When it was first published in 2001, Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park reached bestseller lists and received national acclaim. But its nuances are lost on anyone who hasn’t lived in Vancouver; reading it is much like watching a movie filmed here. You strain to place buildings, intersections, and characters based on actual people. (Some names are barely disguised. There’s reference made to photographer “Malcolm Perry” and architect “Arthur Erikson”). The book is as much a postcard as it is a compelling assessment of the city’s best and worst qualities. Taylor reminds us that Stanley Park may be the city’s green heart, but it’s also full of shadows.
Books Every Vancouverite Should Read: Stanley Park
Noticed: Flickr as a Cataloguing Tool
We’re always looking for images of Vancouver—new, old, beautiful, strange, revelatory. Browsing photostreams on Flickr—a site invented locally, no less—has become a pastime at the Museum.
Vancouverites, it would seem, spend an inordinate amount of time photographing their surrounds. Two reasons, the first one obvious: we’re a photogenic city. Two: we’re a young city, and in so many ways still settling in. Some of our most populous neighbourhoods are only a handful of years old; others have been redeveloped many, many times over, and have no particular aesthetic. A typical Vancouver city block might include an arts-and-crafts-style cottage, a mid-century bungalow, and an 1980s-era, seashell-pink, stucco-clad two-storey. On so many occasions, you pass a new building on your daily commute and can’t recall what was there prior. Local photography has become a way to keep track; a powerful cataloguing tool, driven by photographers, both amateur and professional, who actively share their work online.
