14 February 2024 – Two parks, both small, and so very different in the story they each tell.

One, a park I only discovered recently, thanks to falling across the Vancouver Park Guide blog, in which Justin McElroy takes on the task of visiting every park in the city. The other… well, it’s my local, innit? Some people have a pub, I have a local park.

Yours To Enjoy (within limits)

Thanks to McElroy, I’ve headed south on Granville Street into Kerrisdale, to walk through what he (& the City’s own website) calls Shannon Mews Park, but which the signage identifies otherwise.

A modest little name, by definition quickly outdated, but on the edge of a property with considerable architectural and historic significance. To the rear right, the Beaux-Arts mansion commissioned early in the 20th century by B .T. Rogers (founder, British Columbia Sugar); to the rear left, some of the mid-20th century apartments designed by renowned BC architect Arthur Erickson and, in the 21st-century, “revitalized” by the 10-acre site’s subsequent owners, developer Peter Wall and the Wall Financial Corporation.

There is also a street-side map showing “accessible” walking routes, with the usual icon of a figure in a wheelchair. However, thanks to McElroy, I have been warned. Though there is indeed some public space in front of this complex, it offers minimal accessibility to non-residents, whether in a wheelchair or on their own two feet. And, he added darkly (in a post that is now just over a year old), there is some on-going history of attempts to limit the pesky public even more.

I put my pesky-public feet on one of the designated pathways and walk on in.

Even mid-winter, with the Italianate gardens severely shorn, it’s an attractive walk. There is a small children’s playground to the east, and a few benches to the west and north. It’s fine.

But then, boom…

I’m up against it. A locked gate, barring access. Go away, pesky-public-person, says the gate. I try another path, and soon find myself in front of another lockable gate — which, at the moment, is ajar.

I walk on through. i want a closer look at the mansion.

Well, good luck with that.

As long as I keep my pesky-public feet on the path, I am allowed to look across the lawn and the water feature to the mansion beyond. But I am now on PRIVATE PROPERTY, and everywhere I now turn, there is another big red sign to remind me of my interloper status.

So I leave.

Before I do, i squint my eyes at the gargoyle midway on the wall just beyond the water feature. Spread the photo, you can see him as well. He is either grimacing in solidarity with me, or laughing at me. I choose the former interpretation, and go on my way, head held high.

A public park, yes, but cold. It does not welcome us. We are on sufferance.

In contrast to…

The Warmth of the Chill

I am back in my “local,” Guelph Park. Known to us all as Dude Chilling Park, in honour of the Michael Dennis bronze sculpture that is the park’s only claim to aesthetic merit — officially Reclining Figure, but the nickname is the name we use.

It’s a small and simple park, with a few amenities: benches at the periphery, a bit of a playground, two tennis courts. But this park is ferociously loved and much used. And also much-adorned, by all the people who think of it as their own.

Our area Yarn Bomber, for example, has hung her work on the mesh fence and wrapped each of the poles that dot the park.

Beyond this pole, you see people gathered around one of the benches. The park has its regular visitors, each group with its regular bench or set of chairs — just like any local pub.

A tree near the south end of the park is typically covered in changing ornaments, each one a testimonial to someone, to something. (One day a young man detached himself from his cluster of friends to tell me about one of the people he associates with that tree, and the memories it sparks for him.)

Today, the tree base is freshly circled with these bright hearts and flowers, and a new selection of stones. That grey stone reads: “But until then, I’ll see you in my dreams”

For the first time, I notice the plaque on one of the benches along the western edge of the park.

This is a park that, despite the chill in its nickname, is very warm indeed. It welcomes us all — and it even gives us a role model. Who would not want to be known as a “Chill dude with the best laugh”?