The City of Vancouver lists 192 parks — although many are pocket parks, such as those created along Point Grey Road when the city manages to snap up vacant lots (in the expectation of eventually assembling a sizable portion of the south shore of Burrard Inlet).
While east-side political activists claim they’re seriously short-changed in terms of per-capita green space by a series of since-jettisoned west-side-dominated city councils and parks boards, parks are pretty well distributed throughout the city.
The biggest is Stanley Park, at i,ooo acres. The second largest park within city boundaries is Pacific Spirit, which takes in much of the forest at the end of the Point Grey peninsula, including Wreck Beach (Westside). It’s actually a regional park, managed by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (604-432-6350). (You can download maps for most regional parks, including a gargantuan one of Pacific Spirit, at www.gvrd.bc.ca.)
Pacific Spirit is definitely a jewel in the crown — with thirty-three crisscrossing trails totaling forty-five miles. There are twenty entrances connecting it with adjoining neighborhoods, and paths begin at major roads such as Marine Drive, Chancellor Boulevard, and West i6th Avenue. As to its character, Pacific Spirit is a fully regenerated forest.
The second largest park managed by the city, rather than the region, is Everett Crowley, built on a former garbage dump in South Vancouver.
Residents of this Champlain Heights and Fraser River area play a quadrant. However, if the crush of weekend walkers, many with dogs for the moment, and controversially, this park is “off-leash” — is any indication, the public is not overlooking this area.
The intent is to keep Crowley au naturel. There are no directional signs on the i.6-mile trail that loops through a mostly deciduous forest; newcomers, I’m told, are always asking how to get out. Some-where in there are three lookouts over the Fraser River. The entrance is off Kerr Road, just north of Southeast Marine Drive.
If you’re after access to the Fraser River, there are several attractive parks, including a smallish one southwest of Granville Street. But the best, for the time being, is the Burnaby Fraser Foreshore Park at the south end of Burne Road off Southeast Marine Drive in Burnaby. Here, several miles of path follow the river.
Long my favorite park (though Capilano Canyon is nudging up there) is Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. Not that big — 185 acres with just under four miles of interconnecting trails — this park is nonetheless an airy showcase of old-growth fir and hemlock, framed by a spectacular, rocky shoreline. At its southernmost point stands the 1912 Point Atkinson lighthouse, one of the few remaining manned lighthouses in this region. The Marine Drive turnoff to the park is well marked.
North Vancouver, too, has great parks in provincial Mount Seymour Park and Lynn Headwaters Regional Park, a remote mountain park with trails to Grouse Mountain. There’s also the voluptuous Capilano River Regional Park (see “Secret Trees”). Cates Park, off the Dollarton Highway near Indian Arm, is your all-round, family¬oriented, picnic and boating destination.
The village of Deep Cove in North Vancouver — follow the Dollarton Highway eastward as far as it goes — has several parks,
but it is such an exceptional place in its own right that the parks are incidental. Writers, artists, and film types live here; it often functions as a movie set. The village is, well, village-y; the ambiance modestly upscale and not overly hip; and the physical surroundings entirely, inescapably, coastal rainforest.
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