Beddis Beach

Ten years coming to Saltspring Island and this was my first visit to this popular local beach. Nice weather, but I was early, so there were only a couple of dog walkers. This is a small south-facing pocket beach between rocky points - both with homes perched on top. The beach is backed by a 5-foot bank, the erosion of which displays an elegant stratigraphy of soils and broken clam shell - clearly this place has been someone's home, or at least their kitchen, for a very, very long time.

Jericho Beach

Jericho Beach is a sandy crescent beach on the southwest side of English Bay, west of Kitsilano and east of Spanish Banks. I'm not sure what the beaches along this side of the bay looked like before steam shovels arrived, although I would have expected substantial eastward drift from Point Grey and maybe a more continuous beach east towards Kitsilano. Groins and other historic modifications have segmented this shoreline into a series of pocket beaches - and left no beach at all in some places. Next trip I'll have to explore Locarno and Spanish Banks.

I once heard that it suggested that these beaches are supplied by the Fraser - maybe, though I suspect the eroding bluffs at Point Grey are the more likely source. Not that the Fraser doesn't loom just around the point to the southwest.

English Bay

Like horseshoe crabs on the beaches of Delaware Bay, penguins on the shore of South Georgia Island, and walruses at Cape Vankarem on the Chukchi Sea.

How about the small artificial pocket beach behind the riprap? It's even smaller than Seattle's Sculpture Park Beach. I think the Corps of Engineers, or the City of New Orleans, should hire the kids in the second picture - although I suspect their success can largely be attributed to the tide having already crested.

Stanley Park

The seawall promenade along the north edge of the park (between Lion's Gate Bridge and Siwash Rock) has been repaired from the December 2006 storms (Stanley Park, 8 April 2007). Things look recently cleaned up and the forest hanging over the edge is distinctly thinner than before, but otherwise the bikers, joggers, strollers, and tourists are back to normal.

I liked this little mussel shell beach - stacked up against the seawall along an otherwise rocky platform. Probably some fluke of the wave action and the changing orientation of the shoreline and the seawall.