Groffsdale Road: Thanksgiving in Canada

Celebrating Thanksgiving with Benjamin and Morgan Tipton was the next best thing to being at home. During the meal we participated in a Tipton family tradition involving beans and expressions of gratefulness. For the record, my three beans represented: 1) My Past. How it has shaped me, and the good reminders I've had of it recently. 2) My Family. For giving me the travel bug and for supporting me in this crazy adventure. And 3) My sister. For being in touch and being a great sibling!
After being on the road for a day under three weeks and having traveled through 16 of the United States and one of the Canadian Provinces it was an incredible relief to just hang out and be in one place for several days. The Menno Simons Center is a really cool community of students and for anyone going to school here in Vancouver, I strongly recommend living here.
Biking all around the city meeting up with Stephanie Suderman and Shalom Wiebe has great. There's really nothing like catching up with old friends from past walks of life and taking the time to remember their impact on your life and the goings on that were going on. And then there's the other people to remember. Looking back on MCC retreats and remembering all the characters and seeing how we all have grown has been inspirational and interesting to say the least. The interest all of us seem to have in going overseas again or entering some kind of service work someday seems to say something about the good role modeling our parents must have done.

Speaking of parenting...

Finn

Although this picture of the little one is quite pleasant and happy, much of the time it did not seem like her natural state of being. Loud cries indicating a need to feed or a dirty diaper erupted often and although it made baby-having seem much less appealing, the wonderful way Ben and Morgan handled it, with patience and love, was something that will stay with me for quite some time.

And now its time for some good old pictures of the city!

The mountain were beautiful! Although this wasn't one of them, there were times when the sky cleared up and there was an incredible view!

Apologies to the mountains in the background.

A beach! The bay was beautiful and I had a great bike ride around the Sea Wall.

Bridges are cool.

The history of this city was remarkable. Although I could've spent much more time leaning good things. I instead just biked a lot. Apologies to history.

That said, I guess I can still highlight some of the more memorable points. Originally (late 1800's) the city was called Gastown. More recently (mid/late 1900's) there has been a huge increase in immigration. Much of that coinciding with the return of Hong Kong to China. According to Ben, around half of Vancouver's population is of Asian decent. A fact that helped lessen my surprise at seeing so many elderly Asian people at the pool when I went swimming.

Note the floating Cheveron station. There were lots of boats and even boat planes cruising around the bay. Lots of fun to watch.

The Canadian respect and the way they have dealt with Native Peoples, although being far from optimal, seemed to be leagues beyond where the US is at. Apologies to the totems for their blurry representation.