Today marks the start of National Science and Technology Week here in Canada, and I’m thinking about a walk over dead, rotting fish, Christmas in February, and hockey star Sydney Crosby.
I went for my stroll over those slimy, decaying salmon in 1981 - 30 years ago this month. The walk was along the shores of False Creek, a small inlet off of the ocean waters that rim the city of Vancouver, British Columbia and cuts into the core of the city. Today False Creek is a superb place to be: green parkland, an evident amount of clean water, some wildlife, restaurants, homes, the Granville Island Public market, and the glimmering geodesic dome housing the science centre and theatre known as Science World. (For some fun pictures of Science World click here). A generation has grown up in Vancouver knowing nothing else.
But False Creek was once a horrible vessel of toxic mire, industrial debris, and wasted opportunity.
On that day, three decades ago, I was a junior beat reporter with a local radio station and the only media type to show up to hear a Federal Cabinet Minister, the now late Senator Ray Perrault, talk about the future of False Creek and the distant government in Ottawa’s on-again, off-again vow to help clean it up. I engineered the assignment because my home was on the eastside of Burrard Street not far from the Creek, and I had a personal interest in the inlet and the odors it produced. The Senator was to go on a tour of the site with some government officials afterward, and I asked if I could accompany him.
“Follow along, but just don’t get in the way,” Senator Perrault said in the firm and clear speech-giving voice that was his customary way of talking.
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| Science World - Wikipedia Commons |
This time, I sailed into the inlet aboard a large yacht loaded with hors d’oeuvres-eating politicians from across Canada, coming for the celebration of Vancouver’s centennial and to bask in the splendor that was Expo 86. It was an inspiring experience for me personally to see how the imagination and energy mobilized by this World’s Fair had transformed the site, and I took great satisfaction in the knowledge that I had stayed out of the way and not done anything personally to hinder the local city staff, business leaders, and volunteers who had made it all happen. Expo 86 closed 25 years ago this month.
My boss, a Vancouver area Member of Parliament, had been the Minister of Science and Technology during the development of the Expo 86 site and had an eager interest in the transportation and communications technology theme of the Fair and, later, in the lively public conversation over the post-Expo permanent use of the Buckminster Fuller-style silvery dome at the end of False Creek that had been the symbolic centerpiece of the Expo grounds. Eventually, forces coagulated around the now-seemingly obvious concept of a centre or museum celebrating science, technology, imagination, and invention. It took much of the next decade to raise funds, develop plans, and make it happen. Mercifully for those involved, I had moved on to another career and was not around to apply my peculiar communications skills and to politicize the exercise with ideological and electoral interests.
The project went ahead, and the very cool Science World became everything that those who envisioned it and worked so hard to spawn it could have wanted.
I continued to stay out of the way - until about a decade ago when I was called out of my office in a government building in Ottawa to join a meeting with then and now Science World CEO Bryan Tisdall. Bryan was looking for ways to work with our organization, and I immediately and selfishly steered the conversation toward hydrogen fuel cell technology since that was the subject I was reading about when called out of my office. Later Bryan and I talked over coffee about whether a building like Science World could ever be run entirely on the power of a stationary fuel cell. I fantasized that the millions of citizens of Vancouver and visitors to it would associate our organization to the shimmering sphere in the city centre. That was about it.
We did collaborate on a modest science centre exhibit on fuel cells. But Bryan, on his own, separately pursued the Science-World-on-a-fuel-cell idea in a more workable, logistically viable, and yet imaginative and impressive way. He secured partners (Hydrogenics and BC Hydro) and funders to light up the exterior of Science World with its Christmas-Tree-type white lights that highlighted the geodesic shape at night all powered by a single 20kW hydrogen fuel cell module. It was done as a special demonstration lasting just over a week.
Great idea. It was cheaper, easier to do, and less technologically iffy. But the true brilliance was in the non-coincidental timing – 27 February to 6 March 2003. It was the week that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was visiting Vancouver to scope out the city as a potential venue for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Hard to say how much this demonstration project influenced the IOC members, but they were purposely taken past the building at night and it got a lot of media coverage (National Geographic photo of centre lit up).
Mr. Tisdall, with gratuitous grace and unnecessary thoughtfulness, later gave me credit for the idea in a letter to my president. The truth, of course, was that once again I watched someone else from afar and made my greatest contributions by not interfering. I knew the facts, but I still had an element of added pleasure when I and millions of other Canadians screamed over Sydney Crosby’s overtime goal for Olympic Hockey Gold. I felt like I was on the ice with him (like these guys in a Vancouver pub), following along, but not getting in his way.
So, this National Science and Technology Week (2011), I am thinking about my slippery walk along False Creek thirty years ago, the close of Expo 86 twenty five years ago, the Olympics of last year, and the creativity and imagination embedded in the sphere at the end of False Creek.
So, this National Science and Technology Week (2011), I am thinking about my slippery walk along False Creek thirty years ago, the close of Expo 86 twenty five years ago, the Olympics of last year, and the creativity and imagination embedded in the sphere at the end of False Creek.
If I had the means, I would bring hundreds of school children from across Canada to visit Science World in Vancouver this National Science and Technology Week to touch the magic and tour the revitalized False Creek - so they could learn - not only about science and technology - but how we can clean up an environmental mess, how we can build something unique, and how we can make a better world if we imagine it and work together.
Of course, I would ask the kids to let me follow along - if I promised to stay out of the way.
More Stubbornbooks
Of course, I would ask the kids to let me follow along - if I promised to stay out of the way.
More Stubbornbooks
