Vancouver Special by Charles Demers

Author:Charles Demers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regional History
ISBN: 978-1-55152-436-8
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2011-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

x. At a religious function in Winnipeg, K., who is Jewish, once retold a joke I’d made to him about a scene in the Old Testament wherein Zipporah, Moses’s wife, circumcises their son and touches the foreskin to his foot; apparently, everyone laughed except for the rabbi, who began a long, painful explanation of why my joke was scripturally incorrect.

NATURE

Despite the cheap pizza on every corner and a city-full of pot-massaged appetites, a fat guy can never really feel completely a part of Vancouver; in a city so defined by nature, full-fledged citizenship is predicated upon the active, red-blooded enjoyment of every rock face and tree, bike trail and sea wall. I used to live near Commercial Drive with two out-of-towners—one a compact, sinewy Haligonian, the other a lanky Pole with a massive outgrowth of hair—each harbouring a pagan-level commitment to the outdoors and its constant appreciation; the Pole had even set himself to the task of building a bike trailer for his canoe. Conversely, I use the mountains almost exclusively for finding north (like many Vancouverites, I’m helplessly lost in other cities without the massive, snow-capped compass I’ve grown up with), and as a result, despite my being the only local, I felt distinctly less Vancouverish than they seemed.

The same thing happens for the fat guy in Mountain Equipment Co-Op—the place that comedian Paul Breau accused Vancouverites of turning toward in unison to pray (his first hint was the sign on the side of the building: “MEC.ca”). At MEC, the preponderance of rosy-cheeked, athletic Übermenschen excited to get outside and into the wholesome, taut-muscled labour of camping and their profound relationship with the soil makes us largely sedentary, endomorphic types feel distinctly like Alvy Singer in a room full of Maxes. I made a trip to MEC once with my friend Dwayne—an avid cyclist, kayaker, and Ontario expat who lived in the bushes off Jericho Beach when he first arrived in Vancouver decades ago—and he watched in confusion as I shrunk into myself, suddenly nervous and uncomfortable, hyperconscious of my weight, amply aware of everywhere I was ample. Eventually, though, I got on my bike, and—still pumpkin-figured—was able to get in on some of the action, particularly appreciating the almost absurd beauty of False Creek, which miraculously runs right into the very centre of the city.

Physically embarking upon the topography of the city and its surrounding areas seems to be a way for Vancouverites to actively engage a beauty that we might otherwise experience passively—in that sense, we’re like a very pretty girl training to be good at running or sports as a way of taking control over a physicality that might otherwise be used to define her. Someone told me that Sinead O’Connor shaved her head because with hair she was too beautiful to be taken seriously, and whether or not that’s true, it reminds me of Vancouver, a city that wants its looks to be noticed, but frets that its prettiness will ultimately get in the way

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