Pixel Darkroom Photography

At 20:59:50 every night, a buzzer and a flashing red light announce the ten seconds remaining until the nine o’clock cannon blast goes off in Stanley Park. Today, in the 21st Century the cannon is fired electrically and is heard at Hastings and Granville five seconds later, in Marpole thirty seconds after that, in New Westminster an entire minute after the blast and in Mission (1h16 minutes and 74.2 km or 46 miles according to Google Maps), where it has been heard every once in a while, more than three minutes passed nine o’clock. The gun has been firing for the passed 107 years, even though it has been on occasion hit by lighting, short-circuited, plugged with rocks and even briefly stolen. An inscription on the gun itself says it was made by H&C King in 1816 (one year after the Waterloo battle, to put it in historical context) and it’s numbered DCLVII, what I assume is the serial number (657) inscribed on it. It is a twelve pound muzzle loader, made at Woolwich, England.

In 1856 the British Government gave 16 cannons to the “provinces of Canada” and it’s been known that at least three of those had made it to the Pacific coast. Two of them were flanking the legislative buildings entrance in Victoria, now the capital of the British Columbia Province, and were melted down in 1940, in an effort to support the World War II – they weighed 1,500 pounds after all.

The third one is the one you see firing here on day 313 of my project, and if you are in Vancouver you can hear it at the times mentioned above at various distances from the blast.

The reasons for firing at 9 o’clock every night are believed to be replacing a dynamite blast set off at the same time in the past “as an aid to navigation” but that is a bit hard to understand how a big blast might be of any navigational help. Some variations to the idea behind this precise blast mention salmon fishing curfew initially set for 6 o’clock. An account from a 1939 interview that city archivist, Major J.S. Matthews had with pioneer Herbert McDonald implies the replacement of four daily fire alarm signals, used for indicating time, and sometimes confused with actual fire alarms, with the 9 pm cannon blast. Apparently, Victoria already had a cannon blast at noon to help ship captains check their times and they apparently asked for a canon blast in Vancouver as well.

You can find more information on the History of Vancouver website.

I went with my friend Ugur downtown to shoot fireworks today. We had a great time and grabbed a few good images. The bridges were full of people (both the one we shot and the one we were on) and it may have been a great picture to shoot photograph all the photographers from the other side of the street ["Maybe one day we'll do you too..." - Finucci brothers], but it was impossible to cross. Traffic wasn’t stopped and some of the images even have camera shake (or should I call it “bridge shake”) due to some of the buses driving by in the middle of some longer exposures. It was a great view to see all the trails that the boats would make, the helicopter and it was just a great view. Ugur is a fun guy and a great photographer. Here’s a link to some of his images.
I will post some hdr and other images in a different section of this website. Until then, this image will suffice as the picture of the day. Here’s 285 images so far. God bless you and thank you for stopping by.