We’ve been feeling a bit stressed and budgeting very hard recently, due to the (we hope) move that we are about to make to a house on the North Shore. Monkey decided to take me out on a date night to a nice restaurant using one of the coupons in the Entertainment Book - a great discount book which provides us with lots of 2-for-1 meal vouchers that allows us to afford to go to more expensive restaurants while still remaining within our budget.

To cut costs further, we had a bottle of wine at home beforehand (a German Riesling called Devil’s Rock - a new, inexpensive favourite of ours) then headed to Griffins at the Farimont Hotel on Georgia Street. All of their entrees are pretty expensive but they all include a dessert buffet (which you can also have on its own). Monkey had the prime rib with yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes and I had the evening special surf and turf (5 oz tenderloin and a skewer of 5 prawns) with blue cheese potato parfait. Both dishes were delicious - the meat, especially, was perfectly cooked and so tasty. The dessert buffet had a lot of options - cheesecake, double chocolate mousse, fruit mousse cake, little macadamia nut treacle tarts, fig tart, profiteroles, chocolate and cointreau gateaux, cookies, creme caramel, chocolate bread pudding, fresh fruit and meringue cake - all of which were nice enough but nothing special. We were so full from the main course anyway that we didn’t need much dessert, but we tried to have a tast of each. In conclusion we give the restaurant a big thumbs up for the entrees but wish that there was an option NOT to have the dessert buffet included in the price. My surf and turf would have been much more appealing at $34 as opposed to $42!

The date night went well - we got chatting to a lady at the table next to us and she commented that we looked so good together that she thought we were newly married! Well, I guess technically we are still newly-weds, but having been together for almost 8 years now I’m not sure that terminology applies!

Further to my blog post of July last year about Grizzly bears starting to arrive on Vancouver Island for the first time, I read an interesting article in the Spring 2009 edition of British Columbia magazine this week. It appears that more grizzlies were spotted over the summer and that instead of trapping and shooting them, like I thought would happen, the grizzlies will be a protected species on Vancouver Island. The population of black bears are certainly not going to like the intrusion onto their territory but wildlife experts say that because this appears to be a natural phenomonon, we should just let nature take its course for now and review any problems that may arise as they arise.

I can’t post the British Columbia magazine article, but here’s a December 2008 Vancouver Sun article on the same topic:

Vancouver Sun Article

I found it very interesting to note that grizzly bears have mated with polar bears in the past, but not ever with black bears. Considering black bears and grizzly bears live in close proximity to each other in areas like the Kootenays I thought that some cross-breeding would have occurred.

The other weekend we took a drive up the sea-to-sky highway intending to do some snow-shoeing at Cheakamus River but we were running out of time so stopped at Alice Lake Provincial Park instead. The idea was to do the Four Lakes Trail which we had snow-shoed last January and very much enjoyed, but when we got there we realised the snow was so compacted and icy that there was no way we could snowshoe on it, but also no easy way to hike on it either. We ended up doing an “ice walk” a third of the way around Stump Lake, and then a quarter of the way around Alice Lake. I was with two people who are much better hikers than me and I was really surprised that I was finding the ice-walking relatively easy compared to them, as I laughed at them falling all over the place and screeching. I think I have learned good ice-walking technique from walking to and from work during that period of heavy snow in Vancouver last year. Mind you, I was the only one who ended up falling on my bum, as they watched me slip and slide down a steep slope and fall over before deciding that they weren’t going to follow, and that they were going to give up and turn round.

We ended up sitting on top of some picnic tables next to Alice Lake soaking up the sun and admiring the view for about an hour before heading back to Vancouver via the Watershed Grill in Brackendale overlooking the river for a pint of beer . It was lovely to get out though, even if our exercise was a lot less vigorous than we had intended it.

The Alice Lake campground is supposed to open at the end of March but it is likely they will delay it this year because of the amount of snow. We’re finding it difficult to get out to the right places this year - most places are the same as Alice Lake - too much snow and ice to hike on, but too bad a quality of snow to snowshoe on. Add to that the extreme avalanche risk on the slopes and in the backcountry in the entire province, and this season has been a bit of a disappointment for most people. We are very much looking forward to Spring when we can get out and go camping and hiking and kayaking and maybe even swimming to make up for the disappointment!

As I like to share pictures and we took no photographs this time, here’s a couple from last year when the snow was good. The first is of me snow-shoeing ON Stump Lake and the second is the view from the Watershed in Brackendale where we had our drink.

In January I went back to the UK for the first time since immigrating to Canada and it was a very strange experience. Before we left we were feeling pretty damned miserable as it felt like it was the end of our holiday in Canada rather than the beginning of our holiday in England. We just did not want to leave Canada because we love it so much.

Once we got to England, there were a few things that immediately jumped out at me - firstly there are so many gates and hedges and fences marking people’s property and indicating ownership of land. Secondly, it seemed to be so bone-chillingly cold even though the temperature was similar to Vancouver’s. Thirdly, everything is crowded and cramped - streets are narrow which makes them very busy with traffic. Fourthly, everywhere is so flat! Lastly, yob culture is very much alive in the UK, and I found it shocked me a lot more than I ever thought possible. A lot of young men, especially, seem to put a lot of effort into looking and sounding insolent and threatening.

I think the hardest thing for us to deal with was that although it was wonderful to see our families and friends, it seemed that most people would politely ask us how our lives were in Canada but not really be interested in the answer. When we talked about “In Canada…this” and “In Canada…that”, we got the overwhelming sense that we were boring them and should change the subject. This was incredibly difficult because “In Canada…” is now our life and we obviously want to talk about how our lives are going. Instead we just talked about other people’s lives and relationships and the economy and the snow etc.

It is interesting that every other ex-pat that I have spoken to about that particular issue has felt the same. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a big issue for one or several of the following reasons:

1) They can’t fully comprehend living anywhere else and so they don’t find it particularly interesting and switch off.

2) They don’t want to hear about how much we are enjoying our lives because they aren’t enjoying their lives as much but are stuck there either because they can’t move or they won’t move because they can’t stand such a big upheaval.

3) It hurts them to hear of us happily and successfully enjoying our life away from them when they used to be such a big part of it.

4) They are (maybe unknowingly) patriotic toward England so don’t want to hear why we like Canada better.

I suspect it is more the third reason than any other. And I also think that we project our own feelings of guilt onto them - our guilt for leaving them behind and enjoying ourselves so much without them. We feel as if we are gloating every time we talk about our “new lives” and so assume they don’t want to hear it!

The good things about going back: it was a really social time and I realised that all the good friends I had that are as useless at contacting me as I am at contacting them are still my very good friends; meeting my friends’ new babies and seeing their new houses; the old English tradition of going down the pub(s); having the chance to have a proper catch up with our grandparents who cannot travel; spending quality time with the rest of our family; taking Graham for a long, nostalgic walk through my childhood neighbourhood; British lasagne, British Indian food and British Chinese food!