Salmon Under Cambie

On Saturday morning after jogging our 7 km training segment for the (rapidly) approaching East Van 10K, and a wonderfully big brunch afterwards, we finally settled on Saturday night to take in a new visual projection about wild BC salmon that is being shown under the north end of the Cambie Street bridge all summer. We’ve tried a couple of times previously to see it but once it was a Nights of Fire fireworks night (not playing), and another time it was a Sunday (not playing).

It’s an amazing production, definitely recommended. It’s the same technology that we witnessed in Beaune, France this summer. Every evening they project light shows on many buildings in the village. The best one I saw was a cat running vertically up a clock tower from bottom to top chasing a red laser dot, until the cat jumps through a top floor window. The walls then appear to turn transparent revealing the building’s interior and we see the laser dot transformed into a red ball bouncing from landing to stair tread to landing until it reaches the ground.

This is the Beaune tower but I didn't get a photo of
the red ball bouncing down the stairs.

The Cambie Bridge presents an odd sensation in that the best viewing position is lying flat on one’s back looking up, because if you think about it, you’re actually watching a stream flowing above you, defying gravity. In other words it’s like a full immersion experience, like you’re in the water with the salmon. The complete life cycle is shown in the film starting with travel upstream to the spawning beds as a golden autumn umbrella unfolds in a slightly water-refracted tree canopy above. Frantic motion of fish tails burrowing into rocky stream beds ultimately leads to bright red fry hatching, starting lives of their own. Completion of the lifecycle must ultimately result in rapid aging and decay of the parent salmon. I didn’t realize how much I’d forgotten since I was a kid at school learning about them, but it was certainly a surprise to see what jagged teeth the salmon skulls display as they lie scattered on the stream bed.

Bubbles under the bridge.

Bubbles under the bridge.

Swimming with the fishes.

The salmon stream.

Autumn canopy.

Almost makes ya hum a few bar of the "Jaws" theme...