The grand Canyon Lights
On the last weekend before all our holiday traveling, Shane and I made one more stop to see Christmas lights in Vancouver. For this excursion, we drove up to the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver to experience the Canyon Lights display.
The Capilano Suspension Bridge is a huge tourist trap destination
(which is why we normally take our visitors to the Lynn
Canyon one), so we hadn’t been there since our first
trip in 2001. Luckily, a combination
of non-tourist season and unusually cold weather resulted in a low turnout that
evening, with everyone in good, friendly (and well-behaved) spirits.
The lights were spread out on both sides of the
canyon. We started by walking around the
main area, enjoying the totem poles illuminated in red and green lights and one
particular tree hung with moving, blue, vertical lights that looked like falling
snow. The suspension bridge itself was
illuminated beautifully, so we took our time crossing over, stopping along the
way to appreciate just how high (70 metres or 230 feet) above the Capilano
River we were.
On the other side of the canyon, we took a leisurely
stroll around a small, colourfully decorated ice rink pond, lit mostly
by hanging paper lanterns. We also got to
go up into the Treetops Adventure, an exhibit consisting of suspended wooden
bridges stretching between enormous old trees (similar to the UBC’s Canopy
Walkway, except much tamer). Each bridge section was covered in lovely lights, and we got a great bird’s-eye view of the “wildlife”
(read: Christmas-light deer) below before finally heading down and back over to the other side.
All in all, it was yet another fantastic night of Vancouver Christmas celebration. I am already anticipating doing many of these events again next year, including the ones we missed out on due to weather (the Egg Nog jog, the Winter Solstice Lantern Festival, Christmas at Canada Place). Hats off to you, Vancouver, for making the most of this dark time of year!
