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Urban Wilds, Vancouver-style: (page 1) Pacific Spirit Park
By JOEL CONNELLY 
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Pacific Spirit Park was created in 1989 out of what had been the University of British Columbia Endowment Lands. Its 20 miles of forest paths form a buffer between Vancouver and the university. The park also protects beaches and headlands below the campus.
My favorite hike begins by walking amid the totem poles and long house at the famed Museum of Anthropology at UBC. The glass-and-stone museum is a creation of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver's master builder, and boasts a dramatic view across the harbor entrance to Howe Sound and glacier-draped peaks of the Tantalus Range.
Just south of the museum, trail No. 4 descends steeply on ladders and steps to Tower Beach. At the base of the cliff, the walker can partake of natural beauty in two ways.
Walk south around Point Grey and you will end up at Wreck Beach, perhaps the city's oldest nude bathing beach. The beach was briefly in the news at the 1993 Vancouver Summit. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin were meeting at the bluff-top Norman McKenzie House, residence of the university president. Clinton's advance team discovered, to its horror, that directly below a spot where the two presidents would be strolling were signs to the nude beach. The signs were quickly covered over.
If you go north around the point from trail No. 4, Vancouver begins to appear and you come upon an abandoned World War II-vintage gun emplacement.
The water here seems murky, but is part of a healthy natural process. The Fraser River empties just south of Point Grey. Currents carry silt north around to where it builds and rebuilds the (clothed) bathing beaches of Vancouver's Kitsilano neighborhood.
Trail No. 3 takes you back up through the spectacular draw to the top of the bluff. A side trip north to Acadia Beach provides broad views of the city as well as access to Marine Drive.
Pacific Spirit Park is reached by following Oak Street toward downtown Vancouver and turning west on 16th Street. To best enjoy the beaches and forests of the park -- and distinguish hiking trails from bicycle paths -- stop and pick up a map at the park center, 4915 W. 16th St., on the north side of the road.
UBC students deserve a pat on the back for preserving the beaches, headlands and eagle trees around Point Grey -- as well as the nudist preserve at Wreck Beach.
Some years ago, the Vancouver Parks Board plotted to build a road around the wild urban coastline as well as a bulkhead.
"Students literally sat down and blocked the bulldozers," explained Dr. Tom Perry, a Vancouver physician and former provincial cabinet minister.
Perhaps in tribute, the old gun emplacement by Tower Beach is decorated with one of the Northwest's most imaginative pieces of graffiti. It says:
"Believe in what you feel, and act on that. When it comes from within, act on it."
- Introduction
- Lighthouse Park
- Queen Elizabeth Park
- Van Dusen Botanical Garden and
University of British Columbia Botanical Garden
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