prose sketch: Lonsdale Quay, in the style of Rabelais

Sun. 5 May 2013 ca. 1:30 p.m. Lonsdale Quay Market

In the style of Rabelais:

We arrived at the quay of the North Vancouverites, where a pedestrian ferry docks and people stream off to visit the waterside market, established in a mass of curious buildings made up of great blocks and cylinders. At one end is a tower of red steel at the top of which rotates a great white letter Q. Why no towers for P or R or any of the other letters? Don’t ask me, my dear Pantagruelists, for I can’t tell you. But the letter Q stands as a beacon over all here: people climb the stairs up the tower to be closer to it, and stand under it looking out over the harbor. For these North Vancouverites are a healthy, wholesome lot—if you regard a life of sunshine and exercise as wholesome, and I know you’ll have your doubts about this, my dear friends and boozers, much more acquainted as you are with the inside of a pub than you are with the back of a bicycle. And none of that about having gone on the wagon—save that nonsense for your doctor or your priest or your wife. I know better. But we know something that these healthy North Vancouverites don’t—that wine is the supreme tonic for all manner of illnesses, from catarrh and cancer to dropsy and depression. We have this on the authority of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen. A good Pantagruelist can squeeze out a good skin or two and awaken the vital spirit that will have him seeking—and finding—a game of the two-backed beast in short order. When was the last time any of these North Vancouverites experienced such hearty, vital fun? Watching the water, sipping their soft drinks, passing the time, they prefer to leave the actual living to those who know how to do it!