Vancouver and its parks

---

July 4<sup>th

Green city</sup>


Vancouver boasts world-class parks, from the 404 hectares (1,000 acres) of prime downtown land that forms Stanley Park, to the many smaller parks that host recreational facilities, community centres, and specialty amenities such as off-leash dog areas and skate parks. Vancouver has close to 300 City-run parks, beaches, and gardens.

Vancouver is the only municipality in Canada with an elected park board, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation. The Board's mandate is to nurture, maintain, and develop Vancouver’s urban parks and recreation system.

This system includes the delivery of sports and recreational programs, social and cultural activities, educational programming and special events, through the many community and cultural centres, pools, rinks, golf courses, and specialty parks.

Enjoy Vancouver's great outdoors by exploring our stunning parks, gardens, and beaches.

From small neighbourhood green spaces to large destination parks and feature gardens, the Vancouver Park Board maintains more than 220 parks that make up 11%!o(MISSING)f Vancouver's land mass.

Ten oceanside beaches and one freshwater lake beach provide residents and visitors ample access to the water, as does the 22-kilometer Seawall that circles Stanley Park and False Creek.

Rain or shine, Vancouver's physical splendour can inspire you with many ways to stay active at the same time that it soothes you with its beauty.
The Ravine
This shaded and lush park winds through the lowest points of the Arbutus Ridge area. Embraced by a canopy of trees that climb the slopes of the ravine, this quiet walkway is an interesting and serene addition to a stroll through the neighbourhood.

History
Though everyone is appreciative and impressed with larger parcels of land that have been dedicated to park space, there are a multitude of diminutive parks whose unadorned realms are equally prized. Ravine Park, running practically parallel to Arbutus Street from West 33rd to 36th Avenues, is classified as undeveloped but this natural walkway is a lovely spot for a stroll or short-cut. Its small size feels larger with its banking shoulders swathed in native ferns and other ground covers. The paved pathway, formed at the convergence of the slopes, has long been the haunt of neighbourhood children during Vancouver’s infrequent snowstorms.

By far the best time to explore this leafy and evergreen glade is in the spring, when native flowering cherry trees arch over the ravine in search of more sun, making a pink arbor of petals in light breezes. At the 33rd Avenue entrance to Ravine Park, skunk cabbages, thriving in late spring in their boggy conditions, expose the fact that this site is one of Vancouver’s original streams.

Long culverted, the sharp-of-hearing can detect the sound of water rushing beneath the pathway’s surface. At the turn of the 20th Century Vancouver’s many natural streams bore a wealth of salmon and trout. The waterway running down Ravine Park was called MacDonald Stream with its headwaters originating in the swampy area where Kerrisdale Arena now sits at West 40th Avenue and East Boulevard. MacDonald Stream met the salty sea at English Bay just west of Bayswater Street.

“What is now the asphalt grid of the City of Vancouver was mainly hemlock forest a century ago. And it is hard to imagine the acres of marsh that fed the steadily flowing streams. It’s hard to imagine the streams- overhung with ferns, salmonberry, vine maple and littered windfalls- that rewarded the bushwhacking pioneer fisherman.”^*
— Excerpt from Vancouver’s Old Streams

UBC Botanical Garden, at the University of British Columbia, was established in 1916 under the directorship of John Davidson, British Columbia's first provincial botanist. It is the oldest botanical garden at a university in Canada.

The garden measures approximately 44 hectares (440,000 m² / 110 acres) and includes over 8000 different kinds of plants. Visitors to the garden should expect to spend a minimum of one hour exploring the garden. Gardens include an Asian garden, an alpine garden, a native plants garden, a food garden and a physic (medicinal) garden.

In 2002, the UBC Centre for Plant Research became the research arm of the UBC Botanical Garden. The Centre for Plant Research examines topics such as plant adaptation, genomics and phytochemistry. The Botanical Gardens and the Centre for Plant Research are both encompassed by UBC's Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

UBC Botanical Garden also administers the Nitobe Memorial Garden, a traditional Japanese garden located on campus.
(source of infrmation www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBC_Botanical_Garden_and_Centre_for_Plant_Research)
UBC Botanical Gardens

We woke up around 9 am and got ready to meet the kids and Erin. We heard their sweet and excited voices looking for Uncle Kyle and headed down the stairs. After the formal introductions and while Kyle´s dad with Jonah helping made waffles for breakfast, Kyle, Erin and I chatted about our life in China, our trips, etc. We ate a delicious very Canadian breakfast of waffles, bacon, and lots of fresh berries and while Erin went to get the kids something she had forgotten, I bonded with the kids and drew pictures and giggled and tickled them along with the famous uncle Kyle. As soon as Erin was back we headed out driving in 2 cars to the Botanical Garden of University of British Columbia.

We drove through a highway, which had a huge, very green and like a forest park on the right. It turned out to be the UBC city park. We got to the Botanical Gardens of UBC and park the car and headed in through a little trail of rocks, dirt and leaves surrounded by tons of tall thin trees. The weather was perfect about 24 C with a bright warm sun and beautiful blue skies. We walked through the path stopping so that Jonah could read the cards on the trees and inform us what name it had. We also stopped to look for slugs, insects and flowers for little Naysa to explore. It was all a beautiful setting. We walked for a few hours with the Kids running around and getting excited to see all kinds of nature treasures. We reached a suspension bridge abut 10 -20 meters high above the ground and went over it to get a nice view of the whole park. It was a little scary if you went by yourself because the less weight it carried the more it jiggled and wiggled. Jonah and Kyle went on it first as the head of our exploration and then I followed and right behind me was Naysa Erin and Kyle´s dad. At the end f the bridge there was a viewpoint and soon after that we went to a kind of vegetable and flower garden and the sat down for a while had some snacks and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

Then we drove to the kids’ beach along the coast of the city and stopped at a little beach with lots of people cycling, roller blading, waking and enjoying the beach. We ate lunch at a concessionary of hotdogs and hamburgers and then headed to the beach to enjoy it. The kids were having fun playing in the sand and water and playground and what was I doing? I fell asleep on the sand (jetlagged!). It felt quite nice to feel the sunshine and also a bit of cool breeze while I snoozed! We headed to the house for an afternoon swim and play in the pool.



July 5<sup>th

Stanley Park</sup>

Stanley Park is a 404.9-hectare (1,001-acre) urban park bordering downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was opened in 1888 by Mayor David Oppenheimer in the name of Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor-General of Canada.

It is more than 10%!l(MISSING)arger than New York City's Central Park and almost half the size of London's Richmond Park. The park attracts an estimated eight million visitors every year, including locals and tourists, who come for its recreational facilities and its natural attributes. A paved 22-kilometre (14 mi) seawall path circles the park, which is used by 2.5 million pedestrians, cyclists, and inline skaters every year. Much of the park remains forested with an estimated half million trees, some of which stand as tall as 76 metres (249 ft) and are up to hundreds of years old. There are approximately 200 kilometres (120 mi) of trails and roads in the park, which are patrolled by the Vancouver Police Department's equine mounted squad. The Project for Public Spaces has ranked Stanley Park as the sixteenth best park in the world and sixth best in North America.

Vancouver now boasts more than 230 public parks. But the city's heart remains in the cool, lush, evergreen oasis of Stanley Park, named for Lord Frederick Stanley, Governor General of Canada in 1888. It was a bold step towards making Vancouver a sustainable, liveable city. And it happened more than a century before the City launched its plan to become the greenest city in the world by 2020.

Yearly visits to Stanley Park, North America's third largest urban core park, are estimated at eight-million people.



Originally home to Burrard, Musqueam and Squamish First Nations people, Stanley Park as you see it today was not one designer's grand scheme, but an evolution of a pioneer city's hopes and dreams; a place for its citizens to recreate themselves through active sport or peaceful relaxation.

(Source of informaton www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Park and http://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture.aspx)

We woke up and headed to Stanley Park with Kyle´s dad to meet with Linda, Kyle´s mom and Erin and the kids. We got there a little too early and went to explore the park as it one of the favorite places to see in Vancouver. Kyle and I walked around the grassy areas and bought a coffee to wake us up and then went to sit down near some swings, which I went on them and then had to get off because a little girl wanted to swing next to her friend.

After about half an hour the kids and Erin and Kyle´s mom arrived and we headed to explore and find Canada geese and ducks to feed them. The path were we walked was through the inside of the park and it was surrounded by lots of vegetation, grasses, ferns, flowers, and many tall trees. Our first stop was a little creek where we saw some Canada geese and the kids started feeding them. The geese would come near us where the corn and seeds would land and if one goose got some corn another one would come and fight for that piece. It was funny sightseeing the geese battle over who got more corn. We continued the walked and through a little bushy area we saw a raccoon right in the middle of the path. I was trying to get a photo, but the people in front of us were getting to close and they scared the raccoon away. We continued our waked chatting and stopping to enjoy he beautiful scenery, again deep and clear blue skies, warm sunshine and a cool breeze blowing. Lots of people, of any age, young, little kids mid-age and old walked, biked, ran, and were having fun. It was such a great place for a family to spend a day in the weekend and even during the week. We walked all the way to a little store, which was a point of information about the park with displays of sample trees, flowers. There was a little children´s area to color animals seen in the park; some puppets and some children´s story books. I read a story to Naysa and drew some animals with Jonah, We continued the walked until we reached the crossroads of the main street and parking lot and there we split the kids, Kyle´s mom and sister went back home to eat lunch and us and Kyle´s dad went for a longer walk through the boardwalk all the way to Canada place and stopped by at a pub for some appys and beer. (appys Canadian word for appetizers!) We then headed back to the house chill out until dinner at Kyle´s mom. Dinner again was delicious. We ate dinner chatting and laughing at the kids sayings and sharing out thoughts and stories about China and around 9 we headed back to the house for the night.

---