The forecast was for sun all day today, with no chance of rain. I figured this would be my best chance to travel into Nanaimo on my kick scooter and see what there was to see. The campground was only a 40 minute scoot from central Nanaimo. I’d just fold it up and take it to whatever I found for a lunch spot.
I scooted into town on Victoria road, a much more sane choice for anything that wasn’t fast moving. The road has a shoulder on one side that graduates into a combination of sidewalks and bike lanes. At the edge of town where I was, only a paint line divided the cars from us. Yet I saw cyclists, slow electric mopeds, mobility scooters, and shopping carts full of bottles being trundled down the roadway to the recycle depot along it. It is a half decent connector into town for being contiguous.
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| Firehouse Grill |
The Firehouse Grill grabs my attention for being a cool old building, but also a concept that has been repeated in Calgary with the Hose and Hound pub. It’s too bad I can’t get a better angle, but wires and trees limit my possibilities.
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| Big skyscraper for Nanaimo |
You can see this beast from any angle viewing the Nanaimo skyline. It’s a fairly generic building – I could point at several of these that are similar in Calgary. I have heard the local debate on if this is too big for the scale for the city. I’d say yes, the scale is way out of proportion for everything else around it – a set of ten story buildings would fit better in my opinion.
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| Ship Mast staircase |
The car park staircase incorporating a ship’s mast was cool. The theme fits the harbor area I was in now, plus it helped distract from the ugly nature of the car park next to it.
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| Sail art |
I’m guessing these are supposed to represent sails. I knew that I could not fit in all three of them in the photo so I framed differently. You’d never know there is a third one there too. Photography is not just about capturing what you see, it is about capturing a focused area to make your viewer see what you want.
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| A bit run down and out of place |
This old warehouse(?) surprised me for being the only thing along the water front that was run down and in disrepair. I don’t know if it is historic. It looks like it could be anything from 1900’s to the 1950s. Even the 1970’s era apartment beside it looked spiffy in comparison. Loft apartment renos, anyone?
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| Side of old building |
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| The Palace Hotel |
There were some old buildings, especially along the narrow streets that would go back to horse and buggy days for design. This street was so narrow I had trouble getting back enough to get these two buildings in – could have used 16mm wide for these two.
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| Faux Historic Nanaimo |
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| Faux Roman Faux Historic |
But a lot of the “old” area of Nanaimo was faux historic buildings. I’d guess that the typical post WWII rebuilds tore down some of it, but now that it is valued, some new stuff has gone up done in the Edwardian style. The scale is good, the buildings look good, but it’s not real old stuff. Hey, in fifty years perhaps they will call this stuff “Edwardian Revival” and the kids will come shoot 3D models of it with their iPhone 25Max3D phones. The faux roman faux historic (two levels of faux!) I admit was pretty nice, a decent interpretation. It almost looks like it may have had bits of a former old building incorporated – but I’m not going to research that.
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| Pearl with poles and wires everywhere |
My standard photographic nemesis of power poles and wire was out in full force trying to get a clear shot of these charming little old buildings. There is just no way it can be done with that mess of wires and poles. I see historic lighting has been placed along the street here. That is just lipstick on the pig that is wires and power poles. But I’m sure a few street lights are a fraction of the cost of burying the utilities here.
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| Modern Cafe |
I fully approve of this 50’s era building. Or is it 50’s era? It occurs to me that the aluminum and neon, even the globe lightbulbs, are all easy to replicate fully in 2021. Perhaps this is faux 50’s, although if it is, it is really well done faux!
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| The Bastion, covered in mesh |
I make my way through a mix of faux and real historic buildings to the one real building I knew I wanted to see today: The Bastion. But I get there and am disappointed to see it mostly surrounded by mesh.
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| The Bastion still partially covered in mesh |
I proceed around to the front(?) of the building and take my best photo that at least has some of the elements unobstructed. Of course, the light is wrong here, so it’s a dull picture. But this is real historic, from the very beginnings of Nanaimo, built starting in 1853. It is the only tower of its kind left that the Hudson’s Bay Company built. The purpose was mostly a show of force back when the natives outnumbered the settlers and really could wipe out a colony if they chose to spend enough blood on it.
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| Bastion Street with bridge across the highway |
My urge for beer and food now outweighed any further urge to find real historic in the old part of Nanaimo, so I head up Bastion Street, crossing the Trans Canada Highway on a convenient bridge rather than having to wait for a traffic light.
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| Two cute stores |
I’m heading out of the central historic part of Nanaimo now, but still encounter a few interesting buildings, like these two colorful stores beside each other. The “Bunny & Kitten Butter Flower Cakes & French Macarons” business sign is very cute, and almost impossible to read. Shorten the name, simplify and make the text BIGGER to draw in traffic. But perhaps they do just fine on the locals that know it’s there.
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| Occidental Hotel |
The Occidental Hotel has potential as a pub I could hit; a real historic building that was probably a low end hotel on the edge of town at the time it was built in 1886.
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| Milton Street Pub |
Another time perhaps, but I have used the googles to select my destination, Milton Street Public House, a conversion of an old house to a pub. I’ve seen a few of these in my time and generally find them quite charming. The rooms of the house make for groupings of tables – you never get too noisy with too many people in one space. When it’s quiet, you can take over a room for yourself or your group of friends. Fish and chips was the special, your choice of halibut or snapper. I went with the snapper, as I see it less often as a choice of fish. As promised by the waitress, the batter was light and not greasy – an excellent fish meal, washed down with some Philips Blue Buck beer. The fries were great too, the chief knows his way around a deep fryer. A dessert and a couple of beers later, I decided I had hung out long enough and took my kick scooter back to my campsite. All in all, it had been a beautiful day in Nanaimo, topped off by a great food and beer in a pleasant pub.
