Shipyards Night Market

Escape Vancouver Completely (by way of North Vancouver) Without Touching a Car
Part 4 of 5 – Shipyards Night Market

For our relaxing day and night off, my wife and I planned, but didn’t plan too much. Being overscheduled does not lead to relaxation. We were on foot so anything we did would be local. I had imagined maybe walking up Lonsdale Ave, but suddenly we were in the middle of the Shipyards Night Market, which was in full swing by the time we had finished dinner (part 3 of 5 of our adventure).

This night market was literally out the front door of where we were staying so we felt unmotivated to do anything else.

This night market features a lot of food trucks, which we didn’t investigate because we had just had dinner. There is one large venue where there were a lot of shops featuring local artisans, wine tasting and a couple of psychics. Have you ever wanted to get a reading and start off by saying, “weren’t you expecting me?” I just don’t have the nerve.

We did buy a bracelet for one child as well as some cool cards that were made from custom made soft plates. It’s a neat process and made for unique cards.

The main square had a band that played hits from the 70s onward and to my untrained ear were pretty good.

One of the least expected encounters was with a local politician. Bowinn Ma (www.bowinnma.ca) is a member of the BC provincial legislature and she had a tent and was handing out basic information. Odd, I thought, because there isn’t an imminent election. Were we in Ontario, it would be different. So we struck up a conversation even though we were not in her constituency. The issues are common. We discussed social media and she finds it interesting to have someone aggressively trolling her regarding a housing speculation tax and then 20 minutes later being on a phone call with constituents, who are both employed, but forced to live out of their car due to a housing shortage.

Irrelevant as this may be to a travel article – and despite Ms Ma clearly having the Taiwanese slow aging gene — I am sure I have a suit older than she is. When I looked up her website for this article I found out she’s a professional engineer and a project manager. Who knew local travel could lead you to 50 choices in beer, wonderful snacks and a politician that inadvertently made you feel like you haven’t done enough with your life?

It was time to return to the hotel that we were hiding in for the night.