Zombie Season

On a pleasantly warm afternoon last Saturday, several hundred costumed people gathered at the northwest side of the Vancouver Art Gallery for the annual zombie walk. The size of the crowd was at least doubled by the presence of photographers and tourists with cameras.

Zombie walks are a recent North American and Australian phenomenon that began as a promotional event for horror B movies but evolved into a more complex social artifact apparently connected with the Halloween tradition which in turn is rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of the dead.

When Celtic domains were conquered, this Druidic celebration called Samhain was incorporated first into Roman and then into Christian ceremonies. In the 19th century, Irish immigrants brought Halloween to the New World where it is now comfortably aligned with the dominant cultural currents of fun and commerce.

An unexpected context to this year's Vancouver zombie walk was brought about by a much smaller group gathered around the southeast corner of the gallery. There, about 30 people protested American and Canadian foreign policies, in particular, the American practice of robotic assassinations carried out in the Pakistani tribal lands.

A young woman in hijab, apparently not used to speaking in public, talked about women and children killed without warning, their lives disregarded, their deaths trivialized as collateral damage. The number of civilian casualties that she asserted matched the size of the crowd of fake dead gathered at the other side of the gallery.

A little farther from the group of protesters, a well dressed, presumably Pakistani-Canadian family sat on the bench. The man held a sign related to the protest. The boy sitting on his lap was relaxed and content in a way one would associate with a safe and happy childhood. His mother, though, looked concerned and wary.

Several zombies went by carrying cups of ice cream. The two groups did their best to ignore each other.