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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Saturday 14 Feb Walking club

Today we headed out west from Britannia Centre to the Chinatown area looking for more wall murals ... Lorna, Maria, Linda, Flora and I walked along E. Georgia through Strathcona and across the foot bridge over the railway tracks into downtown ...

At Vernon and E Georgia, just past Quest Food Exchange, we came to a beautiful grand home in the Queen Anne style, similar to Victorian but broader with a pillared front porch and less ornamentation ... Linda took front and side photos to attach to the blog ...

Between Vernon and Glen on Keefer Street is the Seymour School, the original 3-storey structure in soft yellow siding with Grecian window treatment and sculpted eaves ... this building is attached to another 3-storey brick building with white window trim and eaves ... both buildings are architecturally very pleasing and well built ... we didn't see a dedication plaque for information about when the two wings were built ...

At Keefer and Campbell stands a two-storey church with flat straight walls and a modest cross at the peak over the front entrance ... this is the Chiesa del Sacro Cuore, an Italian Roman Catholic Church built in 1905 ... it must have been constructed with limited funds as most Catholic churches are built of stone with buttressed exterior walls, large arched windows, recessed entrances and wide steps ... next door to the church is a two-storey square apartment block ... the sign above the door reads, "Kaleri Tekakwitha Native Catholic Centre ...

Near Chinatown, at Gore Avenue and E Cordova stands the tall impressive off-white church, St. James Anglican ... dedicated to Father Clinton in 1925, the uppermost section is set above and back from the main structure, elegant and grand in its simplicity ... ... the architecture is reminiscent of cathedrals of southern Europe, ... Linda was not able to get a photo of this church as her camera was not working ...

Diagonally opposite St. James stands the Firehall Arts Centre which had no history posted on the exterior of the building ... (http://www.firehallartscentre.ca/aboutus.html) ... next to the Firehall is the Vancouver Police Museum established in 1932 to honor "those who have gone before and those who come after" in the service of the community ... a statue of a policeman holding a child's hand stands above the dedication plaque ... Linda was able to get a close-up shot of the statue ...

As we carried on to Hastings trying to make sense of the map showing locations of wall murals, we met two young men who asked if we were planning to attend the Women's Memorial March which was to commence soon from the Carnegie Centre ... the young men didn't know who had organized the walk but it was to commemorate the dozens of young women who mysteriously disappeared from the DTES ... banners were strung out above the fence at the centre and a speech was being presented to the few dozen people standing around ... as we passed by, I caught some of his words, "... and a new trial may be scheduled for the remaining 26 women whose lives were taken and whose stories have not been heard ..." ... my guess is he was referring to the Picton murder trials, during which only 6 or 7 of the victims were represented ...

Carnegie Centre is the hub of the downtown east side ... converted from the original library to a community centre, it provides a lunchroom, washrooms, meeting rooms and activities for east side residents ... it is also the focal haunt of homeless people, especially since they were recently moved out of Pigeon Park at Carrall and E Hastings ...

We never did find the wall murals we were looking for as the map had placed them in the wrong sites ... so, next week, we are determined to locate those murals ...

We returned to Britannia Seniors Centre to enjoy a light lunch, pastries, coffee and Hershey Valentine Kisses ...

Contributor Virginia

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