A Perfect Day for a Walk by Bill Arnott

When I arrived, a tourist in Vancouver twenty years ago, it was apparent almost immediately how incredibly walkable the city is. In a glorious July, with the sun in constant consonance with the North Shore mountains, we walked through myriad neighbourhoods, discovering their defining characteristics. Some years later, as a resident, and carrying in memory those long days of summer whose deceptive warmth endured into the early fall, I found it difficult reconciling with the truth that the city I had grown to love could be as rainy as the legends told. Vancouver rain, as it turned out, is something entirely different from anything I knew living in Ontario, where skies, canopied in turbulent, heavy clouds, open in an instant, unleashing a deluge against the spectral backdrop of lightning and the voice of thunder. Rain here is, instead, the less mercurial, more conventional, anemic sibling whose constant proximity approaches the oppressive. Here, the umbrella is inconvenient because it is futile against the persistent mist, and more often than not lost, accidentally or sometimes deliberately, on one numbered bus on one numbered avenue or another. Trudging between Vancouver’s sodden skies and sullen ground is less an act of courage and more an act of perseverance.

And so when I picked up Bill Arnott’s most recent book, I couldn’t but wonder whether his idea of perfection wasn’t one of this seductive melancholy, wonder at his choice to highlight the city through its darker months, perambulating his way through more than fifteen neighbourhoods, meeting with their denizens, and exploring history, art, flora and fauna. As it happens, when the tourist numbers have dwindled and when the sun is water colour pale, and when the rains have again whispered their inevitable truth and made everything newly lush and green, Vancouver is a marvellous place to go for a walk. 

Vancouver’s Dr. Sun Yat-Sen garden in Chinatown, which Arnott writes about in this Patreon article

Arnott focuses on the communities that anchored the developing city: Kitsilano, Gastown, Chinatown, and Yaletown among others, offering up histories with the brio of the storyteller, casual, with a hint of the conspiratorial “did you hear about…?” Each chapter features a neighbourhood or group of neighbourhoods and includes Arnott’s conversations with residents, often notable in their contributions to Vancouver’s historical or literary scenes. He presents multiple histories of past residents widely representative of Indigenous and immigrant voices and reflects on significant events and periods including the Great Vancouver Fire, the history of Hogan’s Alley, and Expo ’86

Each chapter begins with a haiku, which amongst poetic forms, seems particularly suitable for matching image with metaphysic on the Wet Coast.


Each chapter begins with a haiku, which amongst poetic forms, seems particularly suitable for matching image with metaphysic on the Wet Coast. Arnott’s poetic descriptions occasionally take on a list-like cadence, but nevertheless elucidating and evocative; the intended effect is to emboss a picture in the mind’s eye. Among Arnott’s introductory imagery is the leitmotif of crows: animated or still, they punctuate the landscape. Vigilant and impassive, they are emblems of the boundary, not between one neighbourhood and the next, but that tenuous, permeable boundary between that which is the city and that which is not.  Photographs, both the author’s own and a number of historical images from the Vancouver Archives round out this framing of the ever-changing city. 

For the seasoned Vancouverite, Arnott’s book is a wonderful companion guide, a how-to, an invitation, and, at times, a provocation to see the city with new eyes and from crisp perspectives. For the occasional visitor, it is a memento, to refresh the memory and kindle the desire to return to this often damp, but ever lush landscape. For the initiate, it offers particular insights into a treasured yet often misapprehended cityscape that holds as many delights and wonders as curves in the shoreline. 

Arnott’s book is a wonderful companion guide … it is a memento … it offers particular insights into a treasured yet often misapprehended cityscape that holds as many delights and wonders as curves in the shoreline. 

Under sunshine or overcast skies, through rain or through snow, Arnott walks you into the spaces of the city, introducing his discovery of a multitude of landmarks and haunts, of nooks and of crannies, and he reveals that if you are willing, any day is “A Perfect Day for a Walk.”

Bill Arnott is the author of A Season on Vancouver Island and the award-winning Gone Viking books, all published by Rocky Mountain Books. A fellow of London’s Royal Geographical Society, he’s a frequent presenter and guest on podcasts, TV, and radio. When not roaming the globe, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast.

Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press (September 10, 2024)
Paperback 9″ x 6″ | 240 pages
ISBN: 9781551529639

Christina Barber is a writer and educator who lives in Vancouver. An avid reader, she shares her passion for Canadian history and literature through her reviews on Instagram @cb_reads_reviews. She has most recently been committed to writing and staging formally innovative single and multi-act plays.

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