The Historic Inter-Urban Tramway of Vancouver

After completing my previous day's goals of getting an SIN number (unfortunate acronym for 'Social Insurance Number' and weirdly easy to acquire) and opening a bank account (BMO has branches at most Safeways & doesn't mind if you don't have a permanent address yet) I resolved to be a tourist for the day.

Science World was difficult to miss when I got off the Greyhound a week ago. It's a big spherical building on the waterfront that lights up in an interesting way at night time, presumably full of scien-teriffic exhibits and displays. I had just got to the entrance when I came across a tall glass-enclosed box full of plastic balls traversing many interesting obstacles on their way from the top to bottom ('The Magic of Gravity'). The exhibit was there mainly to entertain small children waiting in line for tickets with their parents, but I was fascinated and stood there for about half an hour watching as the balls rolled down tracks, effected various chimes and hooters, dropped into vortex-buckets and were lifted slowly back up to begin again. After this (and noticing the entry fee) I decided I'd probably had enough scientific enlightenment for one day, and left.

'Toot toot', went something behind me. A small red tram was pulling into a bus stop immediately opposite where I was standing. It looked almost exactly like a child's drawing of a small steam train, complete with brilliant red paint job and clouds of steam billowing from the chimney. As I got closer two elderly men in navy amateaur dramatics-looking conductor's uniforms emerged to show the three or four passengers off.

I had no idea where it was going but the train was so cute I had to get on.
'Could I buy a ticket?' I asked one of the uniformed men. He pulled a book of tickets from his conductor's bag, stamped one of them, took my money and gravely handed me the ticket.
'Now,' he explained carefully, 'you take it to the engineer.'
I looked at the other man, who was standing at most two feet away from us.
'Here you go,' I said, passing it to him. He took it solemnly, punched it with an antique clipper and gave it back to me.
'All aboard!' he said.

There were a couple of familes with small children already inside as, with generous use of both hooter and dinger, the tram chuffed merrily off. After running alongside the main road for a short distance, we split off on a scenic tour of Vancouver's prime warehouse, back lot and rubbish loading areas of the harbourside around False Creek. As we passed under a particularly ugly highway bridge a group of hooded youths waved to us cheerfully and without a hint of irony. The small children onboard waved back. It was charming.

"If you look to the left you can see where they're building the new tunnel for the Canada line." The conductor made his announcements in a strangely apologetic tone, wandering along the aisle unamplified.

The 100-year old carriages are restored beautifully with airy wood-panelled interiors and green glass, blinds and basket seats. I watched as the 6 year old in front of me, obviously a regular, casually flipped one over to convert it into a backwards-facing seat for her mother.

The authentic 1920s ads along the tops of the windows also added to the experience ("Looky mother, Martha Washington's own recipe for devil's food cake!").

After a few minutes we passed an identical tram coming the other way, then some sort of mid-way station deep in backlot land where, unsurprisingly, noone got on or off. We went on for a bit more. Then we stopped. In a kind of cutting, under another bridge. Where ever we were, this was as far as my cheapy-cheap one-way ticket would get me. It turned out to be close to Granville Island Market, where you can buy sweet cheese bagels, fudge, ragelach and many other interesting and delicious products. Unfortunately the lack of any obvious signage from the train stop prevented me from discovering this, and I bought another one-way ticket back to whence I'd come.