The history of the Vancouver park system, 1886-1929
Date
1976
Authors
McKee, William Carey
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Abstract
Vancouver has become increasingly covered by brick, steel, concrete and asphalt; yet, her parks have remained as patches of greenery in this apparently hostile environment. Citizens take pride in their parks which many visitors believe give the city a particular beauty. This thesis examines the growth of the city ' s park system until January 1, 1929 when Vancouver amalgamated with the adjacent municipalities of Point Grey and South Vancouver.
The first urban parks appeared in Britain and were the product not of the interest of the great mass of city-dwellers but of the philanthropic and pragmatic business concerns of the aristocracy and growing business community who considered parks to be pleasant but of limited value. The spread of the city park from Britain to the European continent and North America and the evolution of new ideas represented by Baron Haussmann's grandiose design for central Paris and the schemes of American landscape architects brought only a limited expansion in the park's urban function. The American influence was strong in Vancouver. Indeed, by the 1920's, the city was virtually part of the parks movement of the American Pacific North West.
In Vancouver, the business community was mainly responsible for the creation of the park system which naturally reflected its interests; the larger parks and beaches were pleasant retreats for the local population, but also attracted the lucrative tourist trade . Similarly, neighbourhood parks were valuable recreation centres for nearby residents but also contributed to the attractiveness and value of property. Yet, because the City Fathers believed that most land should remain in the marketplace, they failed to make parkland more than a peripheral feature of Vancouver's landscape. In spite of a growing lobby , first by the City Beautiful Movement and then by town planners, to make parkland a more fundamental element in the city, there was no major expansion in the role of public green space in Vancouver by the end of the nineteen-twenties. Expansion would have meant major alterations in the prevalent belief that the primary function of the city was as a marketplace. Parkland could be encouraged as an embellishment but not a challenge to private city land.