'm so happy to say that this was just as impressive as I'd hoped it would be. 

After touring around the rest of the museum, our hangovers had finally abated enough for us to seek sustenance. We weren't wanting anything complicated and one thing we desperately wanted while we were here was a New York style bagel and schmear. 

I don't think I could have correctly conceived of the amount of cream cheese that goes on a NYC bagel. Not only do you have like 10 different types of bagels to choose from, there is a case full of HEAPING bowls of different flavours of cream cheese. 

COME ON, MAN. THIS IS NUTS. 

And if you thought, "hey, that's too much cream cheese for one bagel shop to possibly sell in one day", that's because you can't even begin to anticipate the inch and a half of cream cheese that they swath onto each side of the bagel, making a sandwich that is in three EQUAL parts: bagel-cheese-bagel. 

It might have been the best thing I've ever eaten. I got Scallion cream cheese on an everything bagel and I have no regrets. None. 

 We also decided to eat them in, yet another, glorious park. 

Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

If you guessed that Jenna would procure another park nap, you would be correct. 

You can't really see the city as a whole when you're in it, but from Brooklyn you can really understand the size of those buildings and see the recognizable skyline, and Roeblings great erection right in the foreground. No one for the deep cut Kate & Leopold reference? Okay. 

Post nap, we took the East River ferry back to Manhattan to get ready for our dinner reservation at Momofuku Noodle Bar in the East Village. As we were walking away from the ferry Jenna noticed a Milk Bar and we had to stop to get a few confetti cookies to tie us over. 

Since we were in the financial district and had some time to kill, we did a little wander through the streets,  noting the barricades that had been set up outside of the T***p Building (I refuse to say his name) and happening across the Charging Bull and Fearless Girl statues. 

I was surprised that they would alter the context of the original statue, the financial might of Wall Street, by placing a young girl standing up to it given the omnipresent worship of capitalism in this country. I've later read that they've moved the girl to in front of the stock exchange to better project the original message of the might of women working in finance. Seems more like they realized they goofed by putting her in front of the bull in the first place, a place of defiance against the destruction of unrestrained greed. Sends a mixed message...

Anyway, we returned to our hotel and relaxed a bit more before we had to get ready for dinner. We had another late dinner reservation because after dinner we had another activity to get to. 

This weekend, the Governor's Ball Music Festival is on. We didn't get tickets to the festival itself, but there were a ton of bands playing in venues around the city and Jenna grabbed us tickets to go see Parquet Courts somewhere in Brooklyn. 

I say 'somewhere' because we got an email saying that the map was directing people to the wrong venue, and when we got off the train in Williamsburg, there was a large group of people wandering around with their Maps app out trying to find 307 Kent St without much luck. 

We joined the group of searching people and wandered around the area trying to find any hint at where we should be going. 

Finally, we found a small sign that directed us to what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. This all felt very Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, and even though my feet were killing me from days of walking, and we were still trying to get over our lingering hangovers from the night before, it was a really cool experience. These are the kinds of things that Jenna finds for us - something you wouldn't find as a tourist. Something that the locals would do. 

It was loud, friends. 

Just as my feet were starting to approach unbearable pain levels, Jenna hinted to me that she was also feeling tired as hell and we left early to catch the train. It was a late starting concert to begin with so this was still 1AM when we left. 

It's two different train lines to get back to our hotel: the G train to get us back to where we would catch the B or D over to Chinatown. There was a bit of a walk between the two stations, and we'd already done this trip a few times over the day so we knew it was a well lit walk. 

What we didn't expect to see were a couple of dudes walking ahead of us and one of them, not pulling off to the side to find some kind of tree or wall, just whipped it out and pissed as he was still walking. 

Just a nice cherry on the top of a wild night, I suppose. 

The next day was our last full day here, and though we were so tired we could barely stand, we still had lots of things on the menu to see and do. 

So far, this trip has been as magical as I'd ever hoped!

New York City - 2017 - Part 1

Here's the thing about my friend Jenna...I'm certain she's some kind of wizard. 

She always knows everything that's going on in any city she's in. I don't know if she has some kind of psychic link with the events pages of the local papers, or if she has a cabal of informants that feed her exclusive information, or if she is a secret cyborg that has access to every piece of information that ever existed within 20 square km of her person, but my god, she finds us the best stuff to do. 

When we were living in Vancouver at the same time, I swear she invited me along to some of the craziest shit I've ever seen. For example:

In 2011, Randy Quaid was in Canada seeking asylum because he and his wife were convinced they were being chased by Hollywood assassins called "Star Whackers". While in exile here, they decided to hold a screening of their movie of the same name at the Rio Theatre and you better believe that Jenna and I went. 

It was a truly terrible film; not only did I see full frontal Quaid wearing a terrible red merkin, there was one sequence where he recited a soliloquy from Hamlet THREE TIMES IN A ROW. 

Please forgive the quality of this photo, I, for some reason thought that a Blackberry was a superior machine when I got my first smartphone. 

The theatre was screaming by the end of the third time, which maybe was the intended effect because, to round out the screening Randy and his band got up on stage to sing "Starfukers Incorporated", and I think it might have been a ruse to muster up some enthusiasm for the performance. 

This was one of the strangest things I have ever witnessed, and I have Jenna to thank for keeping me looped in to all of the weird events we've gone to over the years. 

It's also why, when I floated the idea of coming to visit her in Montreal, Jenna suggested we drive down to New York for most of my visit instead, I immediately said yes. I knew that there wasn't a better person that I could go with to ensure that we had the singularly best time anyone has ever had. 

We had a list of criteria that our activities had to abide by. 

1. No cliche tourist attractions. 

2. Eat like gluttons.

3. Avoid repeats. 

4. See as much as possible. 

It was a beautiful day when we left Montreal, we had several excellently curated playlists to keep us company on the 6 hour drive, and since we hadn't seen each other in person for about a year, lots to catch up on. 

I don't know that anything could sum up our personalities more than this photo.

When we turned off the main highway onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway, I don't know how else to explain it other than things felt more "New Yorky". This is ridiculous considering that we were currently in New Jersey, but something in the trees, or the composition of the roads, compounded with my impressions of New York from all of the copious films and tv shows I've seen in my life, I think something in me just recognized the essence of the place when we started getting closer. 

The other thing that REALLY welcomed us to New York was the traffic jam we encountered as we approached the George Washington Bridge. 

The start/stop of inching through traffic is the one thing that can still make me carsick, and I was close to hurling by the time we finally arrived at the parking lot we were leaving the car in for the five days we were here. 

The parking lot was in the Upper East Side and our hotel was down in Chinatown. We had a look at the map for the nearest Subway station and thought "that's not too far", completely forgetting that city blocks hit different in New York. After schlepping our suitcases for fifteen minutes and only moving a teeny weeny bit on the map, we realized we needed reinforcements. The first coffee shop we found, we grabbed a beverage and a snack and took a couple of deep breaths on the patio before moving on. The front of the building was under construction, and this patio was almost fully encased in green tarp-covered scaffolding, but at this point we didn't really care about the ambiance, we just needed a moment to refuel. 

After a minute or so, when the caffeine started to flow through our systems we finally took in our surroundings. I was able to register the sounds of the city, the yellow cabs driving past, the faint smell of something industrial, like oil or metal but also maybe garbage? 

Then I started listening to the voices. Behind us were two older ladies and their tiny dogs, and when their voices finally took form in my brain, it was the most absurd delight. They had the thickest "I'm walkin' here" New York accent you ever heard. It was so heavy it felt like a joke. They weren't even really talking about anything in particular, but the audible confirmation that we were in New York was so gratifying I heaved a big contented sigh before we pressed on towards the Subway station. 

At this point Jenna's navigational skills were running the show so I just followed her lead and before too long we were walking out of the Subway somewhere in Chinatown, looking for the Hotel Richland, a little boutique hotel that was the most reasonable price we could find when we were looking for places to stay.

It took us a bit to find it because it's so skinny you wouldn't think it was a hotel and ended up stopping at this Bodega to grab snacks because a hungry Jenna, is a HANGRY Jenna. 

I promise, not unlike the Tardis, it was bigger on the inside.

After checking in and spending 30 minutes or so recalibrating, eating our snacks and readying ourselves to get our first taste of New York sans luggage, we set out again to do the only thing on our list of activities that expressly broke rule numero uno of the trip.

We went to Times Square. 

Jenna, who had been here once before, recognized that it's the one thing that you kind of need to do when you come here, but if you can get in and get out as fast as possible then it's time not completely wasted. 

It doesn't mean we were happy about it. 

We came, we took about five pictures, the crush of oblivious bodies quickly overpowered all sense of reason, and we scurried away down a side street as fast as humanly possible. 

I don't think I realized that Times Square was also right near the theatre district and when we just so happened to come across the Richard Rogers theatre, we stared through the windows with so much envy because there was no way in hell we could afford Hamilton tickets. 

This was about all we could handle at this point in our day so we headed back to Chinatown to get a good night's sleep and set out again the next day. 

It's Happening! Montreal - New York - Colombia

I don't know if it's a mark of getting older, or if I've just filled up all the available spaces in my friend roster, but meeting new people that you immediately click with and becoming instant friends seems to be a thing reserved for humans under thirty.

I spent five years living in Vancouver and working at a place that always had a constantly changing cohort of young, fun, artsy people coming and going. This meant that every year we would always be exposed to a whole new bunch of rad humans to get to know and do fun stuff with. I made some of the best friendships I will ever have living in Vancouver, and when we all decided to move to different parts of the country, I knew that it would be important to ensure that these friendships didn't fade away with the distance.

Before Vancouver, I went to school in Kamloops BC and had a similar experience - young, fun, people doing like-minded things (school) who were interesting and exciting to get to know. I met one of my absolute best friends going to school here which, when the cost of living in Vancouver became too much for me to bear, is why I decided to move back. I figured that if I couldn't afford to live in Vancouver anymore, I would go back to the other place where meeting amazing people seemed to happen effortlessly. 

Unfortunately, I hadn't really taken into account that getting older, for most people, means settling down, getting married, making babies, and going to bed by 9pm every night. Couple this with a new job where 98% of everyone is female with a young family, and lets just say that my social opportunities since moving back here haven't been as easy to come by as I had hoped. 

With one exception. 

My roommates and I were at a party and I met this random girl named Ashley who somehow I got embroiled in a fantastically nerdy conversation spiral about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was wearing a Dr. Who t-shirt, had a filthy mouth, and I immediately felt like I had finally met another kindred spirit since moving back to Kamloops. 

We became fast friends and the more I got to know her the more it was clear that we were essentially the same person. We both took the same Political Science courses in university. We both traveled extensively - she even LIVED in Prague for a year! - and we both had a deep affinity for nerd culture. 

So, when she told me she had decided to move to Colombia for a year to teach english, I was both ecstatic for her (and the future visiting possibilities it offered), and sad because it would mean one less person I could hang out with here. 

So, it's been a year since she's left, I've been casually saving money for no particular reason since I got a decent paying job, and one day I came across an article talking about "multi-city flights". How have I never looked into this before! They are such a good deal sometimes! 

I set about trying to find the best way to hit as many "friend stops" as I could and finally found the winning combination. 

My friend Jenna has been living in Montreal and finishing up her Interior Design degree. She's also been miserable there and I promised I would try and fly out to see her this year. 

Stop number one: MONTREAL!

Jenna and I have always talked about going to New York and since its a reasonable drive from Montreal we figured we would make a long weekend of it while I was there. In a magically convenient turn of events, one of my best friends from High School just moved to New York City and offered to let us stay with her and her husband (and many animals) while we were there. 

Stop number two: NEW YORK CITY!

My best friend Siobhan is also going to make a trek from Toronto to Montreal for a day or two when we get back and I'll get to have some friend time with her. Killing all the birds with all the stones!

Finally, I am of course going to see Ashley.

Stop number three: COLOMBIA!

She lives in this little town in the mid-west of the country called Buga, that is tiny and charming, and is relatively close to a variety of fun things to do. It's also, apparently, a humid, hot, tropical nightmare for my pale, sun-allergic skin so I've been sussing out a wardrobe that wont make me want to kill myself while we're traipsing around in 30 degree humid weather.

So, it's finally happening. I'm going on another epic adventure! To...a rather odd combination of places, I'll give you that, but I could not be more excited to go! 

Ymir, BC - Hotel Ymir

Old Saloon - Biker Bar - Art Gallery?

Here's the thing about Ymir. 

If you're just driving through, you might think that it is a little nothing pit stop in between Nelson and America. A one-horse town with a hotel, a few stores and a handful of cute little homes nestled in some pretty mountains. 

But tiny towns in the Kootenays aren't like that - they're different from what you can imagine small towns are like elsewhere. 

Like, the stereotypical idea of small towns is that they're conservative, out of touch, isolated, bad gas station coffee, nothing to do and no one to see. 

When you stop in a small town in the Kootenays, however, you're not going to find Van Houtte coffee pods filling up the carafes at the coffee station. There'll be a sign offering organic fair trade coffee from non-conflict countries. You'll see an old hippy in her sixties hitchhiking on the side of the road with grey dreadlocks down to her ankles. You'll find a retirement home with an irreverent name and a cheeky sign flipping the bird. 

I Was a Slocan Valley Hippie for the FBI

Having grown up in Rossland, and with a musician Dad that lived his whole life in the West Kootenays and played at every venue in every town in the land, we got to explore a lot of these little places. 

Over the years you sort of collect adventures that sound like a magical lie: visiting the glass house, driving past the scrapyard with the metal dinosaur made out of old gears, the sand dunes in the trees on the side of the road, the stretch of highway that inexplicably has neckties tied around every electrical pole, the bus graveyard in the woods. There are a million little weird hidden gems all over the place that, I think, make the West Kootenays different and special. 

One of my favourite adventures me and my dad took in recent years, was driving to Ymir on a whim after visiting Nelson for the day. 

"We should go to Ymir. I wanna show you something," my dad says. 

I have nothing to do, I'm on break from school, my sole purpose is to spend time with Pops, and if I'm honest, at this point in life it's been a minute since we've gone on a good old fashioned Dad Adventure. 

I'm immediately in. 

It's only like a 20-25 minute drive down Highway 6 to get there from Nelson, and it's a beautiful Fall day. I'm curious what this little detour is all about, and about ten minutes into our drive my dad starts to tell me. 

A few months ago, his band were invited to play a gig at the Hotel Ymir. They'd played there years before when it was a rough and tumble biker bar - I'm talking tire marks burned on the hardwood floors from the smoke shows the bikers used to do in the main bar type of rough. They played one gig there in the 80s and that was enough - never again. 

"So what changed?" I asked. 

"There's a new owner - German guy - and he's really done something interesting with the place..."

He sort of trailed off and wouldn't go into any further details regardless of my prodding.

"It'll ruin the surprise!"

I'm so curious at this point, I can't help but be relieved when I start to see small houses pop up and we start to see the beginnings of the town through the trees. 

We pull up in front of this old, white, clapboard building. It's the biggest structure in town, and so far I'm unimpressed. It looks like it hasn't seen an update in about 50 years, but even though my internal judge-o-meter is firing on all cylinders, I know my dad wouldn't take me somewhere and be so cagey about details if it wasn't at least going to be interesting.

Built in 1896, it's the oldest continually operating Hotel/Inn in the Kootenays.

Boy, was I right. 

Every single wall and surface was covered in art. I mean like indigenous carvings, sweeping landscapes with farmers harvesting mystery crops, palm trees against turquoise waters. But also clear depictions of Vancouver Island, mountains here in the Kootenays, rushing rivers through steep wooded passes. Art is actually absolutely everywhere. 

But the bones of the hotel are still very there - the furniture hasn't really been updated in quite some time. and things do look a little mismatched. But the sheer volume of artwork is so overwhelming, it's instantly wondrous to behold. 

I was so confused. What were all of these original paintings and carvings from what appears to be all over the world, doing in an old biker bar in Ymir of all places? 

"He bought it to house his art!" my dad says proudly with a smile. 

Hans Wilking bought the Hotel Ymir in 2005. Born in Germany, he lived for 45 years on Vancouver Island, running a plant nursery in Duncan. He's been collecting art his whole life, and purchased the works of some of the most famous Canadain artists, many of whom were based on the Island and who he had befriended along the way. When he retired, he needed somewhere to house it all and came across the Hotel Ymir. 

Here are some of the artists in cluded in Hans' collection: 

Norval Morriseau
CM RCA, also known as Copper Thunderbird, was an Indigenous Canadian artist from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation. He is widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada

Edward John Hughes
CM OBC RCA was a Canadian painter, known for his images of the land and sea in British Columbia. 

Allan W Edwards
He was noted for the interior design work he did for large scale hotels and produced paintings for the rooms. In 1977 he played a key roll in the resurgence of the Federation of Canadian Artists and organized and instructed its art classes for over a decade.  

Joseph Plaskett
OC RCA was a Canadian painter famous for still life paintings. In 2001 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his “excellence in the field of visual art”.

Andrew W. Wooldridge
Based in Victoria, he enjoyed a long and successful 40-year career as a professional painter, ever appreciative of doing the work he loved best. He lived and exhibited in England, Israel and Australia before visiting BC in 1984, and becoming a proud Canadian in 1987. 

John H. Dyson
Born in England in 1910. He showed up in Vancouver in the 1940's and was active in the 50's and 60's art scene. He exhibited work in the 1949 Stanley Park in Pictures exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Agnes Veronica Ketter Warren
A contemporary of Emily Carr, Warren studied at the Vancouver School of Art from 1927 to 1928 and at the University of Saskatchewan from 1930 to 1934. She became a member of the Royal Society of Arts in London, England in the early 1950’s.

We took a tour of some of the rooms and talked to the woman working there a little about how this all came to be. We stayed for a hot beverage and looked around a bit more before thanking her and and heading back to the car. I had a big smile on my face the whole time because this was the perfect Dad Adventure in one of the most unique places on the planet. 

BC you absolute legend. Never change. 

The Centre of the Universe, Vidette Lake, BC - Part 2

Seven years after my first adventure to the Centre of the Universe, I had another opportunity to head out that way. 

I made a new friend when I moved back to Kamloops in 2014. Her name was Ashley and we had a lot in common: she was well travelled (and to a lot of the same places as me), and she loved the same kind of nerdy shit that I did,  granted she was the Dr. Who to my Buffy, but we met in the middle for Harry Potter so it all worked out. She worked for a social services agency just like I do now, and took a ton of the same classes I did at TRU. 

We were like peas and carrots immediately. 

One day, she phoned me up and asked what I was doing this coming weekend. I, as per usual since moving back to Kamloops and getting a real job, had no plans to speak of. 

"Do you want to go to a Sweat Lodge with me?"

The agency that she works for coordinates services for indigenous individuals and so she has made some connections to the first nations community there. One of these connections issued the invitation for her and one other to attend this Sweat Lodge. 

I was so honoured to be asked to join, and even though I was terrified of not belonging there, I immediately said yes. 

I am a white person - my heritage is Norwegian, Swedish, English, and French. I have been told that somewhere on my mother's side we could claim some Ojibway but we don't really have any way to prove it and it's never been part of my culture so I don't think I would want to claim it either. 

The relationship I have with indigenous people is very new. Where I grew up in the West Kootenays, there aren't a lot of First Nations people that live there. Because of this, I didn't even know that something was missing for such a long time. It was the true definition of ignorance. When I did start learning about First Nations people, I remember having a sort of lightening bolt moment where I realized I'd never questioned WHY there were no First Nations people in the West Kootenays any more? How could I have gone this long without asking that?

In the late 1800s, the white settlers started building several dams along the river systems in the area, destroying several cultural sites and traditional locations. The boomtown settlers looking for gold and riches started building communities and towns - this is literally what my hometown was founded on. It made areas close to these settlements less desirable and the Sinixt people started spending more and more time in their settlements south of the border. Then the Canadian government declared that the Sinixt people in Canada were extinct and the people residing south of the border lost their rights to their traditional territories. 

I learned this SO late in life. I learned this AFTER I'd learned about the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc of Kamloops. Here, there is a reserve just across the South Thompson from my neighbourhood. This is where the Residential School building still resides. It has since been taken over by the Band and they have built their Pow Wow grounds close to it, to reclaim the space for themselves. 

41st Kamloopa Powwow in The Arbour - T'Kemlups te Secwepemc grounds

The complicity I feel, having spent so long not even realizing that there were no First Nations people in my area has been a wonderful motivator to learn as much as I can. To support however I can. And to show my respect and honour and being invited into any space that was not made for me. 

After accepting Ashley's invitation, she then told me that we would need to bring some tobacco as an offering to the sweat conductor, and she also said where it was taking place: on the illusively private grounds of the Vidette Lake Resort - a.k.a. the location of the Centre of the Universe. 

When the day arrived, we hopped in Ashley's mum's big blue truck and headed towards Savona, ready to take the turn onto Deadman Vidette Rd. I was nervous - I don't think you could avoid being nervous in this kind of situation. I was scared that I would say something out of place, or offend someone somehow. I think I worried that even our presence might not be welcome - we were told that it absolutely was, but still. 

As we drove, I started to notice some signage on the road and I realized that we were actually on reservation land. I later looked it up and realized the whole first part of the drive to Vidette Lake was on the Skeetchestn Reserve - now it made sense why the Sweat Lodge was taking place here. 

An old cabin on the way to Vidette Lake.

Hello again, cow friends.

Finally, we arrived at the gates to the resort, locked just like last time. Except unlike last time, Ashley's friend was there to open the gate and usher us down the road. 

We drove around the back the resort buildings, past a strange structure and parked the truck at the end of the road, facing the lake. 

Ashley's friend and the owner of the resort were there getting the lodge ready. They had built a structure, it was round and about five or six feet high and we were given a sort of crash course on what to expect. 

As we were taking in the structure, a rusted out old car pulled up and a first nations family with two kids tumbled out. 

The family unloaded their belongings from the car while we stood by the fire pit and learned a bit more about what was to come. They explained to us that the fire pit is where they had been preparing the "Grandpas" or the stones that would be used inside the lodge. The one that tended the fire pit is known as the Firekeeper and the one who pours the water on the grandpas is the Conductor.

The tobacco offering is given to the Conductor, and before every round in the Sweat some of it is burned in front of the fire pit in a ritual prayer. 

That's the other thing you should realize about a Sweat Lodge - this is not like going to a sauna and relaxing. There is purpose to each round of the sweat and there are usually four rounds. 

I think ours was slightly bigger than this, and of course covered. 

When I tell you that it is so hot inside this structure. You stick a red hot rock of granite in the middle of this tent, and get 8 people in there, and then fill it with steam, how could it be anything but intense. 

The first two rounds were similar but for different purposes. There was intentions set and words spoken for each round. When we emerged, the cool feeling of the fresh air is like nothing you can ever imagine. 

We went back in for the last round - this was the round for healing. The mother in the family and Ashley and I were the only women, and she was very friendly. It was really surprising when, during the last round, she started weeping loudly. We were so shocked, it felt like it was coming out of nowhere. The heat in this round felt so much more intense than the others - the steam was hotter and thicker, the air flow less and less. 

At one point I thought I was going to start panicking and pried up a bit of the edge of the tent to see if I could find some fresh air. It was enough to keep me present and I made it to the end of the round. 

When we finally stepped outside, I felt like something different had happened this time. My skin felt different - softer or something. And I couldn't help but feel that while I might only be feeling the benefits of the sweat cleaning my skin, something significant happened in there for that family. 

They hopped in their car and drove away shortly afterwards. 

Ashley and I thanked the Firekeeper and the Conductor for letting us be part of this and then we hopped in her truck. 

It wasn't until we drove away that I realized we never even asked about going to see the Centre of the Universe. But I honestly don't think that we could have had a more spiritual experience than we did in that tent. 

The Centre of the Universe - Vidette Lake, BC - Part 1

May, 2008

I think that when people typically refer to the centre of the universe, it's often used to describe something that is so big and overwhelmingly important (or trying to be) that it draws everything to it. People in BC, for example, often refer to Toronto as the centre of the universe, and not in a nice way. 

So, imagine my surprise when, in my second year at Thompson Rivers University, my friend Kari casually mentioned that the Centre of the Universe was outside Kamloops.

"What...do you mean?" I asked. 

"Some monks declared it's on some hillside in Vidette Lake. It's like, an hour from here." she said. 

After snapping out of my shock and surprise, we did a little more digging. This was all apparently true: monks had come from San Francisco, performed a series of tests and determined that this was the spot. It had to have specific criteria apparently...

...shaped like the prow of a ship, pointed south, and sloping from north downwards to the south.

I'm sure there's much more to it, of course, but my little university aged brain could only comprehend that there was apparently some kind of spiritual epicentre not far from us, and as soon as Kari suggested we try to find it, I was in. 

I had a bit of apprehension because apparently the site itself was on private property and we weren't too keen on trespassing, though apparently people did it all the time. I, on the other hand, have a panic attack when I even think of breaking a rule so I was hoping we'd be able to find another way. 

We decided that the Monday of the May long weekend would be the perfect day to go on our adventure. 

It was overcast and drizzling when we left town, and for the most part it was just your regular highway drive. There's a turn onto Deadman Vidette Rd just outside Savona, and the second you leave the highway things are immediately different. 

There is a remoteness along this road. You can see old structures in fields, and crumbling hoodoos in the distance. A lone animal in a pasture, an old car rusting under a tree. 

Just a cow in the road.

We stopped along some of the Hoodoos and wanted to get a closer look. Why did it look like the rocks were melting???

There are a lot of hoodoos around Kamloops. As you drive in from the East along the South Thompson river, you can see some eroding in the barren hillside. These ones along the Deadman Vidette road are closer and more pronounced though, so I was very exited at the prospect of seeing them up close. 

We finally made it to Vidette Lake and found the entrance to the Private Property the actual Centre of the Universe is. Completely locked. 

This was not even remotely surprising. The scant information we could find before we left on our adventure, is that the site is on the Vidette Lake Gold Mine Resort property, and that while they are a legitimate place where you can book to stay, they are not open to daily visitors, which makes perfect sense to me. It's a perfectly tranquil place, and once you start getting a bunch of obnoxious University students trampling all over the place taking selfies, the peace and quiet will be destroyed. 

Who, us?

We toyed with the idea of jumping a fence further up the road, but I think we both knew that it was wrong and we'd be jerks to even try. 

But the day was still young! We decided to drive further down the road and see what we could see. We got about as close to where we thought the Centre of the Universe was, and even though we weren't RIGHT there, it's still a beautiful view. 

Just off-Centre of the Universe?

There are also cows. So, so, so many cows. 

Don't mind us.

We were stuck behind the bovine brigade for like ten minutes, and between the slow crawl we were driving, the windy road, and the potholes - I was starting to get car sick. We were looking for a good place to turn around and head back, or at least get out for a minute and get some fresh air, when the perfect place materialized right at the moment we were going to turn around. 

Deadman's Falls. 

There is no railing of any kind around this thing. I think because this isn't like a Provincial Park or anything so it's not maintained by anyone but the locals, and it's in a very remote location. We, of course, took full stupid advantage of the lack of restraints...

You can't take us anywhere.

Literally, anywhere.

I can assure you that we were very careful and that all of these scenarios were far less harrowing than they appear...

But, holy moly was it ever cool to see something so powerful so close. To be able to look right up to the edge of the canyon was insane. I always look at photos of my doing stuff like this after I've done them, and I have no memory of feeling any kind of fear, but looking at it afterwards gives me the swooping tummy feelings I think I'm supposed to have while it's happening. I don't know if that makes me an idiot or if while I'm in the middle of it, the adrenaline keeps me from feeling the swoops, but since I came out of it all right I think I'll just take the win, and the good photos.