A Highlander Fan's
Guide to Vancouver
2015

DAY 1: Thursday, Sept. 17
5:00 pm	Arrived in Vancouver, picked up at airport by Andy & Tyas.
6:40 pm	Stopped by City Centre Hotel. (Under Color of Authority)
7:00 pm	Dinner with Charles Wilkinson at Chill Winston (Six Acres was too full)

Mr. Wilkinson told us about the Highlander episodes he directed. He said the key to getting asked back to direct more episodes was to be creative and take risks, as the producers were looking for something special from their directors. One scene in particular that he cited from his first episode, 'Courage', was of Richie riding his motorcycle along a mountain road. He told the camera operator to use a very close-angle lens, which made it difficult to keep the motorcyle in frame. The camera operator was skeptical but did as instructed and the result can be seen in the episode - bushes and trees whizzing past while the motorcycle periodically jumps into view.

DAY 2: Friday, Sept. 18
7:00 am	Visited the former location of the gas station where Michelle ditches MacLeod. (Rite of Passage) Then looked for Mr. Stubbs' candy store on Granville Street. (Family Tree)
7:30 am	Visited the Honniger/Waverly estate. (Epitaph for Tommy / Blackmail)
8:00 am	Breakfast across the street from Michael Moore's Quickening. (Turnabout) This location is pretty much unrecognizable now -- basically it's just a huge pile of dirt for construction work -- but according to Andy, the building across the street is visible in a production still that he has. I'm hoping to get a copy of that still from him but until then, I will leave my photo of that building here...
9:00 am	Visited abandoned bar & location of Carter Wellan's Q. (The Fighter, The End of Innocence)
9:45 am	Visited 'morgue'. (Free Fall)
10:00 am	Visited Aberthau House. (Free Fall / Revenge is Sweet) the history of Aberthau house
10:30 am	Explored the St. Roch at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. (Unholy Alliance I)
12:15 pm	Walked over to the Maritime Museum Ferry Dock and the Planetarium. (Unholy Alliance I, The Wrath of Kali)
1:00 pm	Visited the Wellington, Joe's house, & Delaney's apartment. (Unholy Alliance I)
1:30 pm	Visited the Celtic Shipyards. (2x01,2x08,2x11,3x06,4x07) This photo didn't really fit on the episode page, so I decided to stick it here.
2-5 pm	Ate lunch, picked up Jill & Nicholas at the airport, got them checked into the hotel.
5:00 pm	Explored the Plaza of Nations. Specifically: The stadium, which was under *major* construction so that 'Gate G' was inaccessible (See No Evil), the water's edge where Anne brings Duncan the sleeping pills (Shadows), the outdoor path from Turnabout & Unholy Alliance I, the plaza around the former location of the Production Offices for seasons 2-4 (The Lamb, The Innocent, & The Blitz), and the exterior of the casino (Studies in Light) where the outdoor cafe was staged for 'Courage' & 'Shadows'.
6:00 pm	Walked around to the TELUS geodesic dome, to where MacLeod beheaded Ballin, which has been extensively remodeled. (Eyewitness)
6:45 pm	Visited the former location of Kirin's ashram, now an empty lot. (Blind Faith)
7:00 pm	Visited the Waldorf hotel. The exterior at the back of the hotel was 'outside' Joe's bar where the thugs attack Benny, and inside is Tabu, the Tiki Bar that became the Coconut Lounge in Vendetta. We ate in the restaurant upstairs after our tour of these filming locations.
8:30 pm	Visited Portside Park (after dark). I took a night photo of the Harbour Centre tower, but none in the park, as I had gotten photos the previous year, during the day, and it was really too dark to get anything decent with my phone camera. (Band of Brothers)

DAY 3: Saturday, Sept. 19
6:45 am	Visited Whytecliff Park. (Prophecy)
8:00 am	Picked up Steve Geaghan at his house in North Vancouver and headed out for what ended up being a VERY rainy day in the mountains.
9:00 am	Drove up to the Cypress Mountain ski slopes. Unfortunately, I'm not sure which exact location Steve showed us. I didn't have GPS tagging enabled for my photos (and have never used it before so not sure how well it would have worked if I had), so I had to make a best-guess about where we actually were, using old Google map data and the photos themselves. (Family Tree)
9:15 am	Drove a little ways back down Cypress Bowl Rd to the Cypress Mountain Hollyburn Nordic Area, where several scenes from Courage were filmed. Really old tree near where Cullen crashes into the bus.
11:00 am	Met up with our guide for the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve and drove up to Seymour Lake. It was so rainy, we couldn't actually see the mountains around the lake, sadly. (The Gathering / Line of Fire)
11:30 am	Made our way back down from the dam to the river location used in multiple episodes. (1x07,3x02,3x04,4x09) A fallen tree by the river, although probably NOT one that was there 20 years ago. You can see the rain if you look closely.
12:00 pm	And farther down the road to the 'middle clearing' gravel pit -- which has changed considerably over the years -- and the clearing where the 'MacGyver' cabin used to be, although I didn't get photos of it. (Bless the Child / Haunted) & (Innocent Man / Bless the Child / The Lamb) The woods around the clearing are where the Glenfinnan forest flashbacks were filmed. The drop ship crash site camp from 'The 100' was there, but we weren't allowed to take photos of it. (Homeland / Prophecy)
12:40 pm	Just a bit farther down the road was the 'cliff' Debra falls from (Homeland), but the touchscreen on my phone was too wet to work the camera properly. Ugh. As the rain continued to fall, we reached the Spur 4 bridge from the Spanish Civil War in Blind Faith. After that, I gave up on taking photos for a bit so I skipped the reclaimed gravel pit (US Army outpost in Something Wicked and current location of Camp Jaha from 'The 100'), and Big John's Outpost near the Reserve's entrance (Mountain Men)
1:00 pm	Lunch at A&W. Some of our party had never had root beer before. Foreigners!
2:45 pm	After lunch, we drove over to the Mount Seymour Provincial Park ski slopes. MacLeod's cabin is at the base of the Mystery Peak Express ski lift. (1x01,1x13,2x13,3x12, also Hoskin's cabin in 'Bless the Child') The cliff from Mountain Men and Bless the Child is just up the slope. It was raining HARD and my raincoat had given up some time ago so I was well on my way to becoming thoroughly soaked.
3:00 pm	Continued up the slope to the Seymour Falls Dam where MacLeod kills Michael Christian. (They Also Serve) The pouring rain finally waterlogged my phone badly enough that it shorted out. So I don't have photos from this point until the next day after I'd given it plenty of time to dry out. Fortunately, we were pretty much through for the day and I was able to buy a bag of rice at a grocery store on the way home. Thank goodness it worked! (I took this photo the next day, once my phone was working again.)
?3:30 pm?	The last location of the day was the Waterloo clearing from Band of Brothers, just off the ski slope's parking lot, near the restrooms. There was an unexpected snowfall the day that scene was shot. Steve recalled the problems that created, not least the fact that the Waterloo battle was fought in June, so snow made absolutely NO sense. They also had a lot of trouble keeping the poor extras from freezing to death while lying around *pretending* to be dead. And the snow covered up a lot of their props so that for quite a long time afterwards, people were finding bits and pieces that had been left behind.
7:30 pm	After returning to the hotel (and changing into dry clothes!), we venture forth and up the street to the Rickshaw Theatre, where we had tickets to a performance by... Jim Byrnes! SO AWESOME! We got to meet him briefly before the show, and he even gave us a shout-out as being Highlander fans in the audience and played "Running Out of Time" for us, which he wrote during the filming of 'Highlander: the Source', where Joe Dawson (supposedly) is killed. Thank goodness that movie was just a bad dream (hahah). On a related note, one of the other performers that night, Colleen Rennison, was actually in an episode of Highlander herself when she was a child. She was the little girl at the hospital in Courage. (I took this photo on Monday, during our Gastown/Chinatown tour.)

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Last updated: August 27, 2017