**Finalist for 2006 BC Book Prize - Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
Shortlisted for George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in B.C. Writing
and Publishing**
Each year, over eight million people visit Stanley Park, a 400-hectare
(1000-acre) haven of beauty that offers a backdrop of majestic cedars
and firs and an environment teeming with wildlife just steps from the
sidewalks and skyscrapers of Vancouver. But few visitors stop to
contemplate the secret past of British Columbia's most popular tourist
destination.
Officially opened in 1888, Stanley Park was born alongside the city of
Vancouver, so it is easy to assume that the park was a pristine
wilderness when it was first created. But much of it had been logged and
it was home to a number of settlements. Aboriginal people lived at the
villages of Whoi Whoi, now Lumberman's Arch, and nearby Chaythoos. Some
of the immigrant Hawaiians earlier employed in the fur trade took jobs
at the lumber mills that dotted Burrard Inlet from the 1860s and settled
at Kanaka Ranch, which was located just outside the park's southeast
boundary. Others resided at Brockton Point on the peninsula's eastern
tip. Only in 1958 was the last of the many families forced out of their
homes and the park returned to its supposed pristine character.
Working in collaboration with descendants of the families who once lived
in the park area, historian Jean Barman skilfully weaves together the
families' stories with archival documents, Vancouver Parks Board records
and court proceedings to reveal a troubling, yet deeply important facet
of BC's history.
