To the editor:
Now that Stanley Park has turned 125 and all the festivities of that special occasion are history, it might be a good time to ask the one question that no one seems to have asked: namely, is Stanley Park as good a park at 125 as it was at 100? In some ways I feel it is, as so many positive changes were made to the park in the wake of the storm of 2006. Overall, however, I do not feel it is as good a park now as it was in 1988.
That it still looks as good as it does is down to the dedication, hard work, professionalism and love for the park, of all the staff in Stanley Park. Without them the jewel of our city would, most certainly, be showing the effects of Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver’s misguided agenda of Special Projects because these projects are, in part, being funded by money being reallocated from the park board’s maintenance budget. Make no mistake about it, these cuts (or reallocations as the mayor prefers to call them) have seriously impacted the park board’s ability to maintain all our parks, especially Stanley Park, to the levels they should be maintained and, I must add, to the levels everyone has come to expect them to be maintained! If we do not wake up to what is happening, it will soon be too late to stop the deterioration of our world class park system and, by extension, Stanley Park.
The time has come to tell the mayor and Vision Vancouver cronies (on council and the park board), that we have had enough of this. Special Projects be damned. Let’s preserve what we have first and foremost, then, perhaps, we can take a lot at some of these special projects. I would hate to see Stanley Park and all other parks in the system, decline anymore than they already have.
Rick Harrison,
North Vancouver
