Day 19 - A Touring Day

Following breakfast, our plan for today was to tour the famous Capilano Bridge, which we all saw during the Olympic coverage this past winter. We also had tickets for a tour of the Steveston Cannery later in the afternoon. The we in this case was "us" and Gene & Barbara Tallone. The ride to Capilano Bridge took us through the spectacular Stanley Park. Stanley Park is an oasis in the city of Vancouver that provides an almost endless array of family activities. One of the popular stops is the Totem Pole area. The gardens were in bloom and the Cypress Trees were huge. I guess they like the Vancouver weather. It was a great place to visit.



Capilano Bridge is only a few miles north of Stanley Park and is an interesting place to visit. The suspension bridge is not for the faint of heart, the bridge shakes and wiggles all over the place. In spite of this, Nan and Barbara gave it their best shot but just couldn't make it; they had to turn around after only going a short way. Gene and I on the other hand marched across the bridge and toured the rest of the park. We thought they had big trees at Stanley Park, but in this place they were even larger. Big Doug…yes that was its name, is a 205 ft Douglas Fir Tree that is 1300 years old. It was very impressive. There is also another suspension bridge complex that explores the Fir canopy and looks like it’s 100 ft in the air. Back over the bridge we met the ladies and regrouped for our trip to Steveston Cannery. Although Nan and Barabra didn't make the bridge crossing, we congratulated them for really trying.


We made it to the cannery in time for our 2:00 PM tour, where we got a good understanding of the fish canning industry, which we learned was a very hard place to work. This was a labor intensive industry with very poor working conditions. Automation did speed up the process causing workers to loose their jobs or become skilled in other operations. With the tour over, we met up with our NZ friends, David & Karen Mossman.






Since we were on the waterfront we decided on an early dinner at a local restaurant which was excellent. Back at the hotel we found Dick & Barbara O’Brien. Dick had decided to enter his woody wagon into the Modified Judging class and spent the day cleaning the 3300 miles of trail dust off the A. I sure wish him well in this first venture into national judging.






Tomorrow, I've been told we will be going to Granville Island to visit this unique island's "Quincy Market" like retail area. I think that means more shopping. I also think we will stop by the Richmond Curling Club on the way back to view the show cars while they are being judged.