3. The X-Tour * X-perience in Vancouver! 2004
Before I even begin telling everyone about the fantastic X-File location tour in the city of Vancouver, lets start with a bit of luck that came my way. David Duchovny had been promoting the new movie ‘Connie & Carla’ and it premiered two days before I flew to Canada with Mum. (I knew nothing of this until I got to Vancouver.) So, first of all on Thursday, April 15th 2004 when I got to Calgary, I was channel surfing in the hotel room, and saw the coming attractions for the movie, which was going to be released on Friday! The next day I caught him on a chat show! Couldn’t believe my luck! I suggested to Mum that maybe we could go and see the film when we got to Vancouver? She was apprehensive at first, but discovered the female lead (who wrote the script) also wrote and starred in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ which she loved. So had a feeling she’d enjoy this one?
On my travels I discovered that David is still very popular with folks (even if they do accuse him of saying it rained all the time!) <g> I met a couple of avid fans, a lady assistant on the Jasper cable car, who as I left called out, ‘Goodbye another Duchovny fan!’ Then there was the lady serving in a Subway in Kamloops who was keen to see the new film as well. I also met a few people who had met him in Vancouver. Well of course there was Boyd (the guy who runs the X-Tour) who had at the time let XF film outside, and inside his mother’s suite (Scully’s apartment) in Season 2, having no idea what this ‘hokey little sci-fi show’ would become! <g> But then after all these years, he recently met David again filming in Vancouver’s Gastown, for ‘Connie & Carla’. Needless to say the fans on his tour (Japanese) got more than they bargained for that day! Then, when I went on the North Shore/ Grouse Mountain trip, our guide Sean from the local West Coast Sightseeing mini bus tours decided to make me jealous. <G> He used to be a gardener, and ended up doing the garden belonging to David’s next door neighbour, while he rented a place in the Kitsilano area (not far from Mulder’s original apartment location.) Sean said how David used to say ‘hi’ to him over the fence every morning! (Incidently, I thought Sean looked a little bit like Krycek!) <g> I also found out that one of the Jetsave representatives (the tour co. we went with from UK) played a vampire in “Bad Blood”. Our Canadian guide from Jetsave, Ron also had a friend in the company who looked like Scully’s double, and he used to tease her all the time by calling her this! <G> And there was a female tour guide (West Coast Sightseeing) on the Victoria tour who had met William Davis. She said she could smell a heavy scent of smoke on him. (But I thought he didn’t really smoke, only menthol ones on X Files? Still that’s got a worse smell in my opinion!) <g>
<<WARNING! – SPOILERS FOR ‘CONNIE AND CARLA’ MOVIE>>
It was on the second day in Vancouver, after a trip to Whistler that Mum and I went to see ‘Connie & Carla’, at the Odeon on Granville Street, a few streets down from our hotel. We both loved it! Two women friends have their sights set on being cabaret performers (Nia and co-star had great singing voices.) Then they get mixed up with crooks and accidentally make a run for it with their stash of drugs! They end up in LA, and are getting nowhere with the singing. Then Nia has a wild idea after seeing a drag show. Both ladies pretend to be male drag queens, and are a hit! Then DD comes along as one of the ‘queens’ brothers, trying to make peace with him, after the guy left his family. Nia falls hook line and sinker for him, but can’t reveal her true self, for fear of destroying the girls’ act as drag queens. So she keeps making conversation (and literally bumping into him several times!) He’s drawn to him/her, but when they get drunk in a bar and she kisses him, he panics! The drag queens have a thing for him too! <G> Will he discover that Nia is really a woman? Go see the movie! I also loved it as it had lots of songs from musicals, particularly ‘Mame’ that they kept singing. Erm, all except DD that is. Well the guy has admitted he has a ‘bad’ singing voice! <g> There was also a special guest from the world of musicals. When I got home I immediately bought the soundtrack over the Internet (it’s brilliant!) And I’ll get the DVD, whenever it finally gets released.
<<END OF SPOILERS>>
On my travels I discovered that David is still very popular with folks (even if they do accuse him of saying it rained all the time!) <g> I met a couple of avid fans, a lady assistant on the Jasper cable car, who as I left called out, ‘Goodbye another Duchovny fan!’ Then there was the lady serving in a Subway in Kamloops who was keen to see the new film as well. I also met a few people who had met him in Vancouver. Well of course there was Boyd (the guy who runs the X-Tour) who had at the time let XF film outside, and inside his mother’s suite (Scully’s apartment) in Season 2, having no idea what this ‘hokey little sci-fi show’ would become! <g> But then after all these years, he recently met David again filming in Vancouver’s Gastown, for ‘Connie & Carla’. Needless to say the fans on his tour (Japanese) got more than they bargained for that day! Then, when I went on the North Shore/ Grouse Mountain trip, our guide Sean from the local West Coast Sightseeing mini bus tours decided to make me jealous. <G> He used to be a gardener, and ended up doing the garden belonging to David’s next door neighbour, while he rented a place in the Kitsilano area (not far from Mulder’s original apartment location.) Sean said how David used to say ‘hi’ to him over the fence every morning! (Incidently, I thought Sean looked a little bit like Krycek!) <g> I also found out that one of the Jetsave representatives (the tour co. we went with from UK) played a vampire in “Bad Blood”. Our Canadian guide from Jetsave, Ron also had a friend in the company who looked like Scully’s double, and he used to tease her all the time by calling her this! <G> And there was a female tour guide (West Coast Sightseeing) on the Victoria tour who had met William Davis. She said she could smell a heavy scent of smoke on him. (But I thought he didn’t really smoke, only menthol ones on X Files? Still that’s got a worse smell in my opinion!) <g>
<<WARNING! – SPOILERS FOR ‘CONNIE AND CARLA’ MOVIE>>
It was on the second day in Vancouver, after a trip to Whistler that Mum and I went to see ‘Connie & Carla’, at the Odeon on Granville Street, a few streets down from our hotel. We both loved it! Two women friends have their sights set on being cabaret performers (Nia and co-star had great singing voices.) Then they get mixed up with crooks and accidentally make a run for it with their stash of drugs! They end up in LA, and are getting nowhere with the singing. Then Nia has a wild idea after seeing a drag show. Both ladies pretend to be male drag queens, and are a hit! Then DD comes along as one of the ‘queens’ brothers, trying to make peace with him, after the guy left his family. Nia falls hook line and sinker for him, but can’t reveal her true self, for fear of destroying the girls’ act as drag queens. So she keeps making conversation (and literally bumping into him several times!) He’s drawn to him/her, but when they get drunk in a bar and she kisses him, he panics! The drag queens have a thing for him too! <G> Will he discover that Nia is really a woman? Go see the movie! I also loved it as it had lots of songs from musicals, particularly ‘Mame’ that they kept singing. Erm, all except DD that is. Well the guy has admitted he has a ‘bad’ singing voice! <g> There was also a special guest from the world of musicals. When I got home I immediately bought the soundtrack over the Internet (it’s brilliant!) And I’ll get the DVD, whenever it finally gets released.
<<END OF SPOILERS>>
Speaking of Whistler, Mum and I took a trip on the cable car up the mountain, where I took several photos. Then discovered later that X Files filmed the Antarctic scenes up there. So I’d already been witnessing an XF location without realising it.
This actually happened several times during my stay. I ended up taking photos of areas that turned out to be XF locations – talk about ‘spooky’ intuition! An example was a stretch of mountains called the Tantalus Range.
GETHSEMENE 24,O4
And on the way to Whistler, we stopped at a small area called Britannia Beach. I saw an old Mining Museum and thought it looked familiar, so took a pic of it, and the tourist stores.
Turns out it was the mine in “Paper Clip” 3/2 (Lots of files…lots ‘n lots of files!), and the stores featured as the diner where Mulder & Scully met Skinner, after being chased in the mine.
Then on our return from Whistler, we stopped in a lovely area called Porteau Cove, where I later discovered was the site they blew up the train car in “731” 3/10.
Ok, now for the news about the X-Tour. I emailed Boyd when I got home, thanking him for the wonderful X-perience, and told him I’d be passing on my news to fans and friends. He thanked me back, saying how he appreciates me telling fans about the tour. Well if anyone is a huge fan and also interested in seeing various locations where they shot the series in Vancouver, you just HAVE to go on this tour! Now nowhere on the website does it tell you exactly what you’ll see (then again Boyd did explain that due to traffic etc, the tour is different every day.) But I’ll explain what happened when I went on it. It was Friday, April 23rd. I got up early morning for breakfast in the Marriot Hotel, on Hornby Street. It was raining quite heavy! Ok, I wanted an X Files tour, but it didn’t have to be THAT authentic! <G> Luckily it did clear up later though. Just after 9.30am, a huge white limo with a red ‘X’ on the doors pulled up outside!
(Boyd had emailed me in England saying it would either be the limo or customised van.) He introduced himself and his driver, then I discovered two ladies were joining us. A French girl from Paris who’s a keen Gillian Anderson fan, and her friend from Vancouver. Her friend wasn’t a fan, but had come along for the ride. The first important building we saw (which I’d already seen several times, as it was just up Hornby St, a block from our hotel) was the William Davis Actors Studio, where many X File guest stars were alumni there.
Also along ‘our’ street from the hotel is the art gallery (“Gethsemane” 4/24 – the Smithsonian Institute.) From then on we continued through the city, then got out to observe some locations close by to each other. Eg, Hotel Vancouver (“Fire” 1/11.)
Robson Square Skating Rink (“Apocrypha” 3/16 –
where the Lone Gunmen were skating.)
where the Lone Gunmen were skating.)
Also in the area was Senator Mathson’s Place (“Ascension”) which is Vancouver Art Gallery.
We then drove down to the bay area to the Waterfront Centre Hotel
(“Duane Barry” 2/5 – the famous hostage taking scene outside.
(“Duane Barry” 2/5 – the famous hostage taking scene outside.
Back inside the limo I tried to take pics of areas, but unfortunately couldn’t get them all as we drove by. We went down the road where an intersection was (“Leonard Betts” 4/14 – Intersection crash where Betts lost his head!) We saw a building from (“Fallen Angel” 1/9),
(Boyd hadn’t seen the movie yet, and since I’d seen it the night before, I was telling him and the girls exactly why both actors were running down this street! <g>) Also passed by the building used as a discotheque (“3” 2/7 – where Mulder met Kristen), a building on Granville street that used to be the Bank Of Montreal (“Lazurus” 1/14), parking lot (where XF shot all their parking lot scenes!), sports stadium ( “Sleepless” 2/4 – where Mulder met X for the first time ), City Square Mall (“Tooms” 1/20 – where Tooms met his demise under an escalator), underpass (where the Consortium met, and when Gibson was kidnapped (“The End” 5/20)
As we passed by these Oriental Gardens surrounded by a very high wall (so you couldn’t see it) Boyd explained he’d been told this was also an XF location, but I think it was also from the Duchovny movie ‘Playing God’?
We passed a Safeway grocery store (“Duane Barry” 2/5 – where Scully put the microchip over a till’s sensor and it went nuts! Also in “Colony” 2/16 – she waited at the bus stop outside.)
We sat on the sofa in the small living room while he showed us DVD clips of “Ascension” (Mulder racing into 1419, then having visions of Scully’s abduction from the living room. (They really did break that window, but fixed it, and had to ask permission to put fake blood on the floor and elsewhere.) Mulder also met Mrs Scully in the hall) and “Colony” (where the two agents were talking to the man who was really the bounty hunter in disguise. It was kind of fun sitting in this room whilst watching David and Gillian in the same room on the TV screen! Afterwards an even larger white limo (with ‘X’) pulled up and drove us back to our hotels.
I took this photo of my dear Mum (who sadly is no longer with us) near Canada Place, another location shoot.
But after a bit of a scary walk across the Capilano Suspension Bridge (think Raiders Of The Lost Ark!) we rode on the Grouse Mountain cable car.
Luckily we weren’t going at the speed Mulder was! <G> When we reached the top I was absolutely convinced David hung off the thing, after the last tower? That’s only about a 12 foot drop or so onto snow. So I thought he’d cheated a bit? Turns out I was wrong. When I watched the video at home, he actually stopped before the final tower! Okay, there is a HUGE drop below there, so in my opinion I think he was completely MAD to do this stunt!! <G>
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The building at the top (as seen in the episode) was the Peak Chalet with restaurant, food court and shops.
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Only when Mulder is seen leaving the cable car station, this isn’t the building and neither is the top of ‘Skyland Mountain.’ This was filmed at Seymour Mountain, which was also where Duane Barry drove his car with Scully in the boot.
We also met a couple of grizzly bears, who are being reared by the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife, ever since their mother’s were killed. Aw! I had enjoyed all my four trips in cable cars, but it was so cool to follow David’s trip up Grouse Mountain! The view from the top was breathtaking, of Vancouver. When they filmed David, they were facing the cameras towards West Vancouver (as Agent Mulder was supposed to be in Virginia?)
They filmed “Tempus Fugit” 4/17 – crash site and hangar scenes, and “Max” 4/18 in this vicinity.
I also got a photo of dawn over the control tower,
which was also in “Tempus Fugit” 4/17.
which was also in “Tempus Fugit” 4/17.
Another close encounter of the X-Files kind, was when we passed places on our wonderful trip on the Rocky Mountaineer Train, from Jasper to Kamloops (where we stayed a night.)
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Apparently cast and crew also stayed in this town when they were filming “Herrenvolk” 4/1 at the little shanty town of Walhachin, which we passed through the next day on the train to Vancouver.
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(I recently watched the episode, and realised Mulder, Jeremiah & the Sam (clone) were walking along a steep incline with the Thompson River running below, beside them. The railway line ran alongside the river.
And that concludes my FANTASTIC leap into the X Files locations in Vancouver! PHEW! It’s an experience I’ll never forget!
NB: I visited Vancouver again (May 2005) and have several more photos I’m adding to my previous diary, all X File related of course! <g>
NB: I visited Vancouver again (May 2005) and have several more photos I’m adding to my previous diary, all X File related of course! <g>
This is the General Motors Place which was where Mulder met ‘X’ in ‘Sleepless’ 2,04. It was also where the cast and crew gathered to say their farewells to Vancouver after filming ‘The End’ 5,20. (It happened to be just up the road from my hotel!)
This is the sharks tank at Stanley Park Aquarium. Where Mulder had a meeting with Deep Throat in E.B.E. 1,16
The rest of the pictures are aerial shots of Vancouver city I took from the Harbour Tower (which from the outside looks like a UFO!)
I have absolutely fallen in love with Vancouver and am making a third visit next year!
As a side note I would like to add that unfortunately Boyd left Pendrell Suites and moved to Thailand.
However there are still Vancouver Film & TV tours, and The X Files locations are included, though I’m not exactly sure which ones?
https://www.canadiansky.co.uk/british-columbia-holidays/vancouver/explore-the-best-film-locations-in-vancouver
As a side note I would like to add that unfortunately Boyd left Pendrell Suites and moved to Thailand.
However there are still Vancouver Film & TV tours, and The X Files locations are included, though I’m not exactly sure which ones?
https://www.canadiansky.co.uk/british-columbia-holidays/vancouver/explore-the-best-film-locations-in-vancouver