COLONIALISM, LAND SPECULATION, and STANLEY PARK

Other States of Mind, No. 15

The Canadian city of Vancouver, situated on a peninsula, is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean. Its magnificent Stanley Park, which is in effect a peninsula upon the peninsula, is nearly encircled by the ocean. English Bay is to its west, Burrard Inlet to its north, and Coal Harbour, which is a portion of the Inlet, to its east. English Bay is a major waterway for pleasure and working craft, and Burrard Inlet, where the Port of Vancouver has its principal location, a prime waterway for commercial shipping traffic.

Stanley Park, which occupies the entire northwest end of the Burrard Peninsula, and is entirely within the boundaries of the city of Vancouver, has a shoreline that stretches some nine kilometres (5½ miles) entirely along the Pacific Ocean. It is an unusually large urban park, some 405 hectares (1,000 acres) in size, and its design reflects the planning principles of the designer of New York’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted. Central Park is slightly smaller, at 340 hectares, than Stanley Park; however, the entire squirrel population of the park is introduced and descends from eight breeding pairs of grey squirrels that were the gift, in 1909, of the City of New York.

The park is a result, on the one hand, of military necessity, for it began as a federal military reserve designed to hold off the intrusive Americans who had taken possession of the nearby San Juan Islands in 1872; and, on the other, of real estate speculation, for it was thought, rightly, by early developers that to have a park near the newly developed properties of the residential West End of the peninsula would keep land and property prices elevated. So demonstrating once again that a given plan can produce unpredicted results, sometimes even of what may be considered a good kind, and, at least, if having no relation to war, nonetheless to considerations of greed.