2011-08-28 49 -123

Location

Just off 53rd, maybe in a yard, in a Musqueam First Nation community.

Participants

Robyn

thepiguy

Planning

It's on. Four p.m.

Expedition

A First Nations community is kind of different. It's like going into a special subdivision like a retirement community or a religious enclave or a community built around a golf course except instead of being the home of a lot of people who moved there for some commonality, it's the home of a lot of people who have always been there. I don't mean always been there in the sense that their families were the first residents of the houses on these streets. I mean always been there as in Musqueam people lived there, at the mouth of the north arm of the Fraser River when the Fraser river was the sto:lo, when there were no streets and no houses and the whole city was their campground. The kids playing in the sprinkler on the lawn I'm passing are the direct descendants of everyone who ever lived here. Okay that's probably not totally true. I'm sure people move around a bit, leave, marry people from Saskatchewan, come back and so on, but as soon as Robyn leaves Southwest Marine Drive and head down Crown, all the mothers pushing strollers and the babies inside are First Nations-looking. Thepiguy gets called a "homeboy". Urban Dictionary seems to think that's a good thing, so although the community is small enough that the locals will know who doesn't live here, maybe he can pass as Musqueam.

The street signs are even bilingual in English and Halkomelem, the severely endangered ancestral language of the Musqueam and some other Coast Salish groups. The writing system was developed by linguists, so it incorporates a lot of IPA symbols.

Robyn and thepiguy arrive almost simultaneously from opposite directions. The geohash is on a rock a few steps from the curb on undeveloped land beside a house. We're not sure if it's public or private property, but we're not disturbing anything to walk up to it, so we take the point. And then we head home. What will the algorithm bring us tomorrow?

Photographs

Coming soon