Winter in Vancouver is long, dark, and rainy, so we are very grateful to the artists and creators that bring unexpected light and colour to our soggy grey-blue city every year.
Lumiere is a great example of precisely this sort of effort, with an 11-year track record of lighting events around downtown Vancouver. We have enjoyed them ever year and its been fun seeing it expand from a few lit up animals in our neighbourhood to a festival like we get now. This year they had an experience that included laser beams and lights on the trees also lighting up dry ice smoke being pumped through the air. The raindrops were similarly picked up by the light, making for a very cool experience.
While experiences are all well and good, we were very relieved to find some of our old favourites again this winter after an over-long hiatus. Although we miss having them in our area, we found Davie, Barclay, Luna, and Stanley scattered around downtown as well as this delightful squirrel (that you would be forgiven for mistaking for a fox)
At the top of our list of unexpected surprises was this dragon. Better still, there were enthusiastic people on hand saying "Would you like to ride the dragon and make it breathe fire?" Its design included a tractor seat beside a lever that would open and close the mouth and emit an audible belch of fire.
Other highlights for the evening were fire dancers, opera singers, bubble blowers, and a general sense that the city had come out of hibernation for a few hours. Not so bad for a dark winter night, and at least we don't have to shovel rain...
FWOOSH!!
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