For the second location, I chose to go to Cordova Bay. This is a place I have really only driven through for the most part and I had one school trip here several years ago but not by the beach. My class stayed in the upper part of the forest in Mount Doug Park (PKOLS).

Cordova Bay at Mount Doug Beach

Curricular Connection

The curricular connection I was thinking of specifically for this post focus on grade 4 science from the BC Curriculum:

Demonstrate curiosity about the natural world

Location

Mount Doug and the beach looking out onto Cordova Bay is a significant location to the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. PKOLS means “White Head” or “White Rock” in the SENĆOŦEN language. It is thought that the name suggests that the mountain was glaciated at one point during its history. The W̱SÁNEĆ peoples would also frequently canoe in Cordova Bay. This area is highly diverse in plant and animal species.

Despite the weather and high tide, I really enjoyed being able to walk down to the beach. I even noticed that some of the trees down by the beach were starting to bud. I used a plant identification app on one of the budding plants and learned it was an osoberry shrub.  

Osoberry bud

Mood Before and After

My mood before walking around Cordova Bay was sitting in a neutral area. I found that after I was at about a 5. I was really excited I finally made the time to go to this beach!

I took a picture of some of the branches of some of the cedar trees I had walked by and decided I wanted to paint that for this post. I learned very quickly that cedar branches are in fact way more tedious to paint than I was expecting because of pattern of the branches as well as how the scales hang. For this, I tried to use more liquid watercolour rather than watercolour paints from a pan or paint that had already hardened and just needed water added to it.

Red Cedar Tree

Red Cedar Branches in Watercolour