At about 7:30 p.m. on a Monday in August, I found my way into a deserted multiplex under construction.

I could have just strolled in through those tarps, but I took the skulking route around back, where I was required to climb some scaffolding stairs to get inside.

Looking down at where the seats will go in future Theatre (let's say) 7:

Future theatres 3, 4, and 5:

The pictures don't do justice to how big and airy -- and dim, at dusk -- this shell of a building was.

There was a ladder leading up to the roof, but I only made it about four-fifths up before deciding that I was not going to have the nerve to transition off the ladder onto the roof, and turning back. It was a tall ladder.

On a Tuesday in August, I revisited Th Chrlsn, a condo under development that I'd been eyeing for a while. (On Halloween I'd climbed its sister building and watched amateur fireworks pop and fizzle all around me, small and mute with distance.) That day the fencing was down, and there was a sign on the lobby doors, apparently for tradespersons, saying that the lobby would be closed for tile laying from 6:00 p.m. on that day's date to sometime on tomorrow's. I looked at my watch. It was 5:45.

The lobby was locked but the gate to the underground parking was up. As I was descending the ramp, some guy crossed my path on his way to his vehicle. I was forced to follow him for a while to get to the elevators -- one of which, hung with movers' drapes, proved operable. I rode it to some floor, I cannot now recall which one, but most likely a couple from the top, from where I climbed a stairwell the rest of the way.

Down at street level it had been dusk; up here it was full day.

Why, there's my old friend, Vncvr Hs!

On what my camera, to my surprise, tells me was a Friday in July, I waltzed in to the construction site of the stylish, top-heavy Vncvr Hs. There were perimeter cameras aplenty, but no one apparently around and the gate wide open. Well, wide unlocked. So in I went.

 And up I climbed.

It was a calm, bright, colorful day.

On a Friday in July, I took a public tour of the Greenpeace boat docked at Lonsdale Quay.

On the tour, I learned that the boat had been a something or other before it had been a Greenpeace boat.

After the tour, I strolled along the boardwalk till passing a condominium under construction. I looked hard, but casually, at an obvious point of entry; and finally, after a couple of passes, when there were not many people around, and those who were around were probably not looking at me, I casually hopped over some formwork and into the site. It felt a little brave.

I climbed to the top, fourteen storeys or so, if I remember, and looked out at the water.

Why, there's the Arctic Sunrise!

Then down and back out the way I had come. I had learned nothing.

On a Tuesday in May, I skulked around a condominium "village" in North Vancouver. To get from the finished area to the under-construction area, i.e., past the security fencing, I had only to hop over a belly-high fountain wall. Though there was no one around, this felt a little brave.

I climbed straight to the top, fifteen or twenty storeys, if I remember.

It looks, in fact, from the building next door, that I must have been up about twenty-three storeys.

Back on the ground and on my way out, I encountered a security guard idly strolling, ten meters away. Though he hadn't yet spotted me, he certainly would, so I called out a greeting, and, without breaking stride, hopped back over the wall. From the other side of the fence, he called out to me, "Is there anyone ...?"

"No," I said, putting on my bicycle helmet, "they've all gone home for the day."