ikesau

memory

In 2019, a large chandelier was installed underneath Granville Street Bridge, to aesthetically enhance the area. It was controversial at the time - a symbol of what's wrong with luxury condo development.¹

I used to work near Granville Island, so when I visited Vancouver in early 2025, I wanted to walk around my old stomping grounds and pay the chandelier a visit.

I walked to where I remembered it being installed, and discovered it had been removed, presumably for maintenance reasons. Disappointed, I went home and lamented to my sister.

She replied, "Oh, it's not there anymore? By the north entrance?"

"By the south, you mean. And no, there's nothing."

"It was never at the south entrance. It was installed at the north entrance."

"What are you talking about?"

I argued with my sister - who lives in Vancouver and has been to Granville Island countless times in the last 6 years - that she was wrong. I had seen that chandelier many times while working near the south entrance.

After 10 minutes, she was unconvinced but sympathetic, and so we took to the internet, where every single article, blog, photo, or video we could find confirmed that the chandelier was installed and had-only-ever-been-located at the north entrance.

I felt mad. Both ways. This was a conspiracy. I was so sure that I had seen the chandelier at the south entrance, and that this was all some horrible kind of gaslighting.

But after scouring through every obscure source of evidence I could think of, I had nothing to back me up.

Finally, reluctant and unhappy, I quietened.

I went to the north entrance a few days later. The chandelier was there. I looked around. I had no memory of this part of the island.

Months have passed. I'm pretty sure what happened is that the ceiling of the bridge looks the same from both entrances, and I saw so many photos of the chandelier in the news with the familiar ceiling of the bridge behind it that I assumed they must have been taken from the place I knew where the ceiling looked like that.

So now I have direct evidence to the contrary, and a plausible story as to how I got so confused in the first place. I no longer believe the chandelier was ever installed near the south entrance. And yet.

I still have the memory of walking past it during my lunch break.