“The jewel of Vancouver,” “a vibrant coastal rainforest,” “the greatest urban park in Canada” — there’s no lack of colourful ways to describe Stanley Park, North America’s third-largest urban park. The park, a source of pride for Vancouverites, holds an abundance of exceptional beauty and ecological riches and is one of the most popular tourist sites in Canada.
A very special version of its story is recounted in Sean Kheraj’s book, intriguingly titled Inventing Stanley Park. Kheraj offers a behind-the-scenes look at this immense space of “wild” nature, revealing that it is in equal parts the product of natural forces and of a considerable developmental effort by humans.
The history of Stanley Park began in 1887 when the federal government conceded to the city of Vancouver the right to use a section of a military reserve to develop a park located on the Burrard Peninsula — a point of land surrounded by the waters of Coal Harbour, Burrard Inlet, and English Bay. Vancouver had just been incorporated as a city, and with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway the city’s growth soared. September 28, 1888, marked the official opening of the park that was named in honour of the sixth Governor General of Canada, Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley.
In those days, however, the vast, over-four-hundred-acre area earmarked for park development was still partly inhabited. For hundreds of years, the site had been occupied by the indigenous peoples of the Coast Salish Nation, notably around the village of Whoi Whoi (Xwayxway), many of whose descendants were scattered due to epidemics and diseases introduced to them by colonization. In addition to more than fifty Aboriginal people, the park also housed settler families who were dislodged by authorities over the course of subsequent decades.
Taking possession of the site was therefore a crucial step in the process of inventing Stanley Park, as detailed in the first and second chapters of the book. Transforming the area also entailed many hidden manoeuvres, the scale and magnitude of which led unsuspecting eyes to view the park as appearing to have a wild, untouched landscape. As shown in the chapter “Improving Nature,” Stanley Park would take shape with impressive and extensive landscaping, road and path construction to allow visitor access, and the adoption of a range of regulations that would prescribe visitors’ behaviour.
Kheraj recounts the incessant work undertaken to protect the park from its own natural elements, which were a constant threat to the existence of a site whose ecology had been changed significantly since the late nineteenth century. Some wild animals were expelled (bears, cougars, and wolves) while other species were introduced — such as the grey squirrels that were very popular in the early twentieth century and prized for their fur — as well as various other animals otherwise destined for the zoo. But, like the swans, also introduced in this era, these new species were destined to become the prey of choice for some native predators, and it was a constant battle to maintain their presence in the park.
The “struggle against the autonomy of nature,” as Kheraj puts it, also meant fighting fires, storms, droughts, and the erosion of the park’s shores by the ocean that surrounds it. The last chapter of the book discusses some painful episodes of destruction affecting parts of the park, particularly the violent windstorms during the winter of 2006-07 that decimated more than ten thousand trees, representing around five to ten per cent of Stanley Park’s forest.
Finally, Inventing Stanley Park tells how the site was the subject of some urbanization. The aptly titled fourth chapter, “The City in the Park,” reconstructs the history of its development, particularly the wide road through the park that echoes how the Lions Gate Bridge overlooks part of the park and connects downtown to West Vancouver. We learn how the construction of this suspension bridge was the subject of considerable controversy in the 1930s, given its imposing character that would transform part of the natural landscape.
In this enjoyable and richly illustrated book, Sean Kheraj invites us to explore the paradoxical character of our relationship with nature — one that sees us wanting simultaneously to protect it and to transform it to meet the shifting ideals of the day. Inventing Stanley Park reminds us how large urban parks like Stanley Park are a precious legacy of the nineteenth century, more than ever enjoyed by all.
— Michèle Dagenais (Read bio)
Michèle Dagenais is a professor in the history department at Université de Montréal.