One evening after a concert, before heading home, I scoped out a nearby condo under construction. To my surprised delight, the security fencing had a big welcoming gap in it, and the building had a big welcoming opening in one wall. I entered, found the stairwell, and climbed up twenty flights, the concert program still clutched in my hand.

Even a twenty-storey building feels pretty tall when it is the tallest thing around. Looking north towards downtown, with the junction of Main, Broadway, and Kingsway at my feet:
 

There were a dozen trees planted on the roof, obstructing the various views. Nevertheless it was a balmy night, and I drank it in.

"I am not a brave man at all, but a cautious, even timid soul who makes himself pull off one stunt after another for his own good. And I entered the lonely darkness thinking: Public space should not be like this; all the world ought to be mine. But how can I make it so?" (61)

"Every time I surrender, even necessarily, to authority which disregardingly or contemptuously violates me, so I violate myself. Every time I break an unnecessary law, doing so for my own joy and to the detriment of no other human being, so I regain myself, and become strong in the parts of me that the security man can never see." (97-8)

-- From William T. Vollmann's train-hopping memoir, Riding to Everywhere.

On a recent long weekend, I lackadaisically bicycled past some "Authorized Access Only" signs into this huge construction area.

There were a number of vehicles parked about, and a train shunting nearby, and some machinery humming away, so I expected at any minute to be called out to and sent packing. At lollygagging pace I circled the perimeter, getting gradually closer, before finally dropping my kickstand and wandering inside.

The place was deserted.

There was something magical about this location. First, it was huge. Second, it was vacant and unfinished, which made it feel like a brand-new ruin. The concrete floors were covered in the thinnest layer of rainwater. Wind ripped through the wooden walkways a dozen storeys above, causing tatters of plastic to flutter and flap.

Third, these silos were so smooth and simple -- big concrete cylinders -- that they felt more like alien or druidic monuments than serviceable structures. They were somehow at once reminiscent of cathedrals and of a streamlined video-game world.

I wondered vaguely about the differing orders in which they were being constructed -- some had columns in place for the funnel, but no roof, others had a roof but no columns -- but I didn't speculate for long. If I had had a tour guide, I would have listened attentively, but my enjoyment of these spaces had almost nothing to do with intellectual curiosity. The fun, as always for me, I suppose, was in trespassing, and in being inside a big strange thing I'd never seen before up close.

After the cylindrical ones, I ducked inside the tall cuboid one, half looking for a stairwell. (I was not about to climb sixteen flights of external scaffolding stairs in a high wind.) But these structures are not built to be climbed. In fact, the tall one didn't look like it was built to be entered by humans at all. In any case, its flooded gravel floor, littered with detritus from the construction going on sixteen storeys overhead, revealed that it had not been entered for some time.

I guess I speculated a little; but I learned nothing.

I got back on my bike and, grateful, gleeful, returned the way I'd come.

I continue to pop in to the West Burnaby Nonspecific Sickhouse when I'm in the neighborhood.

Doors that last time were unlocked are today locked; but sometimes a door that last time was locked is today unlocked.

This person liked horses.

Some bags of linen never made it out of this linen chute in the former health records department.

The calendar is from 2007.

Before I started exploring, my favorite dreams took place in big many-roomed houses or semi-derelict mansions. They were in fact exploring dreams.

Since I started exploring, I more often have infiltration dreams. Most commonly I am snooping around big hotels or construction sites or climbing office towers, avoiding running into people and trying doors to see if they are locked. Sometimes they are not!

I don't have recurring dreams, but I do, weirdly, have recurring dream-locations -- I could almost draw maps of some of them. In particular, there is a tower that I occasionally revisit, so high that it sways noticeably; another is a construction site that has, unearthed in its basement, some kind of portal to another world that I desperately want to get to.

Every time I go back to 'Rotown, I take a close look at the latest condo towers. The big development right now is Stn Sqr, which is eventually going to have five of them. Two are already up, and the taller one is the new tallest building around. Before going over to a friend's for dinner in the neighborhood, I compulsively checked out the fencing around this site.

To my surprised delight, I found that the solid chainlink wall had in one place been removed to give access to a firefighters' standpipe. This dark little alcove, imposingly barricaded by a strip of red caution tape, was enclosed by temporary fencing, connected at one corner by a bit of twisted wire and another by nothing but another strip of caution tape. This I ripped, then went to my friend's for dinner, looking forward to a postprandial explore.

When, four hours later, I returned, the tape had been replaced! This briefly gave me pause; but I had had two glasses of wine with dinner, so I ripped this tape too and slipped inside. 

I found a stairwell which took me only to the third floor, then another which took me up one more, to a rooftop garden shared by the two towers. I circled the taller building, trying a few locked doors before finding one wide open. I went inside, found the stairwell, and climbed to the 56th minus 6 (no numbers ending in 4) = the 50th floor to the lower roof; a climb up a ladder and out a hatch brought me to the upper roof. 

Looking down on 'Rotown Mall.

Looking south toward the shimmering lights of Richmond.

Looking down on Crystal Mall. My old friend, Element Hotel, now looking paltry on the right.

It was a warm night and the view was scintillating. I tried my best to drink it in, but I was tired and my thoughts wandered. It crossed my mind that perhaps I enjoy the idea of topping roofs, the satisfaction and pride of having topped roofs, rather more than the actuality. Also, I had to shit; so I took a dump in the highest portable toilet in Burnaby, reflecting with pride and satisfaction that they'd need a sixty-story crane to dispose of my DNA. 

I climbed back down, exiting perhaps forty-five minutes after entering. The tape had not been repaired, but while getting on my bicycle, I did see a security guard shambling around the perimeter towards my point of entry. Perhaps my timing had been good. 

The new development at Bwood is starting to look pretty good, so on a recent holiday I decided to check it out. 

Sort of amazingly, I was able to get access into the construction site from an unlocked door in the mall's service corridors.

From the street I had seen one security guard patrolling the perimeter. I didn't see him inside, but I didn't rove much. I got my bearings and made a beeline for the big condo tower.

I trudged up approximately fifty flights of stairs, then the stairs ended. I climbed two more flights of rickety scaffold stairs in the elevator shaft, but couldn't nerve myself to climb the last big section onto the "roof".

The views were tremendous, the sun was just setting, I could see all of Greater Vancouver and beyond.

I retraced my steps and, exiting the site and the mall, reassumed my law-abiding anonymity. But secretly I felt like hot shit.

I'd scoped out the Drumpf Dauer about a dozen times before I seized opportunity.

It was probably about 7 p.m. on a weekday and the security fencing down to underground parking was ajar. There was a security guard in a yellow jacket sitting in the window fifteen meters away, and he looked up just as I passed through the gap, but no one came running after me and no alarms were sounded.

P1 was empty. None of the elevators would take me anywhere but the lobby, which is where I did not want to go. (There were notices posted for construction workers about who to text if you wanted to ride the elevator to the residential levels, but I did not take advantage of this service.) The two stairwells I tried also led me only to ground level.

I paused to study an emergency evacuation route map, and saw that there was another stairwell leading up to the mezzanine levels. I took that.

The third floor exit was locked, but the second floor was not.

I circled the floor, which was thickly carpeted like a hotel's conference center, but dirty and still under construction, then passed through a door where a guy was working on the flooring. He apologized for being in my way. I said, "No problem."

I walked past him -- to a dead end. I returned immediately, and entered the elevator beside him. I rode this up to the third floor.

I passed a couple of guys speaking Spanish over a vacuum. I said, "Hi," and entered a stairwell that took me all the way to the top.

The three penthouses are on floor 68, but each has an upper level (69) and a rooftop hot tub (70). From this level, also home to some mechanical stuff, you can climb a ladder to the flat central part of the roof. In fact, however, I was not quite 71 storeys up, since 13 and anything ending in a 4 were skipped in the numbering. Call it 64 storeys. The nearby Shangri-La looked to be about a floor higher.

(Posted on the balcony of one of the penthouses was a sign warning that going out there could expose you to falls of greater than ten feet (10'). So be sure to adhere to safety regulations.)

The view from the top was lovely, but obstructed by the surrounding lower roof, so that you could not see anything nearby or straight down. Which gave it a strange remote feeling, almost like being on a mountaintop.

It was raining lightly. The black trees of Stanley Park were indistinguishable from the black water of English Bay.

Coming back down, I was afraid that I would by now be locked inside, and would have to explain myself to security. But, going against my usual habit, I took a different stairwell down -- which let me out the front of the building on Georgia Street to freedom.

This was fun!

There are fifteen floors accessible by elevator in this place. Then there is a sixteenth floor, which appears to be mostly offices and training rooms. (When last I visited, this floor was under construction. I could not get in, but maybe you'll have better luck. Go visit!) The seventeenth floor appears to be a mechanical floor. (I could not get in.) The eighteenth floor I managed to get into.

It has many fan units, as big as garden sheds. They hum along. One had no cover for its belt, which was cordoned off by red caution tape.

I badly had to pee (it always seems to happen to me when exploring), and peed on the concrete floor, I'm sorry to say.

Here is the guestbook to this floor, located right by the entrance:

I climbed a grated stair to the nineteenth floor, where there was a gigantic ... hot water tank?

There is a five-foot-diameter tube passing through this floor. It seems like a smokestack (I imagine an old derelict coal furnace somewhere in the bowels of this place), but then I cannot figure out why it opens here to a grating, with bars spaced like a jail-cell's:

These floors are quite well lit:

The twentieth floor is my favorite.

It has been variously carpeted, and has a few hung photos from the good old days of the hotel:

There are also some chairs around a coffee table, covered in dust in which the word "DEAD" has been fingerwritten:

Each floor is, of course, smaller than the former. There is not much of the twenty-first floor to speak of.

The twenty-second floor must be reached by a ladder -- which, though old, seems very sturdy, I must say.

Here the smokestack is covered in insulation with a thin black surface, which when scraped, with a key for example, extrudes a white interior.

There is, no shit, graffiti here from 1959. And the stack is by no means completely covered with names and dates; so I could not refrain.

From this floor, I climbed a ladder -- equipped with a cable you could clip into, if you were climbing safely -- for about two floors, to the very tip-topmost lookout, where that smokestack debouches, incidentally.

I did not take a photo. I do not like heights much. But I was here:

There is a new building going up at the West Burnaby Nonspecific Sickhouse.

It was pretty easy to get into. There was someone working there, making periodic loud noises.

This is a view from the roof down into the center court.

This is a view across False Creek from the roof. You'll have to take my word for it.