Vancouver is a city easy to show to visitors. It is loaded with natural beauty. From the snow-capped mountains in the north and northeast and the clear calm waters in the north and west, the city is plunked in the place with the best weather that cold Canada can offer. Its cleanliness goes well with the wholesome vibes of the city.
So, when a very good friend and former classmate from my BS Chemistry undergraduate years at Silliman University came to visit Vancouver, I was eager to tour him around the city.
Last week, Monsignor Dan, who I fondly simply called Patrick, visited Vancouver with seven other priests from the Diocese of Talibon in Bohol Island, Philippines. He is the current bishop of the Diocese of Talibon.
“My name is Patrick Daniel. Everyone at Silliman knew me as Patrick. My church name is Father Dan. Whenever I hear “Patrick” from other people, it’s a pleasant sound to my ear,” Monsignor Dan humbly explained.
They held fund-raising concerts in Richmond and Surrey. The priests’ vocal prowess at the concert was made more heavenly with their mission: to raise funds to rebuild the cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity in Talibon, Bohol. The Talibon cathedral, its roof destroyed by Super Typhoon Odette on December 16, 2021, had been on a rebuilding process.
The generosity of BC Filipino-Canadian Catholics, hopefully, was enough to pay for the priests’ airfare. The concert ticket for the 1 1/2-hour quintet extravaganza was only $20. Too small. Compared, say, to a Gary Valenciano concert that started at $85. The recent Madrigal Singers concert started at $118. Or, get this, a nostalgic concert charged a hefty price that showcased Nora Aunor but who did not sing a single song but merely rambled on to answer some questions on stage at the Massey Theater in New Westminster.
From BC, the Talibon diocesan priests bussed to Seattle, then to LA, San Francisco, and San Diego to give more fundraising concerts before flying back to Bohol.
Burnaby Mountain was our first destination. I drove Msgr. Dan around Simon Fraser University (SFU) where I obtained my teacher’s certificate. SFU had an award-winning design by Canada’s premier architect, Arthur Ericksson. SFU’s palisades and columns of naked concrete typified Erickson’s impressive architectural designs. It’s reminiscent of the naked shell-encrusted concrete buildings of the Luce Auditorium and the Main Library of our alma mater (Silliman University).
We checked out the Japanese totem poles made of whole cedar on top of Burnaby Mountain. The row of Japanese totem poles stood in front of a restaurant that I wanted to treat Msgr. Dan to a quiet lunch with a panoramic view, below, of Vancouver and surrounding cities (North and West Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, and my city of Port Moody). The restaurant was closed for renovation. We walked down The Centennial Rose Garden. It was unimpressive. Thousands of roses were still in bud.
The Burnaby Heritage Museum was our next destination. It, too, was closed for renovation.
“I love long walks,” Msgr. Dan said, perhaps to hide his disappointment. So, we walked on Deer Lake Park, and strolled along the northern shore of Deer Lake.
We had a long chat all throughout our long lakeside walk. We reminisced. We laughed as we remembered the wacky classmates we had. And all the girls we pursued in college; or at least I did. We marveled at our student life characterized more by extracurricular activities (at least mine) rather than hitting hard our chemistry textbooks and lab experiments (more Patrick’s). We recalled our favorite chemistry teachers, especially those who favored the boys, the handsome ones mostly. We reveled at the girlfriends we had or didn’t have. We talked about our crushes. Much like the good old days at Silliman. Patrick, Leon, and I were the only men in our big chemistry class.
“I didn’t know you went out with … ” he showed disbelief.
“Yeah. But each of those girlfriends royally broke up with me,” I laughed. I didn’t know why laughter became my easy salve.
We discussed the fall-out of a wedding gone awry last week in Amlan Parish, in our home province. He shared how he handled a comparable situation in his Talibon diocese. Priests, he said, had the humanity to make mistakes. Priests also had a vested power to avert public social disaster. Msgr. Dan had grown so much wiser.
We laughed at ourselves. A lot.
We finally had lunch past 2:30 pm. Msgr. Dan wanted Vietnamese pho. We ended up in Metropolis, BC’s largest shopping mall. To get free parking for the day. And to get some Vietnamese pho.
I was relieved Msgr. Dan was all right with having pho served in a plastic bowl at the mall’s Vietnamese franchise food stall. Bishops (and priests) in the Philippines were used to being served by the parishioners using the best china on a formal table setting. That’s a perk of people of importance in a Philippine society where socio-economic stratification and colonial mentality still pervaded.
Here, in a giant mall’s noisy food court, Msgr. Dan and I gamely slurped our pho. My friend was still well grounded, I concluded.
Science World was our first SkyTrain stopover. I felt Msgr. Dan would enjoy a quick visit to a science center. He and I are still science-minded adults, thanks to our BS Chem background.
To highly enjoy Science World, we needed to put on our science cap and feel like little boys again. Children invariably had immense fun at the Science World, experimenting and playing with science gadgets like children’s toys instead of some nerdy contraptions to be analyzed and comprehended.
“The inner child in me is touched by it,” Msgr. Dan described his child-like animation at Science World.
“Unless you will become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God,” he added with a quote from the Bible. “It pays to be child like every now and then.”
A chemistry children’s demonstration involving liquid nitrogen was an appropriate way to end our Science World tour.
We sauntered around the perimeter of the Science World, a giant geodesic dome that used to be Canada’s display pavilion during the 1976 World Trade Exhibition. Across from the False Creek was the World Trade display pavilion of the U.S.A., now reduced to being a casino.
“Where’s the Olympic Village?” he asked.
I pointed at a group of glass and brick high-rise apartments across False Creek from Science World. The Olympic Village in 2010. Now, a group of multi-million-dollar apartments and holdings of the rich. The original plan was to convert the Athlete’s Village into affordable housing for the middle-class Vancouverites. Oftentimes, economics could change government’s noble plans for the not-so-highly-privileged citizens. Those with enough money, often millionaires, benefitted from the government’s desire to recoup what it had spent big tax dollars on. Governments want us to believe that they are for the common citizens. In reality, the rich are the main beneficiaries of the governments. Governments in a democracy are for, by and of the rich people.
I wanted to tour Msgr. Dan to Granville Island, Vancouver Planetarium, Vancouver Maritime Museum, and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. But we took the train; I left my car at Metrotown parking lot. He had already toured days before the other top tourist destinations: Stanley Park, Whistler Mountain, and the Capilano Suspension Bridge. As a plant-lover, he was keen on visiting gardens. Vandussen Botanical Gardens, McMillan Bloedel Conservatory, and Queen Elizabeth Park would have been great destinations. Again, we had no car to go to those places quickly.
A few blocks from Science World was Chinatown. We walked the three blocks to the deserted streets of Chinatown. Vancouver’s Chinatown used to be the second largest Chinatown in North America. But new Chinese immigrants didn’t want to settle in Chinatown. Even younger generations Chinese preferred to live elsewhere. Chinatown is not a ghost town, far from it. But it’s no longer a bustling center of Chinese commerce and culture that it used to be.
The de facto Chinatown had moved north of the Fraser River. Richmond has become the new homes and offices and business hubs of new immigrants from Hong Kong and mainland China. The young and the rich Chinese call Richmond their home.
The Keefer Bakery, once a favorite, had closed shop. A Cebuana Chinese family owned it. We ended up buying siopao and coconut buns at a lonely bakery across from where the Keefer Bakery used to be. The old Keefer Bakery is now a Tim Horton’s shop, but no customers were in it either.
I wanted to tour Msgr. Dan to the Sun Yat Sen Garden in Chinatown. He wanted to see gardens, I remembered. Sun Yat Sen Garden was a classic example of Chinese gardens. But I became disoriented. Was the Garden east or west of Keefer Street? Maybe north? We walked back to the Science World SkyTrain station instead. We hopped on the train to get to Canada Place.
Canada Place was always a fantastic location to see and to walk around. Its giant roof mimicking white sails showed off the giant building extremely well. The sun made the white sails glisten, giving the tall buildings of Vancouver a clean and impressive front curtain. Neon lights on the white sails created kaleidoscopic shows at night.
From the promenade of Canada Place, we could see downtown Vancouver’s man-made forest of tall concrete and glass on one side and the placid blue waters of the Strait of Georgia on the other side. The Lion’s Gate Bridge on the west and the Second Narrows Bridge on the north spanned the Strait of Georgia. They connected mainland Vancouver to the cities of West Vancouver and North Vancouver. West Vancouver was home to multimillionaire Vancouverites. North Vancouver was a city dominated by factories, seaports, a mountain of sulfur waiting for export to China, Japan, and the U.S.A. The rich and the working-class Vancouverites harmoniously lived together in North Vancouver.
Hydroplanes, and seaplanes and seagulls made the placid waters of the Strait of Georgia in front of Canada Place come alive. Orange and black praying mantis-like cranes were busy at the old Port of Vancouver, a kilometer or so east of Canada Place. It was a cool afternoon perfect to stroll around Canada Place. We instead bought tickets to “Flyover Canada” to see an immersive cinematic tour.
“Flyover Canada” highlighted the majesty of Canada’s Rocky Mountain ranges. With the current trend of including Indigenous Peoples into anything Canadian, the tour also featured the native stories of the Indigenous Peoples. We sat in chairlift-style seats elevated before a large, spherical screen. The visuals were enhanced by special effects, including wind and wetness that blew in our faces as we hit the fog covers of the mountains. The freshness of mountain air and the scents of pine and evergreen forest created the illusion of flying over the landscape, moving sideways past sides of snow-covered mountains, dropping quickly down the slopes to almost the surfaces of lakes. “Flyover Canada” always awakened my height phobia.
The Church, specifically the Catholic Church of which Msgr. Dan is a diocesan head in the Philippines, has had an interesting interaction and relationship with the “poor, the least, and the last.”
The Catholic Church had suffered a black eye in Canada. The highly publicized residential schools for the children of Indigenous Peoples had shredded irreparably the religious habits and purple robes of Catholic priests and nuns. Mass grave sites found in many residential schools for the children who were forced to attend residential schools had been unearthed. The Pope and the Canadian bishops and the cardinals had apologized for the alleged atrocities committed by religious people. Non-Catholic Canadians had remained suspicious of the social actions of the religious.
So, I purposely climaxed our walk with a brief tour along the homeless people in Vancouver. The homeless people in Vancouver were predominantly Indigenous Peoples. Canadian society had never completely served the Indigenous Peoples. National reconciliation remained a dream.
Off the touristy streets of historic downtown Vancouver called Gastown, hundreds of homeless people populated the “other side” of downtown Vancouver. The sidewalks and walkways, and people themselves smelled of urine and poor hygiene. Some people were shooting drugs. Others were sleeping on bare cobbled streets and concrete sidewalks. Most were going around aimlessly like zombies or doing their day’s business, whatever it might be. All were arched on their backs.
“I noticed all of them have arched back,” Msgr. Dan softly said, his eyes filled with disbelief and compassion.
“That’s the result of their physical disabilities caused by drugs and illness. And of old age; people here age so much faster. That’s also the result of the psychological burden of being homeless, of being rejected by society, of feeling of hopelessness and isolation. They carry the weight of a cruel world, ” I philosophized.
Msgr. Dan opened, “For me that’s the best part of the tour. It keeps me grounded. It reminds me of my responsibility in taking care of the least, the lost and the last of society. I never felt unsafe because I readied myself to be vulnerable. It was immersion par excellence.”
This area of Vancouver by the crossroads of Main Street and East Hastings, where the homeless have claimed as their home, is considered the poorest part of the whole of Canada. Here “live” the downtrodden of the extremely rich and very benevolent country called Canada. Canada is indeed a country of contradictions.
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