Everything Is Sacred

A large outdoor mural in a Coast Salish artistic style. A young Indigenous girl with a flower in her hair wades in a dark pond surrounded by lily pads and cattails, while a stylized deer with decorative blue markings drinks from the water beside her. Beneath the surface, luminous blue salmon rendered in Northwest Coast formline design swim through the depths. A forest landscape is visible in the background. Text in the upper right reads "mék⁰scék əi x̌eʔ x̌eʔ — Everything is Sacred" in Halkomelem.

I pass this mural regularly. It’s at the north east corner of Templeton Street and Hastings Street in Vancouver. I couldn’t find any information on it. “Everything Is Sacred” is written in English and a language Claude AI identifies as Halkomelem, a language of the Coast Salish peoples.

It’s on the Hastings side of the Hastings East Rectifier Station. Hats …
Read the rest “Everything Is Sacred”

The Future Has Arrived – Aatl’aan K’atgwaa tluu. k_aatlaagang

I’d been going to the Hastings Community Centre for over a year before I truly noticed this wonderful mural. It was just a bunch of colour out of the corner of my eye, then one day for no particular reason I saw it.

view of "The Future has Arrived / Aatl'aan K'atgwaa Tluu. K'aatlaagang," a large-scale mural painted on the dark exterior wall of the Hastings Community Centre in Vancouver, BC. The mural depicts Northwest Coast Indigenous figures in a glowing canoe set against a cosmic, aurora-like background. The mural spans the full width of the building above the Centre's parking lot.
Close-up detail of "The Future has Arrived / Aatl'aan K'atgwaa Tluu. K'aatlaagang," a large mural featuring Northwest Coast Indigenous art style figures riding in a carved canoe against a dark, nebula-like background in deep blues, purples, and teals. The central figure wears a ceremonial mask and holds a golden sphere, flanked by a wolf or bear figure on the left and a totem-like bird figure on the right. Smaller human figures appear within the composition, which glows with bioluminescent light beneath the canoe.

I’d love to know more about the Indigenous figures, but all I could find is this from …
Read the rest “The Future Has Arrived – Aatl’aan K’atgwaa tluu. k_aatlaagang”

Stanley Park Seawall Ride

Some photos from my ride around the Stanley Park seawall this morning. The weather was amazing, though cold. That’s what extra layers are for. I only had to share the path with a handful of cyclists, so no getting stuck behind someone or being the person holding someone up. Perfect! The only other folks out that early were mostly runners.…
Read the rest “Stanley Park Seawall Ride”