Colourful Dreamer

Douglas and Bonnie at  Shannon Falls I’ve been wanting to visit Vancouver for some time. I knew someone there _ Douglas – and I only heard good things about it. So, it was a great opportunity to break up our journey home from Toronto and to see Douglas again and see a bit of what Vancouver is about. I met Douglas through the International Anglican Youth Network meetings. Douglas was working for the Episcopal church based in New York, and Peter Ball was the National Youth Officer for Church of England. They got the IAYN going again in 2004 with a meeting in New York, and I was a part of the executive until the meeting in Hong Kong in 2011 when I stood down in preparation for being a vicar. Douglas and Keith moved to Vancouver around that time and kept saying I should visit. So, we did. Keith was unsure about us. They had recently had some visitors who didn’t help out much around their apartment and weren’t too keen on seeing anything. Not us! We had looked up Lonely Planet and knew ...

I t is a little bittersweet writing about this. Our time in Toronto and in Vancouver was spent on the assumption that we would be returning regularly. But we did not know that the Canadian government had other ideas. Michael and Amy’s work visa was not renewed, and they had to leave. It is all a little sad. and it makes our time there in 2023 even more special. Friday morning Michael, Bonnie, and I set off by train to explore the Royal Ontario Museum. Expensive. But a really cool building. The have dinosaurs! The highlight for me was the Being and Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond exhibition. Some really provocative pieces, some of which you can see here .   It reminded me of the power of art to break open your perspective and to allow other voices you might hear to speak into your life. It was an amazing exhibition. There was also a permanent gallery of the world’s indigenous cultures which featured 1,400 rarely seen artifacts, including ...