A couple years ago museum directors and curators the world over were flocking to the Columbian city of Medellin. In yesterday's New York Times "Arts & Leisure" section, Michael Kimmelman reminds us why.

Below is a paragraph from that feature, one that could have been written about Vancouver:

What sets Medellín [Vancouver] apart is the particular strength of its culture of urbanism, which acts now almost like a civic calling card [Trevor Boddy's "Vancouverism"]. The city’s new mayor, Aníbal Gaviria [Gregor Robertson], spent an hour describing to me his [green] dreams for burying a congested highway that runs through the middle of town [the Georgia Viaduct], building an electric tram along the hillsides to stem the sprawl of the slums [the proposed Evergreen Line], adding a green belt of public buildings along the tram [social housing?], rehabilitating the Medellín River [False Creek] and densifying the city center ["Eco-Density" TM] — smart, public-spirited improvements. It’s as if, in this country [Canada] whose relatively robust economy has underwritten many forward-thinking projects, every mayor here [former mayor Sam Sullivan] has to have enormous architectural and infrastructural plans [Olympic Village], or risk coming across as small-minded or an outsider [Sam Sullivan].

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At bottom is a historic aerial view of West Vancouver, specifically the Great Northern Cannery, now a Federal Fisheries research station.

Great Northern served as a location for James Clavell's 1962 film The Sweet and the Bitter, while Bill Millerd, the great-great grandson of Great Northern's founder, Francis Millerd, is responsible for turning the Arts Club Theatre on Seymour Street into a multi-venue juggernaut, a transition that mirrored the shift of the provincial economic base from primary resource extraction (forestry, fishing and mining) to tertiary or service-based industries (real estate speculation, drug dealing and cruise ship minstrel shows).

In November, Intellect Press will release another in its series of cities-as-film-locations, this one focused on Vancouver (Rachel Walls, editor). For my part, I have contributed a 1000-word essay on Clavell's film, which was also shot at The Electra (formerly the B.C. Hydro Building) and Lighthouse Park. Other contributors include Amy Kazymerchyk, Diane Burgess, Elvy Del Bianco and Colin Browne, who will provide an "Introduction".

On Wednesday morning I woke early, completed my routines, then left the house with a lightly packed shoulder bag, walking south on Clark. Six blocks later I caught the King Ed bus west to Cambie, where I boarded the southbound Olympic Line for YVR -- a $5.00 trip that took forty minutes versus a thirty-five dollar cab ride that took half that.

Air Canada’s Dash-8 flight to Kamloops is estimated at 45 minutes. On this day most of it occurred in the clouds. But we started blue enough: a sharp turn over West Van, where I stared down at the old world roads of the principality's historic subdivisions, her turquoise swimming pools, and above them, in the lap of the mountains, a lake I had never seen before.

The purpose of my journey was the Esther Shalev-Gerz show at the Kamloops Art Gallery, which I was asked to review for Canadian Art. I am familiar with Esther’s work, having included a piece of hers in a group exhibition I curated last September at Gallery 1965, called "Vancouver/Vancouver". The name of the KAG exhibition is "WHITE-OUT: Between Telling and Listening" (2002), and it is up until June 16th.

Yesterday morning I woke early, completed half my routines, then left the house of KAG curator Charo Neville for the passenger seat of her car. Although the drive from Kamloops to Vancouver was as gorgeous as the transition from high desert to maritime forest was palpable, all I could think about were the old world roads of West Vancouver’s historic subdivisions, her turquoise swimming pools, and above them, in the heavens, the exhibition’s co-curator, Annette Hurtig, whose Hornby Island memorial – the one Charo was travelling to – is today.

Kamloops

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