Vancouver parks & pools 1940 footage

A few days ago someone pointed me towards a wonderful silent film of  various Vancouver parks in 1940.  It’s fascinating to watch this footage and has a feel of the 1970’s to my eye. What intrigued me was the relationship of the body within it against the back drop of the rather prim looking tidy horticulture of some of the parks and intertwined with the garrulous bursts of spirit at some of the playgrounds.

The Vancouver Sun newspaper used to sponsor free public swimming lessons, would that it might do something this useful today? These days it appears to ignore the geography in its title. It could be the Nowhere in particular Sun.

This morning at the swimming pool I noticed an advert for a free swimming program: you needed to be able to swim 25 m continuously in order to qualify. Like many aspects of living in this city, the expectations just go up and up and up and away. The facilities, however, continue to improve and be a central part of peoples’ civic interaction and this is something to be grateful for.

(Thanks to Sandy for introducing me to this piece)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYdllbJyeyM&fs=1&hl=en_US]