Globe and Mail review of the Stanley Park Companion

By LASZLO BUHASZ
Saturday, July 26, 2003 - Page T11

The Stanley Park Companion
By Paul Grant and Laurie Dickson, Bluefield Books, 144 pages, $29.95

"It's a section and a half, about the size of a modest Saskatchewan grain farm, and a shade larger than New York's Central Park," write Paul Grant and Laurie Dickson in their introduction to this enjoyable book about Vancouver's urban forest. "Every day its trees pump out enough oxygen for 11,700 people while providing a home for more than 200 kinds of birds and dozens of species of mammals."

Grant and Dickson argue that Stanley Park is not just the city's biggest tourist attraction, but also its soul, "offering the elusive experience of deep and absolute calm found only in an ancient place."

The Stanley Park Companion is not so much a nuts-and-bolts guide to the various low-tech attractions of the park, as it is a history of a city's love affair with a patch of flora and fauna that has been its citizens' playground for more than a century. Illustrated with contemporary colour photography as well as archival black-and-white images from the early years of the last century, the book is a treasure trove of anecdotes and fascinating factoids.

The authors tell us, for example, that Bill Clinton was only the second serving American president to visit Vancouver. In 1993, while attending an economic summit, he decided to jog through Stanley Park. For his 10-minute morning run, the president's security force combed through the entire park the night before, rousting hermits and vagabonds who hadn't seen the light of day in years.

And not many know that it took nearly 70 years to build the park's seawall and that the ashes of James Cunningham, the master stonemason who devoted 32 years to the project, were interred in the wall in a nook near Siwash Rock.

The Stanley Park Companion is an entertaining and informative overview of the largest urban park in Canada, a place that will impress many new visitors to the city in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

From the Globe and Mail archive (registration required)

Two of my photos appear in The Stanley Park Companion

Photo 1

Photo 2