Vancouver splendor that NBC misses

After two trips to Vancouver in recent years, I have no more than a tourist's knowledge of the city. Even so, it's impossible to overlook the magnificent nature-to-urban panorama of the waterway that splits the city below Stanley Park, from English Bay into False Creek. From the west, the bay leads to the "creek," and, near the east end of the creek, the Olympic Village rises up. For some reason, NBC broadcasts few scenes from this beautiful and exciting part of the city. Instead, NBC parks itself in the harbor at Burrard Inlet at the north end of the city, among the docks for cruise ships and mercantile vessels. That's like broadcasting from the New York City Passenger Ship Terminal instead of Central Park.

My snapshots provide scenes of what NBC has overlooked.


I pointed my camera one way and found a heron and an oil tanker:




I pointed my camera in the opposite direction and found a tree growing out of a highrise:




I am not faulting NBC for failure to acknowledge this summer event from several years ago. I am just saying that the network doesn't seem to be aware of this part of the city, a paradise of water, landscape, steel and glass. In this scene, thousands gathered in the summer of 2006 for the annual Olympic-sized fireworks competition that spreads over several weeks. For these events, people come early to get good spots and party through much of the evening until the late-setting sun has departed long enough for the show to begin —




Totem pole maintenance in Stanley Park:





Raven and the First Men, Haida artist Bill Reid's rendering of his culture's myth of human origin, at the Museum of Anthropology —

The museum preserves ancient totem poles and other First Nations art and artifacts. It also hires First Nations artists such as Reid to carry on the traditions and break new ground.

One artist, Robert Davidson, transforms iconic cultural images into contemporary forms. Davidson is one of several artists who use software-driven laser knives to carve designs into anodized aluminum compositions.