The first time I saw Stanley Park was as a child, squeezed between suitcases in the back seat of a tiny rental Camaro that had somehow managed to trundle our entire family — including a carsick poodle-terrier — across the Rockies. My memories of that trip are mostly nauseous ones.
It wasn't until many years later — while flying in a Helijet over North America's third-largest urban park — that I truly began to appreciate the spectacular beauty of this lush, 400-hectare oasis on Vancouver's western peninsula. As I looked down in awe at this majestic rain forest saturated in a purplish-pink Impressionist glow from the setting sun, I decided right then and there that I must move to this city.
Within a year, I had fulfilled my wish and was living in Vancouver's West End, only a few blocks away from this glorious backyard with its endless natural and man-made attractions that draw an estimated eight million visitors each year.
When I realized I wasn't taking advantage of this sanctuary in the city nearly often enough, I took up jogging. Over the years, I have also tried biking and Rollerblading around the park's 8.5-kilometre-long seawall. But neither means of transport provides the same intoxicating high that I experience whenever my feet hit the pavement. I soak up the fresh dampness of the woods and chase all my worries into the ocean.
The Stanley Park seawall walk is popular place on a sunny day as a runner makes her way past a tourist snapping a picture. (Chuck Stoody/CP)
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I guess I find jogging's more leisurely pace better suited for people watching. Or perhaps it's just that the wheels on a bike subconsciously invoke those queasy memories of my youth. Whatever the case, I usually enter the park, by foot, from Beach Avenue on the west side at English Bay.
On the way in via this route, you will pass four young trees that have been recently planted to replace the oak and two London planes that were infamously poisoned by an interior designer who lived across the street. Incredibly, she got off with a complete discharge, but was forced to sell her $1.7-million condominium after protesters kept pelting her balcony with eggs and taunting her with hate mail.
From this entrance, you can veer right and follow the road past the tennis courts and adjacent heronry. This year, the park's seasonal winged residents have built at least 150 nests in this patch of 24 trees. But since there are plenty of spindle-legged herons to be spotted all over the park, I usually go straight and follow the upper-level path past the Stanley Park Lawn Bowling Club to catch a glimpse of the senior members. They always look so dignified in their crisp summer whites.
The shaded path leads to an open field at Ceperley Meadow, where the smell of barbecued meats and the sound of squealing children invariably fill the air. Occasionally, you will a find a few middle-aged men grunting in agony as their personal trainers count down a punishing set of sit-ups. And, on weekday evenings from June to August, anyone is welcome to kick up their heels for the free Dancing at Dusk lessons by the picnic shelter. I love running by on Wednesday evenings to watch them do the cha-cha.
From here, runners or walkers can follow the seawall either way around the park, but those on wheels must go right and follow the course counter-clockwise. Heading inland, you pass underneath a bridge and come out on the edge of the Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden, which borders the Stanley Park 18-hole Pitch & Putt golf course. The hybrid garden is in full bloom right now and the scent is heavenly.
The path weaves under and around a swath of romantic weeping willows on the eastern edge of Lost Lagoon Lake. Before the early 1920s, when the Stanley Park Causeway was constructed, this tidal flat would fill up with water, almost reaching English Bay, only to slip away at low tide. The retreating waters inspired the late West End poet Pauline Johnson to write Ode to the Lost Lagoon, which is where the present moniker came from.
