Trans Mountain Building

Nice looking building.  Been admiring it for years now as it’s in the neighbourhood and have a clear view of it’s upper exteriors from the upper deck.

Polished pink granite, stainless steel and glass.  And that fine old red and white flag of our fine, fearless nation always on that top pinnacle pole against the sky.  In all kinds of weather it always looks good.

For years I’ve been admiring the building.  And the name.  Trans Mountain.  Trans Mountain.  What a cool name for a building.  Sounds like business and going places.  And they’ve got that big, grassy amenity like a park on the north side with the water feature and the steel gazebo thingy at the northwest corner.  I’m going to have to look that up.

It can be a bit mysterious when something goes right.  I mean in architecture.  Design.  Or in anything.  You see a lot of things and you wonder.  How did it happen?  It’s a disgrace.  But this outcome is good.  I hate that word.  Why don’t people just say this is what happened?

There’s not much info on this building.  It’s triple A.  The only AAA building in the area, whatever that means.  You tell me.  The building is fully leased, but no tenant, or should that be leasee, listed for the eighth floor.  Eight of thirteen floors.

There just isn’t a lot of info about this building, including what’s happening on the eighth floor.  And then you start to think.

Trans Mountain.  Trans Mountain.  Where have I heard that name before?  It’s like it can take years to put something together.  It’s like when you’re climbing and you’re stuck on a ledge at 14,000 feet.  You can be four feet from the tent but if you can’t make it, you can’t make it.

And then you make it.  Trans Mountain.  Trans Mountain building.  Trans Mountain pipeline.  Great Caesar’s ghost, Holmes!  There must be a connection!  Kinder Morgan!

It’s a complicated subject.  Très complicated, all right.  And getting more complicated every day.  Beauty and the Beast.  There’s got to be a line in the sand.  Let’s find it.

Photo courtesy CSN

On a completely unrelated subject I’d like to alert viewers to an event scant weeks away that I’ll be involved in at the Vancouver Public Library, Main Branch, downstairs in the spacious Alice McKay Room.  I’ll be reading poems by Philip Larkin for the Dead Poet’s Reading Series http://www.deadpoetslive.com/ Sunday, January 11, 2015.  3 pm. 

Details on the reading should be up on the site soon.  Great series.  Great readers.  The event is usually four or five readers reading poets of their choice.  Bringing it to the people.  I had the privilege last year of reading poems by Malcolm Lowry for the series.

Author: Steven Brown

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