My New Wheelchair Arrived!

 The most exciting and challenging thing that's happened in the past few weeks, while you've been visiting B.C. on this blog, has been the arrival of my new wheelchair.  After I started the process with my Occupational Therapist in, April, went through three trials, and waited what seemed like forever, it was finally delivered three weeks ago.  

Here it is.  Sorry you don't see much of it, but let me show you how it can make me stand up.  Keep your eye on that painting of Georgian Bay behind me as a reference point.

Here you can see the extra fittings that have to be used to prevent me from falling down.  There are knee braces in front, and a chest brace I can lean against.  If you look closely you can see there's an extra wide belt across my chest that will hold me from leaning too far forward.

And now, up we go!  Remember that painting as a reference point.  It doesn't make me stand up totally, and I'm not quite vertical, but I'm told being able to stand up this much is very good for my body, and since I want to live a good few years yet, it seems worthwhile..

Perhaps you get a better impression from the side.  I'm doing this twice a day for ten minutes, and it seems to help with blood flow.  Surprisingly, since I haven't stood up like this for seven years, I've had no changing blood pressure problems at all.  My OT (Occupational Therapist) will be very impressed.  And even if it looks like I'm still half sitting down, I can assure you that it feels like I'm standing!

It's also easy to do.  I can readily slip the knee and chest braces in place, and do up the chest strap.  Then I can select the controls and touch the joy stick to go up and down.  I originally decided to go ahead with the new wheelchair because the old one was proving less reliable; hopefully this one will operate perfectly for years to come.  Government and insurance programs pay for about 2/3 of this, but don't ask the total!

Fort Langley and the 49th Parallel

We're going to finish our visit to B.C. with a history lesson; it's one I found fascinating.  One day Mrs. F.G. and I drove down the highway to Fort Langley, a historic site with ongoing re-enactment illustrating life in a fur trading post of 200 years ago.  And it ties us to the earliest exploration of the west coast of North America.

There was an interesting display of the barrels they used for shipping food, and of barrel making.  Encouraged by the local Kwantlen people the fort took salmon and cranberries in trade as well as furs, hence the need for the barrels..

Here a visiting student is using a draw knife to try making a barrel stave.  She was with one of several visiting groups of students that day.

Of course they had a blacksmith's forge.

I had an interesting chat with this fur trader, ending up learning about his real life back home in Ontario.

Furs were of course the main coin of the fur trade.

Hudson's Bay blankets were a popular trading good.

If there was a key ingredient to the fur trade it was the famous beaver hat, made out of felted beaver pelts.  This drove the huge demand for furs back in Europe.

I found it quite an interesting history lesson getting the boundaries between the U.S. and Canada straight in my mind.  I know where they are of course, but I hadn't linked them to the fur traders and explorers of over 200 years ago.

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 on the American side (the dark green), involved an enormous area of land from Louisiana to Montana purchased from France (basically the Mississippi River drainage basin on the west side of the river).  The Lewis and Clark Expedition was sent out in 1804 to explore this area.  They reached the Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805.  At this point a huge tract of land from present-day Texas to northern California was still part of Mexico.  The Oregon Country was an American label; not a British one.

 

On the Canadian side. although it's not shown on this map, Simon Fraser, a fur trader from the North-west Company, reached the mouth of the Fraser River in 1808.  The Fraser River reaches the Strait of Georgia just north of the 49th parallel and Fort Langley sat just a few miles up the river.  The mouth of the Fraser River is just a few blocks north of Boundary Bay, so-named because the 49th parellel runs right through the middle of the bay.

So in 1846 when politicians in Washington were negotiating a boundary from the Rockies west, they looked at these explorers from nearly 50 years before, and decided the boundary had to be at the 49th parallel.  It already existed at this parallel from Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains.  Those who argued for '54.40 or bust' lost their case, but there were plenty of later disputes over the San Juan Islands, settled in the aftermath of the Pig War.

And thus I learned the link between Fort Langley, the fur trade and the Canadian/U.S. border.

Farm Markets and Great Blue Herons

We saw a number of other interesting things while we were in B.C. now nearly 10 years ago, so here's a motley collection before we finish.  We visited several local farm markets, as our daughter preferred to 'buy local' when possible.  We also visited, more than once, a Great Blue Heron Sanctuary which was fascinating.  And of course there were the waterfalls.

Among the three farm markets we visited, this one was interesting for its educational programs.  This store not only had live animals but also an operating dairy with robotic milking you could watch.

Outdoors there were turkeys, a goat, a pony and pigs.  Inside was the dairy operation.  

And for each there was information provided in the hopes you would learn a little about where your food came from!  These farm stores operated by bringing together crops from numerous farms in the Fraser Valley.

The Great Blue Heron Sanctuary on the banks of the Vedder River, east of Abbotsford, was a popular destination.  As you can see by the map, there are several trails you can walk, including the observation trail (the purple one) where you can see the herons from a safe distance.  The heronry is the lighter patch of green forest.

And this is what we got to see, since we were not there during nesting season.  Great Blue Herons are colonial nesting birds, building huge nests high in the branches.

And again there was some educational info provided.

Right outside the interpretive centre were some hummingbird feeders.  This was an Anna's Hummingbird, known only from the west coast, so I had never seen one.

And finally I'll leave you with another waterfall, Devon Falls, located right inside the subdivisions of Abbotsford.  One more history lesson and then we'll move back to Ontario.

Clayburn Creek Trail

Our daughter lived at that time, in a mountainside subdivision bordered by deep ravines, and there was a trail down one of those ravines (there was a road down the other).  The trail followed the route of an old narrow gauge railway that led to a brick factory in the village of Clayburn.

The entrance we followed to the walking trail goes right between two houses, and is easy to find.

Once you get there, it's a smooth gently-sloping trail, often 10 feet wide.  I could picture a small freight train going down the trail quite easily.

Here's a map of the Clayburn Creek Trail, winding down the ravine.  You're never far from the houses, but they are far above you through the rainforest.  The valuable clay deposits are uphill on Sumas Mountain to the east.  'Burn' is the Scottish term for a creek; you can see how it got its name.

As long as you're heading downhill it's an easy walk - until you come to those stairs!

I took it as an opportunity to learn a couple of western trees.  This is Western Hemlock, almost identical to Eastern Hemlock, but it grows so much larger.

And this is Western Red Cedar, similar to Eastern White Cedar, but also it grows so much bigger!

And this fallen leaf is the Bigleaf Maple, with deeply cut leaves that are almost twice as big as a typical Sugar Maple leaf.  This leaf was about 8" across!

It certainly gave me an introduction to the west coast rainforest.  There was thick moss everywhere!  I had never seen anything like it!

And then of course, the going downhill stretch ends and you're faced with those stairs.  They are very well built and quite attractive, but they go on forever!  If memory serves I think I counted 365 steps!

The trail doesn't go this far, but originally it went to the tiny company village of Clayburn, of which the Clayburn General Store is the most obvious evidence.  This was B.C.'s first company town, complete with houses for workers, a church, a school, the store and a doctor.  Several of these are provincially-designated heritage buildings today.  The bricks they made are found all over Vancouver, and were shipped worldwide.  You can look up the details on Google.

In Search of the Hidden Waterfalls

 I spotted a tiny note referencing 'Hidden Waterfalls' on Google Maps someplace near our daughter's home, but unfortunately it was in the middle of undifferentiated forest cover.  Never-the-less I was determined to find these, and roped in our grandson as a guide.  It took two trips, but eventually we did find them.

This was the best of them, once we eventually found them.  I had no tripod with me, and these necessitated absurdly long hand-held exposures, so some are a little blurry, but our grandson and I had a grand adventure.

The stream was tumbling over rocky sections, and slushing down flatter bedrock.

There was no open trail here, we were bushwacking, and in most places branches blocked my camera's view, at least partly.

In other places we were struggling down steep-sided fern-covered valley walls.

Moss on the huge old stumps looked like a miniature forest itself.

And someplace we came across this sign, in a place where cattle had absolutely no business being!

Often I thought the view of the rushing stream was better than the small waterfall.  Though sorry for the blurriness!  But it was indeed a grand adventure!

Bald Eagles!

 Bald Eagles are a rare sighting here in southern Ontario, but we saw so many in B.C. that they became familiar! They were perched in trees, guarding huge nests, or catching fish.  It was just such a surprise compared to back home here!

It got to the point where it was not unusual to see a large mature Bald Eagle with its white head wherever we were driving.

Yes, this is a picture of those swans, which spend a lot of their winter on the fields of the lower 

Fraser Valley.  But did you notice the eagle?  And the huge nest?

Here's a close-up for you.

And here's an isolated eagle clear against a backdrop of forested hills.

On yet another occasion we visited a Great Blue Heron Sanctuary, spotting an eagle high in the treetops.  Before I could get a picture we heard a high=pitched scream and a second eagle flew in to join the first!

And here's your closer view.

Of course we frequently saw eagles overhead, such majestic birds.  This is the only view I might typically see here in southern Ontario.

Driving toward Chilliwack one day we saw cars parked along the road, and photographers with big telephoto lenses.  Well, that was a signal to stop!  We were overlooking a stretch of the Harrison River known as Nicomen Slough, and there were both eagles and gulls splashing in the shallows.  I think we saw eight Bald Eagles here altogether.

Here are three of them, feeding on salmon on the shallows.  I hope you get the impression that there was another Bald Eagles everywhere we went, for that's what we saw!  Such a memorable experience!

Cascade Falls

 On our first adventure on that trip out west, we headed for Cascade Falls, on the north shore of the Fraser River.  It was a short but steep hike up to see the falls.

We drove over the Fraser river and into the lower mountains.

After a bit of the hike we came to the stairs.

The whole trail passed through more of the west coast rainforest, with prolific moss and Sword Ferns.

And then we came to the falls itself, a beautiful cascade..

Of course I fiddled around with camera settings.

The river below the falls was a pretty as the falls themselves!

And then we were back to the start of the trail.