STANLEY PARK

Description

Essentials about Stanley Park in brief

What the Tiergarten is to Berliners and the Prater to the Viennese, Stanley Park is to Vancouverites. With its gigantic area of 405 hectares, it is the largest city park in Canada and the third largest in North America. Named after the former British Governor General of Canada, Frederick Arthur Stanley, the park is one of Vancouver’s main attractions, visited by about eight million locals and tourists each year. Stanley Park is popular mainly because of its beautiful location on a peninsula in the middle of the city, its vast network of walking, biking and hiking trails, its diverse recreational and leisure facilities and, last but not least, its scenic beauty.

The location of Stanley Park

First, Stanley Park is incredibly beautifully situated. It is located on the northern tip of a peninsula (on which Downtown Vancouver is also located) that juts into the fjord Burrard Inlet. Therefore, from many points in Stanley Park you have a beautiful view of the great skyline of the city, Burrard Inlet with its busy shipping traffic and the mountains surrounding Vancouver.

The trail network in Stanley Park

Secondly, Stanley Park, with its network of paths over 200 kilometers long, is a paradise for all walkers, cyclists and inline skaters. The most famous path is certainly the Seawall, which runs along the shore for about nine kilometers and has been spectacularly carved into the steeply sloping rocks in places.

The recreation and leisure facilities at Stanley Park

Third, Stanley Park has an incredible array of recreational and leisure facilities for young and old alike. The younger ones among us are probably most excited about a ride on the miniature park railroad, which runs on a two-kilometer circuit between the peninsula’s east coast and Beaver Lake. A replica of the train that first reached Vancouver in 1887 on the transcontinental railroad will be used.

In addition, kids will love the Variety Kids Water Park. No one is guaranteed to stay dry at the water splash and play park. For the more athletic, there are also numerous tennis courts, an 18-hole miniature golf course and two swimming pools. The Vancouver Aquarium, the first and largest aquarium in Canada, is also located in Stanley Park. It is home to over 300 species of fish, 50 species of amphibians and 60 species of mammals.

The landscape of Stanley Park

And fourth, Stanley Park is also exceptionally beautiful in terms of scenery. Most of the park consists of a forest with about half a million trees, including a large number of tall Douglas firs, giant live trees, western hemlocks and Sitka spruces. Due to the sometimes very violent storms, the tallest trees have been trimmed back for safety reasons since the early 1990s.

Also interesting from a scenic point of view is the so-called Siwash Rock, a monolith-like rock that lies about ten meters off the northwest coast of the peninsula. It rises 18 meters into the air, is of volcanic origin and was formed by erosion about 32 million years ago. Stanley Park is also home to two major bodies of water. Beaver Lake is a lake in the center of the park, surrounded on all sides by forest and attracting many species of waterfowl. The many water lilies deprive the lake of oxygen, making it less and less able to break down organic material and slowly turning it into a swamp. And Lost Lagoon, a man-made lake, is located at the southern end of the park. It was created in 1916 when an ocean bay was divided in two by the construction of a road embankment. In the bay between the southwest of Stanley Park and the Coal Harbour neighborhood is Deadman’s Island. This four-hectare island got its name because it is the site of an Indian burial ground. Today, a naval base and a museum are located on the island.

The history of Stanley Park

Historically interesting is the fact that Stanley Park is almost as old as the city of Vancouver itself. In the 1860s, the British declared the peninsula a restricted military area due to its strategic location. Although several forestry companies operated in the area between the 1860s and 1880s, the peninsula was spared large-scale clearing because of its military use. In 1886, the city of Vancouver was incorporated. As its first official act, the city council passed a petition to the Canadian Dominion government requesting that the restricted area be leased and turned into a park. After the government granted this request, the City Council appointed a commission to manage the park and in 1888 Stanley Park was officially opened.