Early December, 2023, I had a rare night by myself walking around the city. Picking something up from on the West End followed by a meeting past Olympic Village; generally a transit worthy-distance but I had over an hour to kill and the night was warm. Not unseasonably warm, but comfortable. It had been raining all day; not a steady downpour, just the fine mist that seems to vacillate between fog and rain. Walking along the waterfront the streets glistening with the sheen of the rain, trees were still, halos formed around the pricks of streetlights. My feet carried me effortlessly through Yaletown toward False Creek. Walking through a city helps to create a mental model in a way that a car or transit does not; not only do you learn the geography, it also has the odd effect of shrinking the city. Somehow things that once seemed quite far away feel close. Cutting across parks, allies and walking paths that route you around congested streets. You’re apt to get lost a few times but it’s a worthy trade to know the city.
The lights around me seemed to dim as I entered a park along the water; pricks across the inlet and a glow behind me. Along the promenade coming from the opposite direction, a father and a young boy leisurely made their way across the street and along my path. They looked happy, the boy was skipping, and the father was encouraging him in some kind of game. Laughing and talking the two made their way past me and I felt such an overwhelming sense of calm. I thought of my own child, my daughter at home, likely already asleep, had we not done something like this that very afternoon? Would we not the next afternoon? In that brief moment I felt like this was the place I belonged most in the world.
My thoughts turned to other fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, walking together. My mind went back to the fathers who may have spent their nights looking for food or shelter for their children. The genocide in Gaza was in it’s second month, most media hadn’t yet started referring to it as such. I was constantly preoccupied by the fear, the sadness, the anguish that a civilian population was feeling as their homeland was, yet again, besieged and everything they had ever known, worked for, dreamed of was decimated in front of them. Are the children who survive the lucky ones?
This contrasting sense of calm and rightness that I felt on my walk and the emotions I had been having for the previous two months. Feeling at home on the waterfront where the only sounds I heard were a young boy and his father laughing, the slight dinging of boats in the harbour, the lapping of the waves. I felt hopeful for the first time in weeks, I was hopeful that if this boy and his father were enjoying a laugh together on a quiet night; hopefully children elsewhere were doing the same. Perhaps even amidst the chaos in Gaza a young boy and his father there were laughing and having fun making their way back “home” whatever that looked like at the time. War is dehumanizing, it has no regard for the dreams of youth, the anguish and the joy of a mother going through labour, the first steps taken, the last few years spent with grandchildren. War and the men who make it don’t consider these things. We are human, we are all human, and even in the midst of a devastating war, a conflict, genocide, ethnic cleansing whatever you call it people will claw back whatever humanity they can.
People living under occupation, growing up in war zones, are resilient people with an impressively stubborn resilience that builds rather than diminishes over years, decades, and generations. No one should have to live like that, but those who do have a determination to live, a determination to claim their land and to protect it that I can’t being to understand. This resistance comes in many forms; acts of “terrorism”, acts of courage, and sacrifice; these are the ones that make the news. Humanity without resistance will lead to extinction but resistance without humanity has nothing to save.
I began to circle the ramp up the Cambie Bridge, the view from up there was spectacular. Science World’s lights had just, finally, been turned back on and were glittering off the inlet. The calm serenity of the night did not leave me; I don’t remember a single car on the bridge as I walked across. The sun had long set but a lite fog rose from the streets as if the moon took over the shift from the sun and continued drying things out. Someday I hope to feel that peace again, I hope everyone does.
