Monday, 2 July 2012

Laying wreaths on Captain Vancouver's London grave on Canada Day

St. Peter’s in Petersham, London, could never be so full as it is on each 1 July, when the little building is full of displaced Canadians making a rare church visit to watch wreaths be laid upon Captain George Vancouver’s grave.

Vancouver didn’t discover his namesake city, the First Nations have lived there for thousands of years. He didn’t found the townsite—that occurred in 1862, 64 years after his death. He wasn’t even the first choice for the name, Hastings came first then Granville. But the Canadian Pacific Railway land speculators thought that was a hint of grandeur in the name Vancouver and that’s what they chose for their new end-of-the-line station in 1886.

We took the District Line to Richmond then, mostly, walked along the Thames to Petersham, and to St. Peter’s. Here is a short video I took of the memorial service for Vancouver’s Megaphone Magazine.

Afterwards, we walked up the back way from Petersham, up Richmond Hill to the terrace and found that we were looking at this scene from our seat at the Roebuck Pub.