Three buses will take visitors in a “loop route” throughout CFB Naden and then the Dockyard sections of of the base each night.  A typical tour lasts approximatelu 25 minutes.

Visitors are to go to CFB Esquimalt main gates on Admirals Road for parking and to drop off non-perishable food items and/or cash donations for the Mustard Seed Food Bank, purchase hot chocolate, and board shuttles.  Be sure you do not miss out on this event….the lights on the Destroyers are amazing!!

Photo Credit: CFB Esquimalt

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But the highlight for everyone (especiallly the children) will be the stories told by Santa himself in his very own cozy living room, followed by special appearances by Christmas Elves or by the great Magician David Wilson.

flickr:keepitsurreal

The Festival of Lights will be running from December 5 until January 4 from 4:30pm til 9:30pm.

The VanDusen Botanical Garden will be closed Dec.25
Cost for addmission is adults $11; youth and seniors $8; children $6 or you can get a family ticket for $25.

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T & T Supermarket – So you’ve seen supermarkets? Unless your hometown is Hong Kong or Singapore, you haven’t seen one like this. Just have a look at the seafood display inside the doors: king crab, scallops, three different kinds of oysters, lobster, and geoducks. Farther in is a host of other wondrous products, including strange Asian fruits like rambutan, lychee, and the pungent durian. Browse, maybe pick up something you don’t recognize!

Outside, walk 1 block east on Keefer Street to Taylor Street. Andy Livingstone Park is farther ahead to your right, but to continue the tour turn left on Taylor Street and walk 1 block north to Pender Street. Turn right on Pender and walk 1 block. Now you’re in one of North America’s most populous Chinatowns. Our first Chinatown stop, at 8 W. Pender St., is the:

Sam Kee Building – The world’s thinnest office building — just shy of 1.5m deep (4 ft. 11 in. to be exact) — was Sam Kee’s way of thumbing his nose at both the city and his greedy next-door neighbor. In 1912, the city expropriated most of Kee’s land in order to widen Pender Street but refused to compensate him for the tiny leftover strip. Kee’s neighbor, meanwhile, hoped to pick up the leftover sliver dirt-cheap. The building was Kee’s response. Huge bay windows helped maximize the available space, as did the extension of the basement well out underneath the sidewalk (note the glass blocks in the pavement).

Just behind the Sam Kee Building is Shanghai Alley, which just 40 years ago was jam-packed with stores, restaurants, a pawnshop, a theater, rooming houses, and a public bath. (Canton Alley, on your right between E. Pender and E. Hastings sts., still gives an idea of what these teeming alleyways looked like a few decades ago. More interesting is the Chinese Freemason’s building, just across the street at 1 W. Pender. This building could be a metaphor for the Chinese experience in Canada. On predominantly Anglo Carrall Street, the building is the picture of Victorian conformity. On the Pender Street side, on the other hand, the structure is exuberantly Chinese.

Walk 1 block farther (east) on Pender Street and you’ll come to the:
 

Chinese Cultural Centre/Dr. Sun Yat-sen Park & Chinese Classical Garden - A modern building with an impressive traditional gate, the cultural center provides services and programs for the neighborhood’s thousands of Chinese-speaking residents. Straight ahead as you enter the courtyard, a door set within a wall leads into the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Park, a small urban park with a pond, walkways, and a nice gift shop, Silk Road Art Trading Co., which sells scaled-down replicas of the ancient terra-cotta warriors unearthed in the tomb of Chinese Emperor Qon Shi Huang. Admission to the park is free.

Adjoining the park, and accessible through another small doorway to the right of it, is the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden. Modeled after a Ming Period (1368-1644) scholar’s retreat in the Chinese city of Suzhou, this garden is definitely worth a visit. Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), for whom the park and garden are named, is known as the father of modern China.

Exit the Chinese Classical Garden by the gate on the east side, turn left on Columbia Street, and you’ll find the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum and Archives at 555 Columbia St.

From here, continue on Columbia Street up to Pender, turn right and continue east, peeking in here and there to explore Chinese herbalist shops like Vitality Enterprises at 126 E. Pender. At Main Street, turn right and walk south 1 block to Keefer Street and take a break at:

Floata Seafood Restaurant - Though it’s Canada’s largest Chinese restaurant, it isn’t easy to find (180 Keefer St.) In classic Hong Kong restaurant style, it’s on the third floor of a bright red shopping plaza/parking garage. Time your arrival for midmorning dim sum (a kind of moving Chinese smorgasbord) if you can.

To continue the tour, stroll east on Keefer Street, lined with sidewalk markets selling fresh fish, fruit, and vegetables. Turn left on Gore Street and walk 1 block north to Pender Street. On your left, at 296 E. Pender St., is the: 

Kuomintang Building – Though often a mystery to outsiders, politics was and remains an important part of life in Chinatown. Vancouver was long a stronghold of the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT), whose founder, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, stayed in Vancouver for a time raising funds. In 1920, the party erected this building to serve as its Western Canadian headquarters. When the rival Chinese Communist party emerged victorious from the Chinese civil war in 1949, KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan. Note the Taiwanese flags on the roof.

Return to Gore Street and turn left (north) for 2 blocks. At the corner of Gore and Cordova streets (303 E. Cordova St.) stands:

St. James Anglican Church - Just before getting this commission, architect Adrian Gilbert Scott had designed a cathedral in Cairo.

One block west on Cordova brings you to the:

Vancouver Centennial Police Museum - Located in the former Coroner’s Court at 240 E. Cordova, the Vancouver Centennial Police Museum is worth a visit. Among other displays, the museum has the autopsy pictures of Errol Flynn, who died in Vancouver in 1959 in the arms of his 17-year-old girlfriend.

Back on Gore Street, walk north 2 blocks to Alexander Street. Turn left and walk 1 block west on Alexander to the:

Crab Park Overpass – City Hall calls it Portside Park, and that’s how it appears on the map, but to everyone else it’s Crab Park. It was created after long and vigorous lobbying by eastside activists, who reasoned that poor downtown residents had as much right to beach access as anyone else. The park is pleasant enough, though not worth the trouble of walking all the way up and over the overpass. What is worthwhile, however, is walking halfway up to where two stone Chinese lions stand guard. From here, you can look back at Canada Place — where the tour started — or at the container port and fish plant to your right.

To bring the tour to an end, return to Alexander Street and walk 2 blocks west back to Maple Tree Square (stop 5).

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Chinatown and Gastown are two of Vancouver’s most facinating neighborhoods. Gastown has history and the kind of old-fashioned architecture that no longer exists in downtown or in the West End. Chinatown has street markets and the buzz of modern day Cantoneses commerce.
One small travel advisory, the two neighborhoods border on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, a skid row area troubled by alcoholism and drug use. While there is actually little danger for outsiders, this tour route has be designed to avoid these areas.

Begin the tour at:

Canada Place – With its five tall Teflon sails and bow jutting out into Burrard Inlet, Canada Place is meant to resemble a giant sailing ship. Inside there is a giant hotel, giant cruise-ship terminal, and giant convention center. Around the perimeter there’s a promenade with plaques at regular intervals explaining the sights or providing historical info. During the summer months this area is jammed with tourists and passengers arriving and departing from Alaskan cruises; the rest of the year you’ll have it pretty much to yourself.

To follow the promenade, start by the fountain flying the flags of Canada’s provinces and territories and head north along the walkway. On the roof at the far end of the pier a pair of leaping bronze lions point up and out toward a pair of mountain peaks on the North Shore called the Lions . Continue around the promenade and you’ll turn and look back towards the city: The line of low-rise older buildings just beyond the railway tracks is Gastown.
To continue the tour, walk back toward shore along the promenade, go down the steps, turn left, and curve along the sidewalk until you pass the Aqua Riva restaurant. Then turn left and go up the steps to an elevated plaza.

You are now at:

Granville Square – Had some forward-looking politicians and developers had their way, all of Gastown and Chinatown would have been replaced by towers like the one you see here at 200 Granville. In 1970, the plans were drawn up and the bulldozers were set to move when a coalition of hippies, heritage lovers, and Chinatown merchants took to the barricades in revolt. This undistinguished building was the only one ever built, and the plan was abandoned soon afterwards.

At the east end of the plaza a doorway leads into:

Waterfront Station - 601 W. Cordova St. was converted into the SeaBus terminal in the 1970s (SkyTrain was added in 1986), the building was originally the CPR’s Vancouver passenger-rail terminal. Look up high on the walls and you’ll see oil paintings depicting scenes you might encounter if you took the train across Canada. On the main floor there’s a Starbucks and some tourist shops. This is also where you can catch the SeaBus over to Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver.

Leave by the front doors, turn left, and proceed to the cobblestoned Water Street, Gastown’s main thoroughfare. The Landing, at 375 Water St., is home to some high-end retail stores and offices.  As you walk along, note the Magasin Building at 322 Water St., each of the columns bears the bronze head of a Gastown notable, among them Ray Saunders, the man who designed the:

Steam Clock – A quirky urban timepiece, the Steam Clock at Water and Cambie streets gives a steamy rendition of the Westminster Chimes every 15 minutes, drawing its power from the city’s underground steam-heat system. A plaque on the base of the clock explains the mechanics of it all.

Continue down Water Street, past Hills Indian Crafts (165 Water St.), where Bill Clinton picked up a little bear statuette as a gift for you-know-who. At Abbot Street, cross over to the south side and continue on Water Street until you come to the Gaoler’s Mews building (12 Water St.). You can check your e-mails and have a coffee at the Internet Café or enjoy excellent beer and good food at the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall St., accessible either via its back solarium — facing onto the mews — or by going out through the far passageway onto Carrall Street. You have to go this way eventually in order to reach:

Maple Tree Square – A historic spot, Maple Tree Square is where Vancouver first began. The statue by the maple tree (not the original tree, but a replacement planted in the same spot) is of Gassy Jack Deighton, a riverboat captain and innkeeper who erected Vancouver’s first significant structure — a saloon — in 1867. Deighton got the nickname Gassy because of his ability to talk at length about whatever topic happened to spring to mind. In 1870, when the town was officially incorporated as Granville, it was home to exactly six businesses: a hotel, two stores, and three saloons. Most folks called it Gastown, after Jack.
Continue south on Carrall Street to W. Cordova, turn right, and walk 1 block to Abbot Street. Turn left and walk 2 blocks down Abbot, crossing W. Hastings Street and stopping at W. Pender Street, where you get a great view of the:

Sun Tower – At 500 Beatty St., it was the tallest building in the British Empire when it was built in 1911 to house the publishing empire of Louis D. Taylor, publisher of Vancouver World. Not only was the building tall, it was also slightly scandalous, thanks to the nine half-nude caryatids that gracefully support the cornice halfway up the building. Three years after the building opened, Louis D. was forced to sell it.

Cross W. Pender Street and continue on Abbot Street until you come to the entrance at 179 Keefer Place of:

…..to be continued

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photo credit – L.Sunstrom

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photo credit – Ziptrek Ecotours

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The dates for this years competition are July 23, July 26 and August 2. The fireworks start at 10pm and last for about 30 minutes.
This is an extremely popular event, and downtown Vancouver streets around English Bay do get closed down. So plan ahead and make your way down to English Bay early, as parking will be almost impossible to find (busing might be a good alternative). Our family usually heads down to the area around 4pm and enjoys the beach, shopping and the vast array of food in the area…a great way to make a day of it!!

For more information check out the website at www.celebration-of-light.com 

photo credit – sxc.hu

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It is easy to spend the entire day here and there is something that will excite every member of your family, it is definitely worth the drive out there!

Visit their websit at Greater Vancouver Zoo , they have a fantastic website full of information and beautiful pictures!

image credit – sxc.hu

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Splashdown Water Park is located by the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal.
For more information and admission fees visit their website at splashdownpark.ca

image credit – sxc.hu

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