🇨🇦 Whale Hunting

Hello Adventurers, 

If I’m being honest, a trip out West wasn’t in my personal summer plans…but a burgeoning professional opportunity lured me out there. And after five Zoom-y interview calls in July — proceeded by a briefing — I was flown out to Vancouver in early August, put up in a nice hotel, and paid to present my creative response to some top brass gents in a boardroom.

To be respectful — and leave wiggle room for the possibility of a delayed and/or rescheduled flight — the organisation kindly brought me out to British Columbia a day early…which is standard operating procedure for these types of things. I presume that worrywarts would use this ‘day before’ to practice their talking points or fine-tune their presentation deck. Me? I arrived with everything locked and loaded…so I disembarked, ditched my suit and laptop, and ripped a marathon to kill time (and loosen my mind). This wasn’t a flex on my part. Rather, it’s part of my creative process.

You may be questioning my decision to go marathon — because it may suggest I’m not taking a serious career opportunity seriously — but I’ve done hundreds of pitches over the decades, and have long known that over-tinkering with a presentation deck or over-rehearsing one’s talking points isn’t just overkill, it actually has a weird way of dulling one’s confidence by sharpening one’s doubts (because you can plunge yourself too deep into the work, and then drown in the imagined reeds of the minutiae as well as the madness that ensues).

Some like to be cooking — and be up in the work — until the last minute because they love the thrill or need the pressure…but I much prefer to get things done peacefully and methodically (and well in advance) so that I can step away from the work to give myself a breather, and then step back into it — when I’ve reset myself and am refreshed — to go best deliver at game time (when it actually counts, and matters most). The gist? It’s that distance from the work somehow brings me closer to it (when it is time to present the work)…whereas being too close to the work always distances me from it (and causes me to trip up when I have to go present it). Admittedly, all this goes out the window when a presentation is a group project, comprised of many contributors and speakers (such is a whole different type of ballgame, and one where all bets are off in terms of process and efficacy).

Anyway, from touchdown to takeoff, I was only in Vancouver for 36 hours…and could only jam in 50 kilometres by foot amongst a few meetings and a presentation…so this issue of the newsletter is kinda like a sprint (despite it being created on a marathon).

- Ben Pobjoy

TREK TRACKER

World by foot and/or footnotes

• Countries marathoned to date: 75-ish

• Marathons completed this year: 29

• Kilometres trekked by foot this year: 3129.9

• Marathons completed since 2015: 873

• Kilometres trekked by foot since 2015: 77,686

• Next stops wish list: Tehran, Addis Ababa, Nuuk

RAPID RECAP

A speedy synopsis for time-crunched readers

• The Wildest Thing: Dunno why…but I’m obsessed with the 2024 Summer Olympics🤗

• The Biggest Obstacle: My ear has healed from my recent cancer surgery…but now I can’t swivel my head rightwards due to the resulting scar tissue on my noggin (and this is fucking with my jaywalking abilities)😐

• The Lesson Learned: Places designed for people are superior to cities designed for cars🤓

FIELD NOTES: VANCOUVER, CANADA

So close to perfect

Domestic travel in Canada is cost prohibitive. Why? Because the country is a big-ass place with few national airlines, meaning consumers must contend with suck-it oligopolistic pricing. Like, if you live in Toronto — as I do — it is often cheaper to grab a flight on a foreign airline to Europe than it is to fly to any of Canada’s coasts. Because of this reality, I haven’t seen as much of Canada as I’d like to.

Thankfully, past business stuff has flung me ‘round the country for creative projects (saving me the expense of flights and accommodations); like, an airline client sent me to Quebec, a cannabis client sent me to Newfoundland, an alcohol client sent me to Alberta, and a telecommunications client sent me to British Colombia loads of times over the last decade.

And rain or shine, I always dug Vancouver the most; it’s a well-planned city on a small peninsula that juts out into the salty waters of an inlet. Add in the visual capping of the North Shore Mountains, the wonderful pedestrians paths, and the Pacific Northwest charm of all the seaplanes coming and going, and you got yourself a pretty unique place (especially since Vancouver is an amalgam of small neighbourhoods — each with distinct character — which all seem to have their own main drags that are ripe for exploration).

For me, no trip to Vancouver is complete without a trek around the woodsy 1,000 acre Stanley Park courtesy of the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path. I use said path to go counter-clockwise and marathon past all the lovely public beaches which are full of logs that serve as both time-out seating and natural recliners (which are clutch for taking in a sunset). On this trek, I did my typical Stanley Park rip then took the Art Deco Burrard Street Bridge — to step over Granville Island — into Kitsilano (where I marvelled at all the millionaire baller homes, and poked around the commercial strip on West 4th Avenue). From there, I took Broadway Avenue into East Van to cruise northward up Commercial Drive…which is a well-loved, no guff, locals-only kinda drag that’s full of shops / bars / restos both new and old, hip and normie. One thing to take note of — as you cut through the neighbourhoods in greater Vancouver — is how few of the homes are made of brick and/or have air conditioning units (because of how temperate the climate is year-round). After Commercial Drive, I went westbound and checked my existential privilege by confronting the Downtown Eastside — more on that if you keep reading — before I admired the old / well-preserved architecture in Gastown. The finish? It’s a no-brainer; swigging some doppios from any third-wave café in Yaletown (IMHO, Vancouver is the best coffee city in Canada).

While Vancouver is small in size and population — just 662,000ish people in 123km² of space — it is both a fashion and retail powerhouse (T&T or bust, bb). This might seem head-scratching given Vancouver is largely cast as more hippyish than cutting-edge, but Vancouver has birthed Arc’Teryx, Hershel Supply Co., Native Shoes, Reigning Champ, Lululemon, Aritzia, Fluevog, and Mountain Equipment Co-op (which is the Canadian equivalent to Seattle’s REI or France’s Decathlon). I don’t love all those brands per se, but many are commercial behemoths and/or cultural juggernauts…so you gotta give Vancouver its props (this outlier knows how to output at scale)!

While the shopping here is decent (as evidenced by the above), I’m a greater fan of Vancouver’s overall vibe (excluding its expensiveness); nature is present and beautifully integrated, the people are outdoorsy / environmentally-minded, nobody is fussy, and the downtown is super fun to cruise around (because the west side is a grid, the east side is curvy, parts of both have hilly inclines and declines, and ‘cause pedestrian paths line much of the surrounding waterfront). The only downer is that Vancouver gets an average of 169 rainy days a year, but it’s great in the summertime when the skies are clear; especially when people are swimming in English Bay and boating through False Creek (both of which contribute to the city’s big chiller spirit).

Lastly, Sing Sing and Chancho both caught my eye when passing ‘em on my ‘thon, and they’ll def be on my hit-list next time I’m hungry in Vancouver.

BEST LOCAL THING-Y

The Naam is nothing to write home about…but it has served me well over the years. Open since 1968, it serves what it describes as, “Homestyle vegetarian food”, and that description is accurate / what I love most about the place; here, I can eat the types of low-fi meals I sloppily make at home…enjoyed when I’m far from home, and there’s something infinitely comforting about that.

Prior to the pandemic, The Naam was open 24/7, and such was clutch on past business trips to Vancouver (like, when I flew in late or was working late). I also have a ripping sweet tooth…and the amount of times I’ve gotten outta bed in some hotel room in Vancouver to trek to Kitsilano in the middle of the night for The Naam’s warm Apple Crisp dessert (paired with two scoops of vanilla vegan ice cream)…it’s more times than I’d like to admit, LOL.

However, I behaved this time around, and responsibly ordered The Naam’s signature dragon bowl…which is basically OG, first-wave vegetarian fare; steamed carrots / cauliflower / broccoli on brown rice with miso gravy, peanut sauce, apple cider vinegar-pickled tofu, wakame, grated carrots, and grated beets. It was served with no care for its plating or presentation, was hearty and healthy, tastes earthy exactly like you imagine it would, and cost me a reasonable $16.35 USD (including tip).

The Naam is a local institution where the dining room is shabby yet cozy, the tables are old and tacky (not because they’re dirty…but because they’re so old), the service is warm and pleasant, most of the patrons are longhairs (e.g. free-flowing, pony-tailed, or man-bun’d), and clientele footwear is either Teva sandals or Birkenstocks (and not the new or cool kind)…which I think tells you everything you need to know about the joint.

Places like The Naam blazed the trail, and while sorta passé today…I’ll just always make the pilgrimage, show my respects, and support it (because this is the type of old-school vegetarian food I grew up on, and which forged me).

POBJOY'S GLOBAL PRICE INDEX

This is an on-going documentation of how much things cost in different places around the world. Here are some of the things I bought in Vancouver (all prices converted to USD):

• 12 ounce soy milk latte from a café: $6.22 (including tip)

• 500 grams of take-out Korean glass noodles from a hot counter in my fave Asian chain supermarket: $4.53

• 12 kilometre-long public train ride from Waterfront Station to the YVR airport: $3.35

MARATHON MUSINGS

On some uncomfortable truths

East Hastings Street in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood represents my definition of hell. Not all of it, just the notorious stretch that is less than a kilometre long, the one full of human suffering…which has been raging on for decades.

It is here that addiction, homelessness, and mental illness are observed in their most extreme and compacted expressions; meltdowns, punch ups, blackouts, robberies, dangerous sex work, and where hard drugs are shot or smoked out in the open, and on the filthy sidewalk at all hours. A prolific serial killer once mined East Hastings Street for his double-digit MMIW victims, residents here experience Canada’s highest rate of death from encounters with police, and according to Wikipedia, “It also has significantly more Indigenous Canadians, disproportionately affected by the neighbourhood's social problems.” Misery.

I don’t know how East Hastings Street came to be what it is, and I have no clue what policies — or lack of policies — contribute to its continuation. And frankly, it doesn’t matter because its existence is a municipal, provincial, and national failure (and stands in opposition to what virtuous Canada as well as most Canadians wishfully think of themselves — and our society — to be…unless we accept that we’re all bullshitters). And political leanings aside, the situation isn’t just objectively dire — or the system’s problem — it is fundamentally immoral; humans turning their backs on humans, and letting them slip into hell. Like, if we all participated in Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance thought experiment, I highly doubt any of us would co-sign this type of outcome. It’s also why I never judge anyone on the streets…because should I somehow end up there one day, I hope your empathy for me would be greater than your judgment of me.

I’ve marathoned East Hastings Street a bunch over the years; never to be a voyeur but to regularly pull over and distribute free food and water to people in need…something I’m embarrassed to admit I forgot to do on this trip. And that — in my personal opinion — is precisely the problem; yes, my forgetfulness (which is a symptom), but more so our general tendency here in first-world and resource-rich North America to normalise the abnormal, ignore what should be unignorable, and/or do the weird ethical arithmetic we do to ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ things / compartmentalise away what makes us most uncomfortable / diffuse our responsibility to the greater good ala not on my dime or time (but blessings to those tireless outreach workers on the front lines working to make the streets safer for all). All of that mentioned stuff is the cause…not pass-the-blame-externalities like politicians who we know serve the highest bidders, and rarely the lowest of the low (though they should be held to greater account). Said another way, East Hastings Street exists — as it does — because we people let it exist. Oof.

And just to be clear, I’m not dunking on Vancouver because me and my city are failing our very own neighbours too. Plus, I’ve also marathoned Los Angeles from Beverly Hills to Skid Row — which is not that dissimilar from marathoning Kitsilano to East Hasting Street — meaning Vancouver’s quagmire isn’t a phenomenon all unto itself. But what my travels by marathon have revealed to me, is that this type of lousy shit wouldn’t fly in similarly advanced regions like Scandinavia or in countries like Japan (where said cultures have a stronger social contract, and a greater sense of duty to their compatriots). But us — in these specific wilds of the Western Hemisphere — we’re not as civilised. And that’s on us to culturally correct.

I haven’t yet heard back on how my pitch in Vancouver was formally received, but I’m grateful that my time in Vancouver provided another much needed kick in the arse to be a better human being; on my marathons, and in my life in general.

May we all walk our talk, and always have the courage to walk into the fire (and do our part to help extinguish it).

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