Orcas, or Killer Whales, were something of a feared creature in the olden days. Apparently, back in the 1800s when this part of the world was first being explored by Europeans, their technical/scientific classification was actually “Monster.” Hilarious as this might seem, it does make some sense. Black whales with sharp teeth and shark fins? Yeah, that would have definitely felt somewhat monstrous to me if I was an early sailor of these waters. The conventional wisdom of the day was that, if you fell in the water, you needed to get out ASAP so an Orca wouldn’t eat you. If you hadn’t already guessed this, there is, in fact, no record of an Orca ever eating a human. But this was still a legitimate fear as recently as the 1960s when they actually mounted a machine gun on a coastal bluff known as Chatham Point with the aim of shooting as many Orcas as possible. 🤯 Somehow, for the time when this gun was actively scouring the seas, the Orcas stayed clear of this area and there were no casualties. So Orca/human tensions have never escalated to be anything more than a cold war. And it was not long after this that human sentiments toward Orcas began to change for the better.
Vancouver is kind of a perplexing place because it mashes together a lot of puzzle pieces that don’t really seem like they should fit. Or at least, they didn’t to me. When I first arrived, I was having a sort of dissociative experience trying to piece it all together and make sense of things.
First off, there’s the location. Looking northward, Vancouver is built into a landscape that seems entirely impractical for a major city. It’s hard to believe just how close the northerly Cascade mountains are to the city. The northern suburbs of Vancouver literally slope upwards as far as physics will allow before you’re headed towards snow caps. 🏔
And we’re back in mainland Seattle from our little trip over to Bainbridge Island! In our first installment, we checked off some of Seattle’s more obvious tourist attractions (i.e. Pioneer Square, Pike Place Market, the view of the Space Needle from Kerry Park, etc.). It was very cool, but TODAY we’re going to peel a few more layers off the onion and get into some of Seattle’s quirky b-list attractions. As a city, Seattle has a stronger and more distinct personality than most. I think this cross-section of less-notable items actually did more to help me get to know this place than the major tourist attraction did. It’s all about details.
SO LEMME HITCHU WITH THE DEETS.
