Grand Boulevard Residents Association

A BUSY TWO MONTHS

Your Grand Boulevard Residents Association (GBRA) has had a very busy September and October planning and preparing for two events in October. The first was an All Candidates Meeting at Sutherland Secondary on October 4. It took a bit of back-and-forth between myself and the School Board Rentals coordinator, and then the City Elections Office for the grant to hold the meeting. We rented the Sutherland small gym and 200 chairs, when we weren’t even sure how many people would come. The resulting delay meant that we couldn’t advertise the meeting until a few days before Oct.4. So we stuck notices on poles and posts around Grand Boulevard.

Thirteen of the fourteen candidates for the City of North Van (CNV) Council and about 100 voters attended. Our format was similar to our previous Civic Election All Candidates Meetings in 2018 and earlier. But one thing stood out as very different this year: Continue reading →

Great Grand Boulevard Pumpkin Walk 2022

Hi Neighbours,

This is a heads-up about the Pumpkin Walk that the Grand Boulevard Residents Association (GBRA) is now planning for October 29, 2022, from 4:00 – 7:00 p.m. Last year was the first Pumpkin Walk, on Saturday, October 30, 2021. The City of North Van organized it with lots of help from community organizations, including GBRA, and first responders. And the weather was excellent!

The most important element of the Pumpkin Walk is Continue reading →

The Hidden Life of TREES, Part 2

When I first wrote about Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Hidden Life of TREES (2015), I couldn’t help feeling so proud of the research which UBC’s Dr. Suzanne Simard wrote about in Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (2021). I feel so fortunate to be living in the best neighbourhood of the North Shore, with Grand Boulevard and its twelve blocks of ‘parkland’, including so many gorgeous, humongous trees!

Left: Spruce             Right: Big Leaf Maple

Now, I want to tell you a bit more about Continue reading →

The Hidden Life of TREES

I’m once again fascinated by a book I’ve borrowed from the library: The Hidden Life of TREES: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben (2015). I learned about it when I went to a Metro Vancouver Regional Parks (MVRP) event at Pacific Spirit Park (UBC) in June, called “The Secret Life of Trees”, led by a park interpreter, from 9:30 to noon. We learned about the things Dr. Suzanne Simard wrote about in her book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (2021). And participants were shown Peter’s book in which he refers to Suzanne’s findings about trees sending chemical signals to each other through the fungal networks around their root tips. He also mentions the “wood wide web” (underground) that Suzanne has been researching for years.

Peter writes about the enormous underground network of Continue reading →

GARAGE SALES

What ever happened to garage sales? I used to love seeing the home-made signs around the neighbourhood, and making room in my schedule to visit a few of them. Did COVID put an end to them? …in this unprecedented time of ‘tightening our belts’? …after all the financial stress? Well, when I visited a local organic eggs distributor, I was told that the response to COVID had built such an atmosphere of fear that people wouldn’t buy his homegrown-hens’ eggs. Nobody wanted to risk potentially coming in contact with the virus. Imagine!

So I thought to find out what’s happening with that great tradition of Continue reading →

BITTEN

Last weekend I went to a farm in Aldergrove to help clear up the garden overgrowth. It’s actually an orchard, but it has different gardens and shelters and fields. As I was collecting the tall buttercups and other ‘weeds’, to put them into a wheelbarrow and bring them to a trailer, I felt a prick at my wrist. I looked at it and saw a tiny bit of blood, which I wiped away. It was itchy, but I continued working. It wasn’t painful, but I had to wipe the bit of blood a second and third time in the next few minutes, before it stopped bleeding.

I was trying to think how I had been bitten—maybe by an ant. No, I’ve been bitten by an ant in my backyard, and it’s a sharp prick that happens sometimes repeatedly, until I manage to get it out of my pant leg, shirt sleeve or glove. Maybe a bee or a wasp? No, I’d feel a lot more pain and would probably hear and/or see the Continue reading →