Repose by the Bay
Vancouver's Stanley Park offers the visitor moments of transcendence,
and a few lessons in unfussy preservation.
BY JAMES CONAWAY
Something happens to the traveler
in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is both delightful
and paradoxical. In this most remote of the Northwest's
coastal cities, the dry, cool summers scrubbed clean
by Pacific breezes recall the austerity of northern
Europe. And yet, the newcomer is surrounded here by
an almost Mediterranean light and sensuality, not to
mention a farrago of languages and a liberalism that
at once suggest California and a New World Amsterdam.
Vancouver's list of its
top 10 endangered sites for last year, according to
the nonprofit watchdog Heritage Vancouver, included
a bridge, a garden, a hospital, a theater, a motel,
and the home of a local Japanese Canadian novelist
who wrote about internment during World War II. But
it is Stanley
Park, the 1,000-acre maritime landscape protruding
like a thumb into English Bay, that astounds the traveler
with its beauty, size, and remove. Remnants of the
extensive temperate rain forest that once blanketed
the continent's northwest coast here act as an urban
foil, a remarkable triumph of nature over development
and the myriad pressures of big-city life.
My love affair with Stanley Park was serendipitous:
I had booked a room at the nearby Sylvia Hotel (built
in 1912), despite a warning in an otherwise reliable
American guidebook that the Sylvia was "old fashioned"
and that some of the carpets were, well, musty. That
proved to be the case, but so what? Worn gentility
merely added to the charm of these old-timey, ivy-covered
but stylish digs long favored by artists, writers,
and professors. The Sylvia had big windows that actually
opened, and a greensward spread out front like an
enormous, living doormat, luring me out-of-doors.
For more of this article, look for the
January/February 2007 issue on newsstands or e-mail us to purchase
a copy. Subscribe
to the magazine. More
from our current issue >> | 
