In this week’s final Weekly Photo Challenge of the year Ben asks us to “share a photo of something that says “resilient” to you. It could be a local landmark that has survived through the decades …. or of a ritual or tradition that you (or people in your community) have successfully preserved. Show us something that has endured.”
What could be more fitting for this final day of the year than this photo from the Remembrance Day Ceremony around the “local landmark” of the Cenotaph in Victory Square here in Vancouver on November 11th this year. It is an event that has been respectfully preserved and attended by many, many thousands each year and is certainly something that has “endured,” as it has all over the world.
If you would like to see more images from this year’s ceremony and read a special story that I wrote about it, open drawer 21 of my New Year’s Eve Retrospecteave that I posted today. No, that is not a misspelling and the reference to the drawer will become quickly evident.
On yet another day of terror our sympathy and thoughts are with those killed and injured in Istanbul today to whom I would like to dedicate today’s post. We will all need to remain resilient in the year ahead.
The title to today’s post is explained in backdrop to a life, which I submitted to this week’s Discover Challenge: Finding Your Place. I hadn’t planned on a Part 2 but after those crisp, clear blue skies last week the weather changed and it was snow, snow, snow, creating a whole new beauty to magical Kitsilano Beach where it felt yesterday as if I had stepped into a Lowry painting.
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This final image seems to be the perfect way to wish everyone Happy Holidays
Yesterday was one of those perfect days in Vancouver that needs to be shared.
The North Shore mountains, the West End skyline and the shadowed sands of Kitsilano Beach.
Looking out above the logs to English Bay and the snow-covered peaks beyond.
A perfect afternoon for bicycling through the park.
Who wouldn’t want to stroll in the afternoon sunshine on such a day?
No surprise to those of you who follow The Changing Palette that I would choose this special place to write about in response to this week’s Discover Challenge from the Daily Post: Finding Your Place, in which we are asked by Cheri to bring a place alive that means something to us. But more than that, Cheri writes, “the heart of this challenge is to go further and show how or why this place is particularly special”.
I have shared so many photos from Kitsilano Beach and English Bay over my nearly four years of blogging that the “how” is really self evident.
But what about the “why”? Well, here is my answer.
In 1975, on our first wedding anniversary, my wife and I came to Vancouver from England. We moved into a one bedroom apartment in Kitsilano just a few hundred yards from Kitsilano Beach Park. The following March, on one of our regular walks along the path you see in all of the photos, my wife went into labor and a few hours later our beautiful daughter was born.
The beach was the perfect place to walk with the pram or stroller whatever the time of year, and soon a little brother joined our daughter on those same walks. It soon became a place to stomp in puddles, to take training wheels off bicycles, to bury dad in the sand, to laugh on the swings and slides, to walk with my wonderful late parents whenever they visited, to enjoy the four seasons with the changing colours of autumn, the few days of frost and snow in winter to be followed by the warmth of spring and the heat of summer filled with magnificent skies and those unforgettable sunsets creating silhouettes of lovers sitting on logs or people playing beach volley ball in the dying light.
I could go on and on but I’m beginning to sound like Dylan Thomas. I think you can understand why this place is so special, so meaningful to me, as it has been and continues to be, the beautiful backdrop to our lives over these past forty years.
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Yesterday’s walk, as it always does, lifted my spirits at a time when they are being crushed by the daily news and pictures of new atrocities a world away to the people of Aleppo, particularly to the children; and also as we remember the tragedy of the murdered children of Sandy Hook Elementary School four years ago today. I know you feel as I do that these moments must never be forgotten and so it is with a heavy heart that I pause and dedicate today’s post to the memory of all of these precious lost souls.
Private William Teichrib, South Saskatchewan Regiment, R.C.I.C.
I never knew William Teichrib, but I do now. He died at the age of 22 in northern Belgium. I was introduced to him by his proud relatives today at the 92nd Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph in Victory Square here in Vancouver.
As always it was a moving ceremony attended by many thousands, young and old, all of us standing reverently listening to the Prayer of Remembrance, the playing of the Last Post, and in quiet thought during the Two Minute Silence; then The Lament played on the bagpipes by Pipe Major Vern Kennedy, The Rouse, the commemorative Flypast by 407 Maritime Patrol Squadron, and the singing of In Flanders Fields by the Vancouver Bach Youth Choir.
Not far from where my wife and I were standing I noticed a family proudly holding the photograph of a loved one together with his medals and regalia.
At the end of the service I made my way over to them and introduced myself. I then asked if they could tell me about their fallen family member, which they were only too happy to agree to as well as allowing me to take their photograph.
It was then that I was introduced to Private William Teichrib by his two great grand nieces Vanessa and Sarah and his grand nephew George. I learnt that he was born in Morton Manitoba and died on October 15th 1944 at the Battle of the Schelte in Northern Belgium serving in the South Saskatchewan Regiment. This was Vanessa and Sarah’s first Remembrance Day Ceremony and it was clear that they were so proud to be there to keep alive the memory of their great grand uncle who like so many died too young.
We attend the Remembrance Day Ceremony in Victory Square every year but meeting Vanessa, Sarah and George made today’s ceremony more meaningful than ever. Just one story among so many, but one that moved us deeply.
Once home I searched William Teichrib’s name and immediately found it on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial of the Veteran Affairs Canada website and learnt that he is buried at the Schoonselhof Cemetery in Belgium located in a suburb in Antwerp. Through the website I was also able to find his name in the Second World War Book of Remembrance on Page 459, which is displayed in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower in Ottawa on October 3rd each year.
Now it was time to learn about the Battle of the Schelte, which I am ashamed to confess was new to me. Once again through the Veteran Affairs Canada website I was able to learn about this vital battle which opened up the port of Antwerp to be used to supply the Allies in north-west Europe. The battle took place in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from October 2 to November 8, 1944, with the first convoy carrying Allied supplies able to unload in Antwerp on November 29. At the end of the five-week offensive, the victorious First Canadian Army had taken 41,043 prisoners, but suffered 12,873 casualties (killed, wounded, or missing), 6,367 of whom were Canadians.
Private William Teichrib, now a name and no longer a statistic, was one of them.
This post is dedicated to his memory with thanks and gratitude to all of our fallen heroes on this day of remembrance.
Walking under the Granville Bridge on that magical morning that I posted about last week, this advertisement for a show running on the Island this month reflects how the results of today are very much in all of our minds at the moment. Using a bridge analogy I wonder if the call will be One No Trump by the end of the day. Good luck to all of my friends south of the 49th. You are in my thoughts 🙂
In July last year Ben challenged us to split our photos in two for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Half and Half. I had taken a photograph of the Wall Centre here in Vancouver surrounded by clouds and titled my post for the challenge Both Sides Now. Perhaps you remember it.
For this week’s Discover Challenge: Song Ben asks us this time to “Tell us a story about a piece of music that stayed with you.” How could I not repeat my love of Joni Mitchell’s song Both Sides Now as I explained in this quote from my post in July 2015:
“I took this photo with my iPhone a few weeks ago looking up at the Wall Centre here in Vancouver. The words of Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now from her album Clouds, instantly came to my mind and a moment of warm reverie came over me as I looked up at the clouds and remembered hearing her voice for the first time in 1969. I was driving my old yellow Triumph TR2 down the Old Kent Road in London, and as she started singing on the car radio I had to pull over to listen to the rest of the song, a magical moment frozen in time and one which has remained with me ever since.”
Both my love of the song and of clouds themselves have never left me. We are fortunate indeed where we live in Vancouver to enjoy glorious sunsets throughout the year, so often accompanied by wonderful cloud formations. My camera is always to hand to record these masterpieces of nature that surround us every day. What better way to share them with you, both as a gallery and a slideshow, and accompanied once again by the unforgettable voice of Joni Mitchell singing one of her greatest songs.
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.
For this week Discover Challenge: Flâneur Krista asks us to “Observe your city, town, street, or patch of earth and report back — in your favorite medium.”
No surprise that the patches of earth that I love to feature on The Changing Palette, as you know, are here on Kitsilano Beach Park in Vancouver with views out to English Bay.
Yesterday’s morning walk at sunrise was rewarded with these glorious Fall colors in the park…
the silhouetted figures seen between the trees…
and the tankers illuminated out in the Bay.
One final image from the walk you might recognize as I used for an eerie backdrop in my post for this weeks Photo Challenge: Transmogrify.
What could be more fitting for this final day of the year than this photo from the Remembrance Day Ceremony around the “local landmark” of the Cenotaph in Victory Square here in Vancouver on November 11th this year. It is an event that has been respectfully preserved and attended by many, many thousands each year and is certainly something that has “endured,” as it has all over the world.
If you would like to see more images from this year’s ceremony and read a special story that I wrote about it, open drawer 21 of my New Year’s Eve Retrospecteave that I posted today. No, that is not a misspelling and the reference to the drawer will become quickly evident.
On yet another day of terror our sympathy and thoughts are with those killed and injured in Istanbul today to whom I would like to dedicate today’s post. We will all need to remain resilient in the year ahead.
thechangingpalette 