On Friday afternoon, at about 2pm, I wandered out of my home-office cave . Like a fish emerging from the primeval sea for the first time, I squinted in the natural light. I staggered over to the dining room, where I looked down on a peculiar site. I quickly snapped a couple of photos:
We’d had a lot of rain the week before, but why the sudden geiser? It must have lasted about two minutes, and shot, maybe, 150 feet into the air. There’s a sub-station/maintenance building cleverly-concealed below the viewpoint in the bottom centre of this photo. The geiser is clearly associated with that.
In unrelated news, I always refer to ferries like the one to the right of the spout as “the gay ferries”, because they’re in rainbow colours. There are two competing companies in False Creek, and I can never remember what they’re called or which one comes to which dock.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
One’s called, epynomously, False Creek Ferries; they’re blue. The other is the Aquabus, it’s Skittle(tm) colored.
I don’t know where they stop or when they run, and I sort of remember they have different hours in the winter.
As for the water cannons, perhaps your neighborhood was being attacked by a fire elemental.
Bahahaha.. fire elemental. I love it.
As I understand it, Darren, those water spouts connect to a substantial underground reservoir in the area. I seem to remember it being something to do with fears for the water supply in the event an earthquake breaks the pipes to downtown from the Capilano Reservoir, or something. I might be making that up, but I remember seeing a news clip on the fact that they let water through the valve system every once in a while, 30 days, something like that, to keep the system in working order.
Strange, but something like the truth. I’ll try to find out more.
I’d like to see another version of this picture with the fire elemental clearly visible.
Thanks.
Darren, I’m no longer familair with the topography of that part of False Creek, but the spouts sure look like the ones from the fire boat. The fire boat couldn’t be docked and out of view from your vantage point, could it? (In other words, are the tubes always there?)
I don’t think there is a large reservoir in your area (I could be wrong). The closest one to where you are is, I beleive, the massive reservoir beneath VanDusen gardens.
Nostaliga moment: I was a pilot on the original False Creek Ferries, about 25 years ago, when there was only one ferry, and it went from Granville Island straight across to beneath the north side of the Granville Street bridge (from where a guy once jumped and landed in the water right beside me).
Now if we could just digitally enhance that photo so we can see the name badge on the person in the orange suit, we could track him down through Interpol and go ask him.
Found it! Ross is correct – it’s not a reservoir under there, the creek itself is the reservoir. The water spouts are a test of the False Creek Pump Station, part of the Dedicated Fire Protection System in Vancouver. Basically, in case an earthquake disrupts the normal water supply, there are salt water pumping stations to assist fire-fighting.
The City of Vancouver link:
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/engsvcs/watersewers/water/emergency/
There’s also a reference to periodic testing on the first Friday of every month on this page: http://dfps.tripod.com/
Glad to be of service, Mr. Barefoot.