Seen from above, Vancouver resembles the side profile of a salmon's head facing the Pacific. Along the upper jaw West Vancouver runs into North Vancouver. The open mouth is English Bay narrowing in the east to the throat of Burrard Inlet. The jutting lower jaw is the University of British Columbia and Greater Vancouver. And on the tip of the tongue lies Stanley Park.
Visitors owe a debt of gratitude to the city fathers.
After incorporation in 1886, their first act was to preserve a thousand acre peninsula of cedar and fir as Stanley Park arguably the most beautiful urban park in the world. Some, survivors of wind and saws, stood here before Columbus. Their former neighbors now hold up the Imperial Palace in Beijing. These remnants of the world's greatest conifer forest are now surrounded by an international city of 1.7 million, half of British Columbia's population, where over 60 languages are spoken and an even greater variety of cultures thrive. But the builders of this urban jewel haven't forgotten the outdoors.