IT'S STANLEY PARK not JURASSIC PARK

Oldtown News
Vancouver, BC


IT'S STANLEY PARK not JURASSIC PARK


Driving west along Georgia Street and make a right hand turn and you might believe, if our Vancouver Park Board Commissioners have their way, that you arrived in Drumheller, Alberta.

Yes folks, right here in our beautiful forested Stanley Park, our Park Board Commissioners are wanting to place Jurassic park. Park Commissioners have put out a tender for animated Dinosaurs, like as if we want to see them.

Vancouverites have continually spoken out that they desire to keep this beautiful park, lush, green and forested. We don't want the continued gimmicky commercialization of our park and any move to disrupt the natural ambiance of this Jewel of the Pacific will be met with resistance.

Placing animated Dinosaurs in the midst of our beautiful park is wrongheaded thinking.

I say, leave Stanley Park natural for all the world to see. Even with the fallen trees, I say leave this natural beauty alone and let nature take its course. What arises from the unique windstorm that toppled so many beautiful sacred trees will be determined by the elements and not jurassic thinking.

It's interesting that the majority of Vancouver citizens demanded closure of the Stanley Park Zoo, yet here is our elected park board taking another kick at the can, this time albeit in the floating of a make-believe Zoo.

It continually seems that commercialization of our parks and especially Stanley is deemed as suitable stewardship and this political approach has to be thwarted.

The only time though that we have any say on who the stewards of our public spaces are is at election time.

It seems that the NPA Park Board is determined to give away parcels of our cherished public parkland. First it was Pacific Spirit Park, now it's Stanley Park. Will it ever end?

Even more shocking, Spencer Herbert, an opposition COPE Park Commissioner, in response to the NPA Jurassic plan, says he doesn't want to pre-judge the plan. So much for COPE claims of being the moral conscience of the people. If it still was, Commissioner Herbert would have jumped all over this issue and denounced it loudly.

Use your vote wisely come November 2008.

Jamie Lee Hamilton
tricia_foxx@yahoo.com