The ThunderBlogs

The psychic hold that the sea has on a port town such as Vancouver – where the European exploration of the Burrard Inlet predated the city’s incorporation by more than 90 years – is evident in the circular wooden sign that greets visitors to Sailor Hagar’s Brew Pub. The emblem for the North Vancouver bar and restaurant, overlooking the inlet, features a larger-than-life carving of a wizened sailor’s hard squint, his face rutted by years of salt and sun, his white beard draped down the front of his raincoat.

Inside, a sandwich board reads “SPORTS ALL DAY.” And sure enough, if you take a seat on the middle of the dining room, you can see no fewer than eight flatscreens, all of which on a recent Saturday night were showing the B.C. Lions kicking the tar out of the Calgary Stampeders and the Vancouver Canucks thwacking puck after puck past the Anaheim Ducks. Another screen showed keno results, over by the mantelshelf with a model ship with three tall sails in a clear box.

The curious collision of the nautical and the modern were all around the bar. By the flatware station hung a portrait of a sailor, kettle and coffee pot in hand, clinging to a rope on a ship’s deck swamped by waves. The sign above the stainless-steel kitchen station read “galley.” Around the corner hung another portrait, this one of a traditional galley, with men crowded around a wooden table, one with a guitar, another with a banjo, a third playing an accordion, a fourth smoking a pipe. Beside it, also on the wall, stood a lottery machine, like an ATM in reverse. A small waste bin on the floor overflowed with crumpled keno tickets.

The full-scale fibreglass narwhal mounted on the far wall clashed with the veggie burger on the menu. A couple seated beneath a boom with fakes sails lashed to it complained audibly about the saltiness of the gravy and sent back a lasagna they said was inedible. A woman asked a man at her table a hypothetical: “Would you date yourself if you were a woman?”

Every so often, the chatter of the dining room would halt as men cheered and applauded for a Canucks goal. Even the interior of salty ol’ Sailor Hagar’s isn’t impervious to Hockey Night in Canada.