Being that I no longer live near Stanley Park, I haven’t visited it since the devastating storm that caused it significant damage. Today, while flying over to Victoria, I got my first look at the damage – and it is unbelievably considerable.
The entire slope adjacent to Prospect Point is completely devastated. And when I say devastated, I mean that it will take decades for it to recover. Were I to put it in the simplest of terms, it looks as though napalm were dropped on it and there’s nothing left save the odd, barren tree. The rest is just dirt.
I know that Rebecca has photographically documented some of the damage, and I wish that I had brought my camera with me, as my vantage from the back of the seaplane was perfect. I would imagine that a lot of debris and underbrush has also been cleared, which is why it looks so barren, but it shocked me nonetheless. If there is anything in Vancouver that could unequivocally be called its crowned jewel, Stanley Park is surely it, and it utterly stunned me when the plane banked portside and it came into view.
