On the Waterfront

Vancouver's Legacy of Access and Views

"Water. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it."

- Mikhail Gorbachev

For nearly a century, the Vancouver Park Board has advocated for access to its most precious asset - the waterfront. Starting in the 1920s, Park Commissioners made it a priority to incrementally acquire beachfront property that was earlier snapped-up for hotel and private residential development during the city's infancy. It was an arduous and long process to virtually "buy back" an ever-shrinking number of properties that increased in value as the years went by, but the Park Board persevered. With portions of its modest annual park acquisition fund, one generation after another of Park Commissioners continued to support the public waterfront policy whenever the opportunity for purchase presented itself.

By the mid-1980s the Park Board had at last acquired full waterfront access along English Bay from Burrard Bridge to Stanley Park and virtually all the waterfront from Spanish Banks to Jericho Beach. Inroads had been made along Point Grey Road with a handful of street end lookouts, but soaring property values stalled progress there.

Over the following two decades, new civic policies and residential developments on former industrial lands along the Fraser River, False Creek Basin and the Inner Harbour, afforded the City and the Park Board an almost unfettered opportunity to dramatically increase waterfront access through frontages and views.

People are intrinsically drawn to the water that virtually surrounds three sides of our city. The Vancouver Waterfront Inventory unveils the history, jurisdictions, pathways, parks and so much more for residents and visitors.

English Bay

Coopers' Park