Inventing Stanley Park

An Environmental History

By Sean Kheraj
Categories: Environmental & Nature Studies, Environmental History, Urban Studies, Planning & Architecture, Planning (urban & Regional), History, Canadian History
Series: Nature | History | Society
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774824248, 304 pages, May 2013
Paperback : 9780774824255, 304 pages, August 2013
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774824262, 304 pages, May 2013
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774824279, 304 pages, May 2013
Ebook (MobiPocket) : 9780774852883, 304 pages, August 2014

Table of contents

Foreword: Between Art and Nature / Graeme Wynn

 

Introduction: Knowing Nature through History

1 Before Stanley Park

2 Making the Park Public

3 Improving Nature

4 The City in the Park

5 Restoring Nature

Conclusion: Reconciliation with Disturbance

 

Notes; Bibliography; Index

A thought-provoking exploration of the natural forces and human manipulations that helped transform a peninsula in the Pacific Northwest into Vancouver's most iconic landmark.

Description

In early December 2006, a powerful windstorm ripped through Vancouver's Stanley Park. The storm transformed the city's most treasured landmark into a tangle of splintered trees and shattered a decades-old vision of the park as timeless virgin wilderness. In Inventing Stanley Park, Sean Kheraj traces how the tension between popular expectations of idealized nature and the volatility of complex ecosystems helped transform the landscape of one of the world's most famous urban parks. This beautifully illustrated book not only depicts the natural and cultural forces that shaped the park's landscape, it also examines the roots of our complex relationship with nature.