Vancouver, BC

Walk leader: Jaspal Marwah, Vancouver Public Space Network
Text by: Jaspal Marwah
Photographs by: Jaspal Marwah

As longtime supporters of Jane’s Walks and advocates for public space, the Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) tried something a little different for one of our Jane’s Walks this year. Working in partnership with local author Nicole Boyce, we developed a very short fictional story that took place in a Vancouver neighborhood.

We then posted the entire story (each chapter was only a paragraph long) in public spaces around the neighborhood that was written about in this piece of fiction. Our Jane’s Walk consisted of participants wandering through the neighborhood in search of each chapter, “walking through” the story as they read it. Literally, choosing their own adventure!

It was a rainy weekend in Vancouver, but close to 40 people experienced our Jane’s Walk and had a great time exploring the intersection of fiction and a real life walk through the neighborhood. Many people remarked what a great way it was to rediscover a part of their city. It was so well received that we’re going to create more of these fiction-based walking tours to keep exploring our neighborhoods.

It was a rainy weekend in Vancouver, but close to 40 people experienced our Jane’s Walk and had a great time exploring the intersection of fiction and a real life walk through the neighborhood. Many people remarked what a great way it was to rediscover a part of their city. It was so well received that we’re going to create more of these fiction-based walking tours to keep exploring our neighborhoods.

Walk Leader: Judy Williams
Text by: Judy Williams

Our walkers were dogged by an icy early-May wind, but that didn’t squelch their enthusiasm. Starting from Pacific Spirit Regional Park’s Acadia parking lot, they made their way along the foreshore to verdant, sword-fern-graced Trail 3.

Along the way, they filled in ethnobotanical quizzes that tested their knowledge of native and non-native plants, and how the First Nations and the early pioneers used these plants medicinally and for food, clothing, shelter, bedding, weapons, fishing, and winter sustenance. The hikers then descended along Northwest Marine Drive to the parking lot, where those with the most correct answers won a t-shirt or poster.

Participants also learned about the colourful political and social history of naturism at Wreck Beach, North America’s largest clothing-optional beach. As Chair of the Wreck Beach Preservation Society, I shared the many struggles naturists have waged against foreshore development, slope deforestation, and proposals such as roads, sea walls, ferry terminals, truck bridges, and marinas, which would have destroyed the beach and its precious surf-smelt spawning beds.

Participants also learned about the colourful political and social history of naturism at Wreck Beach, North America’s largest clothing-optional beach. As Chair of the Wreck Beach Preservation Society, I shared the many struggles naturists have waged against foreshore development, slope deforestation, and proposals such as roads, sea walls, ferry terminals, truck bridges, and marinas, which would have destroyed the beach and its precious surf-smelt spawning beds.

Walk Leader: Sean Ruthen
Text by: Sean Ruthen

As a pedestrian who calls the Central Business District home, I felt it apt to give a walk in an area which Jane Jacobs would’ve agreed is vital to any city: its financial district. I took the group past the bank towers, as well as the Marine, Guinness, and Bentall towers, and pointed out the strange urban pairing of the Christ Church Cathedral and the gargantuan Park Place, with its curious address of 666 Burrard Street.

At Waterfront Station, I regaled the group with the history of how the Canadian Pacific Railway’s arrival in what was then a small sawmill town had transformed Vancouver overnight. I then led them up a few flights of stairs to Granville Square. Unbeknownst to most folks who stand here, looking out over the Burrard Inlet to the north shore mountains, this was the deck level of what would have been a 50-metre wide elevated freeway that was to run along the waterfront. Proposed in the 1960s, it was known as the Gastown 200 Project.

The tower at Granville Square represents the type of building that planners envisioned marching along the water’s edge, replacing the then-rundown warehouses along Water Street in what we now call Gastown. But at precisely that moment in Vancouver’s history, Jane’s folks rose up, much as they had in Toronto and New York when those cities had tried to build freeways through equally loved neighbourhoods. The result is that instead of a noisy eyesore of a freeway on the waterfront, as both Toronto and Seattle have, Vancouver has Gastown and one of the most walkable downtowns in all of North America—for which we all have Jane Jacobs to thank.