What a beautiful crisp, clear sunny day out here on the Westcoast, a rare treat in this rainforest. With no cloud cover the temperature is at or below the freezing point at night, and shady spots are frosty even during the day. We can’t complain about a little frost when the prairies have been having sub-zero blizzards. That elusive winter sun told us it was a good afternoon for a little outing to finish the holiday season and we chose to go to Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park.

First, we just squeaked in on its last day to see the two exhibitions I’d written about earlier at the Burnaby Art Gallery overlooking Deer Lake. A Survey of BC Printmaking and The BC Landscape by Toni Onley are both very interesting visual records of British Columbia’s art history. Of course I’m biased in loving prints, so I was pleased to see some of Onley’s silkscreens amidst his watercolours, and the many familiar works by several of BC’s best printmakers in the print survey exhibition.

We unexpectedly met another Finnish-Canadian artist, Irene McCutcheon, there and had a lively catch-up chat, then ran into Wayne Eastcott coming in as we left. Wayne has a print in the show that is also featured on the invitation and posters (and on my earlier entry).

Then, a walk around the gardens of historic Ceperley House, now the home of the Burnaby Art Gallery, past the lovely Jack Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and down to Deer Lake to see the ducks on the shimmering water, and then back home for some hearty home-made ham and pea soup! I think I’m ready to get back to work now.