This is a walking city — or at least a pedestrian-friendly one. This claim will infuriate some: there are a dozen or more pedestrian fatalities yearly, usually in dark, rainy conditions. But most drivers respect foot traffic to the degree that pedestrians habitually step into the intersec¬tion without looking left and right (not recommended). And unlike car-dependent suburbs such as North Vancouver, the city itself is well endowed with automatic pedestrian-crossing signals, some of which include an audio signal for people with vision problems.
But best of all — and unlike most American cities, where large swaths of the urban waterfront remain in private hands — Vancouver’s waterfront is mostly publicly owned and accessible. The downtown peninsula, and the south shore of False Creek to Kitsilano, are almost entirely encircled with a seawall that is, well, the pride of the town.
An immigrant Scottish stonemason, Jimmy Cunningham, began building the Stanley Park portion in 1917. In 1931, as the parks board took control of the park shoreline, he was named master stonemason. He oversaw the wall’s granite-block construction well beyond his for¬mal retirement in 1955. By that time, the Stanley Park seawall was three miles long. It was completed in 1980 — 5.5 miles around the entire park. After Cunningham died in 1963, his ashes were interred somewhere in the seawall.
Today, the seawall — which accommodates walkers, cyclists, inline skaters, and other non-motorized wheeled vehicles — continues east from English Bay and Sunset Beach around the north shore of False Creek. Portions of this section take the form of a suspended boardwalk. The seawall runs just beyond Science World at the creek’s eastern end.
A large parcel of industrial land on southeast False Creek, set aside by the city for a future “sustainable community,” then cuts off the trajectory. But when this area is built out, likely over the next decade, the seawall will run right around the creek, picking up the existing section at the Cambie Street Bridge, and continuing, as it does today, past Granville Island and Vanier Park to Kitsilano Beach Park.
A second portion, not quite finished, runs between Canada Place and Coal Harbour (a particularly elaborate stretch, with fancy developer-funded railings and street furniture). It will be completed when a con-vention center expansion, near the foot of Burrard Street, is finished.
The seawall is not without its politics. Devoted walkers, cyclists, and particularly high-speed inline skaters periodically collide and clash ( verbally at least). Parks board commissioners have talked about banning bikes or skaters, rejected the idea, and issued a press release or two to calm the waters. In the past few years, the parks board has started redirecting cyclists to alternate paths where space allows, and ordered all “wheeled-vehicle traffic” to take the seawall in a counter-clockwise direction (only in Canada would we obey!).
And as if that weren’t enough official incursion, you can go to the parks board Web site (www.city.vancouver.bc.ca, click on “parks and recreation”) for “smelt-fishing restrictions.” Dip-net fishing from the seawall is permitted for two six-week runs in early and late summer.
Anglers must have all the right buckets and so forth; keep well to the edge, and leave nothing behind. (Actually, this law isn’t that bad. West Vancouver devoted an entire bylaw to its Dundarave Pier after neighbors complained of late-night fishing by outsiders, some of whom had left behind. . . fish guts!) |
