Chapter Nine – US & Canada (6/25)
Seattle, Victoria & Vancouver
Seattle, Washington US, June 25, 2025
The tide has come back in and the monstrous cruise ship that docked across from us last night has grandly departed. It was only here to off load passengers and on load passengers; 3,000 of them. Larger ships can carry twice that amount. From early in the morning to about 10 o'clock people were disembarking. Rolling suitcases, hefting backpacks, lining up for buses to the airport, catching a cab from an endless line of multi-colored cabs, single and in couples with children or without, a little weary, distracted, they are thinking about the trip home, the airports, as they leave their 7 to 10 day escape, everything included, a taste of the elite life. Here come the new passengers. Their steps are bouncy with anticipation, couples and singles, family groups, rolling suitcases, hefting backpacks, carrying totes, they are eager and excited. Expectations are high. Cruise ship tourism, a phenomenon of our times.
The low hanging fruits. That's what we went for in the beginning. Our numbers were small; we had to share knowledge and resources to survive. Gathering clams and kelp in the shallows, picking the ripe berries, the wild asparagus on land, testing herbs and mushrooms on ourselves, hunting. It took a very long time but when all that was running out, on to new territory, find ‘untouched’ lands, learn from the native people then push them aside, more elbow room to build homes, families, pastures for sheep and cattle, cities, fortunes. Natural resources get harder to find, people dig deeper, clear further, find the limits, exceed them. The best and easiest has been bought, sold and resold. We pay to live. Some can't afford it. They are just lazy, and should work harder! No excuses, we are all in competition now. Survival of the fittest. An elite economist's interpretation of Darwin's research. The richest, by extension, are the fittest. Money is the decider. The better you understand and operate within the economic system the more fit you are to survive. You are given permission to live. Leave compassion to the religions, and their super compassionate representatives; that small handful. Some religions are also generous. They don't just listen to your grief and comfort you. They give you an out. Just repent before you die and all the creepy, insensitive, immoral, illegal stuff you did during your life will be forgiven. You can progress to that Oasis above, that Utopia, where there is no need for money, no one starves or is homeless. Sounds like something people thought was possible to do on Earth. Something they sang about in folk songs.
Victoria, Canada. June 28, 2025
Approaching Victoria, the sky is breaking apart, pressing light through the grey remnants of night. From a distance homes, apartment houses and office buildings scale the landscape like mange. But, once you are on the ground, walking around in the bright sun, this city is pretty.
Some places are just very pleasant. Victoria is one of these. Temperate weather warmed by soft Hawaiian currents. Gardens everywhere. Everyone seems to be a gardener. Flowers of all kinds, evergreens tastefully arranged against each other, every texture and shade of green. No weeds. I think I saw three dandelions. Roses. Roses, every color of red, pink and yellow. I smelled the roses, literally. And each scent was different. Some sweet, some sweeter, some spicy sweet, some spicy, and some with no scent. The people are nice too. They very politely refrain from speaking about the serious events playing out in my country. They have pretty money. The older neighborhoods still have some older homes, made of wood. Even the gardens around abandoned homes or homes that the owners are too elderly to care for, these gardens are still beautiful in their disarray. They were tended so carefully for so long that the plants seem to remember how to arrange themselves attractively.
If I had known about Victoria when I was younger I would have thought seriously about living there.
“It would be wonderful if we could all just agree that we are all the same species.” Joe, a passenger on Odyssey.
Vancouver, Canada July 1, 2025
People don't believe in Mickey Mouse anymore. I just wanted to say that.
We are docked behind a Disney cruise ship. It has a gold emblem with Mickey painting the stern logo. It backed into the dock just before us, inching so slowly for such a long time I began to imagine that it was preparing to tip up and become a skyscraper alongside the many others that brood over the harbor.
Vancouver Is disappointingly large. In my imagination I saw it smaller. The reality is another big city. From the two cruise ships that preceded us to the docks, the Norwegian Something and the Disney Wonder, passengers poured out like ants into the city. Mickey Mouse headbands blending with the flow and being absorbed into the local throng as effortlessly as the Pied Piper vanished the children into his cave.
Canadian geese are flying over the city in V formation, six on one side, four on the other. There is a single wind generator at the very top of one of the mountains on the far side of the Fraser River. A path is cut through the evergreen trees leading up to it. It is alone up there, probably running something useful. Below is the busy harbor, lots of comings and goings, ferry boats, tugs dragging barges on long lines, seaplanes landing, taking off, pleasure boats race by, sail boats pass trailing their dinghy. Under a conveyor on the opposite shore, a pyramid has formed of a bright yellow sulfur, in the sunlight it glows as if lit from within. High cliffs in the background have snow in their valleys and hanging like a white bib from their peaks.
It is Canada Day. Planes speed on the water, lift and disappear into the sky. The theme is set. Things are done differently here. It is a comfort. Things need to be done differently, new solutions, more people thinking. They have constables, not police, they want to be helpful, they don't carry guns. It is nice to know there is a place where people want to help other people. And Canadians have a sense of humor. They shot off cannons to celebrate their day of independence. The sound reverberated off the walls of the city's tall office buildings.
