the city on the edge of forever, : Victoria, part three,

Okay, so I clearly had too many adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here; see part two here]. I thought I could contain it all in one post, so there you go.

Saturday, April 25: My final morning in Victoria, with a noon check-out, so I had to get my bags figured out. My high school pal Jennifer (who originally collected me from the airport on day one of this trip) arrived for the sake of my many bags, and we headed out to get coffee and sandwiches. There were rowboats in the water. The sky was an incredible blue. We drove out for sandwiches to a place she likes, realizing we were parking right by that art gallery that was closed on Thursday, when I wandered that same way, able to go into the "multi-media debut solo exhibition by Mila Rio," You Do Not Have to Be Good (again, a line from this Mary Oliver poem). Rio is layering animal imagery in a really interesting way, from paintings to works of felt across frames, stitching ideas together that intrigue and slightly trouble the imagination. I hadn't realized until after that we had actually met the artist, sitting in the space, so that was pretty cool. I think Rio is doing some interesting work. If you are in Victoria, you have until May 28th to see this small show, and I would recommend it.

Sandwiches by the water, the low American hills in Washington State across the bay. Sandwiches, as we talked about who we still knew from high school (Glengarry District High School, class of 1989), and where they might be. Who we still spoke to. Where has everyone gone? A handful still around home, while others (that we know of) scattered across Ottawa, Germany, Lethbridge, Texas, etcetera. The long arm of Glengarry wanderings.

Mile Zero, where I think I might even have visited with Joe Blades, back in the spring of 1998 (we attended that year's League of Canadian Poets AGM, and launched a five-poet anthology we were in, that he edited/published). A photo, most likely. I wonder where that might be? Mile Zero: the end of a poem by Robert Kroetsch, naturally. Or is this the beginning?

Afterwards, Jen offered to keep my bags in her car until the evening event, and she dropped me at Miniature World, a museum near enough to the reading venue that I knew I could catch this, sit somewhere, and then head off to the event fairly easily. This place is magnificent and everyone who goes to Victoria must go there immediately. When I looked on a map, it seemed close enough and intriguing enough, and I thought, why not?

Some of the battlesites were pretty cool, as were the occasional trains, but the best part had to be a wrap-around single train-line heading from Canada's west coast through to the east, catching most of the main stops along the way across the period of some of the original founding of our country's national rail. Victoria, Calgary, Regina, Toronto. Although it jumped immediately from there to Quebec City and a generic "The Maritimes," which I thought a bit nonsense (I wanted to complain, but the end of the tour leads one to the street, and not back to the front desk). It was a remarkable display, either way. But I wanted to see my house!

And then the lights went low! And the train lights went on, and the train whistled through! And then it was daylight again, the sunlight lifting up across the whole stretch of country.

There were historic European and American battlesites, fairy tale settings, circus city-scenes and a whole room of dollhouses. A stretch of buildings and totem poles reminiscent of the Great Hall in Gatineau's Museum of History (formerly the Museum of Civilization, which is a better name, despite what former Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks).

No gift shop, which was admittedly a surprise (and disappointing; I would have picked up something, at least). From there, I wandered slightly, collecting postcards (and a block further, stamps to accompany), before landing at the Sticky Wicket, "Vancouver Island's biggest pub" (it's not always about size, fella), attached to the city's Strathcona Hotel (very different than, say, the Edmonton namesake, which had been a perpetual favourite of myself and pals such as Andy Weaver, Paul Pearson, etc circa 2000). I sat with pint, wrote postcards and read further from The Paris Review for a couple of hours, catching my breath. Why didn't I take any pictures? The pub was fine (and there was a woman across from me reading, also, so it felt the right place), although there was an artwork, a drawing, along one wall I found confusing, and didn't know the reference, something about "preparing the troops for Sevastopol," a sketch of the army that I realized, upon looking it up, was a reference to the Crimean War (1854-56). Why would a pub in Victoria, British Columbia be holding a sketch referring to the Crimean War?

I eventually met up with Jennifer, who had my mound of books, and went into the on-stage recording of The Poet Laureate Podcast, in which I interviewed Kyeren about her experience around being Victoria's (seventh!) poet laureate for the first half, with the second half focusing a bit more on me and my work, my thoughts around writing, etcetera. She kept saying throughout that we would have cake in-between, so the audience listening would have to imagine us eating cake. The third poem she read, leading into our break, was one that referenced Marie Antoinette. So, as I said, let us eat cake.

The crowd was grand! Rhona McAdam [my generous host], John Barton again [who later said I reminded him of the late Victoria poet Robin Skelton, which I would like him to explain, as I don't have enough direct knowledge of the man to speculate], and Terese Svoboda [I knew Donald Sutherland, she said, and you have his eyebrows!]. Allegra Kaplan. I was able to return Sara Cassidy her charger cord, which saved my computer while west. During the half-time, a familiar face came up to me (the woman on the couch) and reminded me that she was a waitress at The Royal Oak I frequented in the second half of the 1990s [ex-partner of my late pal Greg Kerr, also] and had been a therapist in Victoria for years, interested in the fact that I was doing an event, and came out, which was very cool. Kyeren had suggested I read three poems, so I read only my three poems from the new Coach House Books anthology On Occasion: Poems for the People, ed. Sina Queyras [see the write-up I did on the collection here]. Given I'd read healthily from my two University of Calgary Press collections, it seemed a good idea to read from the new collection, since it was brand new.

It was an engaging conversation, kind of all over the place, but one I quite enjoyed (worried slightly it was my usual rambling nonsense). I shall let you know when the audio lands online. After, Jen and Allegra [it was good to hang with her and get a sense of her, as I'd only caught her in passing at that first reading] and I caught a quick drink at a hotel (fancy) bar. I mentioned the artwork at the Sticky Wicket, and Allegra suggested it could just as easily be an interest in British-isms by whomever designed the space, and not any deeper or more specific connection between anything here and anything there. That makes the most sense, I think.

And then Jen drove me to the airport for my 11:30pm overnight flight, which left late, bumping my landing in Toronto enough to put me on a further flight back home. But home by noon, exhausted, pleased. Hopefully it won't be another two decades-plus before I land in Victoria again! (and hopefully next time Wayde Compton is actually in town, as well).