Skywatch & Remembrance Day 2022

Hello friends and fellow bloggers,

Earlier in the week we had our first snowfalls and some of it stayed for a few days on my patio but melted on the streets and sidewalks in my neighbourhood. It's been cold here and autumn is well and truly over in a flash.  We've had a lot of gray skies and rain just before the snow came.  We are now moving into our winter months and the sun will be in short supply unlike further north where they get a lot of snow and a lot of winter sunshine. For most of this week we've had bright blue skies and sunshine so that has been nice.

Today is not only Skywatch Friday but it is Remembrance Day here in Canada.  Lest we Forget the sacrifices of the many who fought in war that we might have some kind of freedom. God bless them every one of them and their families.

I'm joining in with Skywatch Friday this week. 

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful weekend. 

Sky Photos & Greening End Of Life

Happy Friday friends and fellow bloggers,

I took a few day shots and some night shots to share with you today. The sky was nice and  mostly clear. The weather temperature has taken a noticeable downturn. I felt a bit chilled in early evening but I had taken a shawl to wear if it got too cool. 

I had a busy day attending a specialist appointment. After that I decided to get a foot reflexology session because I haven't had one in a very long while and I felt my feet needed a tune up. Once I had my feet attended to I went for a quick bite of Japanese food before heading to a downtown church for a seminar called "Greening Your Death and Aligning Your Values".  It was a fully subscribed 2 hour session which was information intensive.

 

The seminar was held at the St. Andrews Wesley Church in downtown Vancouver. It brought attendees up to date on alternatives to traditional burials and gave us some insight into the different disposition alternatives and their impacts on the environment.  The greening of final disposition is not very advanced in my province despite some of these issues being talked about for decades. There are however a lot more people working to try and change things;  most of them seem to be women.

I've been looking into this issue here and there for many years but I haven't actually done anything about setting out my disposition wishes. What I have done so far is purchase the burial plot and given some thought to whether I want a funeral service or not. Tonight I met a death doula, well several actually. One of them suggested we sit down and write down my disposition wishes in detail so I can leave a package for my loved ones most of whom don't want to talk about the subject. Having looked after several loved ones at the time of their passing, I know that pre-planning will be a great comfort and help to my loved ones once I am no longer here to take care of things for myself.  This will be a good project for me to work on in the new year.

Now without further ado, here are some sky photos.

The bottom 2 photos are taken at the steps to the Vancouver Art Gallery. This exhibit has been here for a few years now and commemorates the Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women in Canada as well as the recently identified unmarked graves of many, many Aboriginal children found at several sites of former residential schools. These are very sad incidents of violence and racism against Aboriginal people which the Canadian people, Canadian governments and Aboriginal people (Indian, Inuit and Métis) are working to overcome and heal. It will be a long but necessary process.

Linking up with Sky Watch this week. Thank you for stopping by!

A Hot Day in July

Thanks for stopping by. I'm a bit late for Skywatch Friday but here we go. It was a rather hot day and the sky had nary a cloud.

 ~~~

On Friday, dear hubby and I took a far flung city tour on several different train routes of the sky train system.  I'd never been on these routes and I thought it would be a great way for Jonah to get an overview of the city and for me to get an idea of where I can get to on these routes. 

We set out on our city safari after fortifying ourselves with a large breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast.  Have a look at our intended routes by viewing the map of the city's train system. 

We started our journey on the Expo line shown in dark blue on the map.  It's the oldest line of the Sky Train rapid transit system and is called the Expo Line after the 1986 World Exposition held in Vancouver. It was built to help move people around the city during the World Fair. Several other train lines have been added to the city's transit system since then and I have used the Expo line to the downtown and the train to the airport.  I've never taken the train out to the suburbs of Surrey or to Coquitlam.  I've never had a reason to go out to these suburbs but recently a good friend moved out to Coquitlam and she would like me to visit her. 

 

 

We decided to go as far as the train will take us so we followed the Expo Line (blue) out to King George station.  We didn't get off there just looked around and I was pleasantly surprised to see that a college and a satellite office of the Simon Fraser University are located just steps from the station. That's good to know.  It was a rather hot day and the train we were on for the first leg of the journey to King George Station in Surrey took about 1 hour. With the rocking motion Jonah fell asleep. On our return journey he stood up so he could view everything out the windows.

After that we got back onto the Expo Line and travelled north then west to Columbia station.  There we transferred to go east and north to Production Way-University.  Once there we transferred to the Millennium Line (yellow) and went all the way to Lafarge Lake-Douglas.  This is the last stop on this train route.  I enjoyed seeing the  fountain and the pretty flowers after making the short walk from the train stop.

 

This man was walking 5 dogs at once.

I've been wanting to go to this man made lake for awhile now. At Christmas they have a light display and so maybe next Christmas I will get there. It also seems to be a place where more and more festivals are happening too.  DH and I enjoyed the quiet and the scenery and made loose plans to pack a lunch and refreshments and head out there to spend the day enjoying the tranquility one day. I was wondering what all the tents are for just beyond the water. Apparently a Caribbean Festival starts on Saturday for the weekend. I'm sure it will be a much busier place this weekend.

Thanks for dropping by!