Vanier Park

Vanier Park — museums, kites and Shakespeare on Kitsilano Point

Vanier Park is the open headland at Kitsilano Point where False Creek empties into English Bay, and it is the strangest and richest park in Vancouver: an ordinary-looking sweep of grass and gravel path that happens to contain three museums, a planetarium, a national historic ship, the city’s archives, a music academy and, every summer, two theatre tents full of Shakespeare. It is also ground of enormous consequence. This was Sen̓áḵw, a Squamish village whose people were removed by force in 1913, and the land beside the park has now returned to Squamish hands. Everything about the place rewards a slow walk: the wind off the bay, the kites above it, and a skyline standing across the water like a stage set.

Highlights

• Museum of Vancouver — Canada’s largest civic museum, housed since 1968 in Gerald Hamilton’s West Coast Modernist building whose sweeping conical roof was designed to echo the woven cedar-bark hats of Northwest Coast peoples.
• H.R. MacMillan Space Centre — the planetarium built into the same structure and opened in 1968 through the gift of the forestry magnate whose name it carries, with a star theatre, live science shows and a public observatory on the grounds.
• Vancouver Maritime Museum and the St. Roch — the RCMP schooner that made the first west-to-east transit of the Northwest Passage between 1940 and 1942 under Henry Larsen, later the first vessel to make the passage in a single season and the first to circumnavigate North America, preserved in dry dock inside its purpose-built A-frame.
• Bard on the Beach — two open-ended theatre tents pitched on the grass each summer since Christopher Gaze founded the festival in 1990, where the backdrop behind the actors is the actual mountains, sea and sky.
• Gate to the Northwest Passage — Alan Chung Hung’s 1980 sculpture, a 4.6-metre square of weathered Corten steel twisted like a paper clip into an arch, marking Captain George Vancouver’s arrival in these waters.
• The best kite ground in the city — the headland is open to the west and takes the wind straight off English Bay, which is why the lawns are full of kite strings on any breezy afternoon.

What you’ll find

The park works as a wide, mostly treeless bowl of grass tilted toward the water, with the museum buildings gathered at its centre and paths radiating out to the shore. It is deliberately unfussy — no formal gardens, no fences — because the point of the design is the horizon: downtown to the northeast, the North Shore mountains beyond it, freighters at anchor in the bay and the whole sky available overhead. Ponds, a fountain, low banks and a few groups of trees give the lawns some shape without blocking anything.

• Museum of Vancouver and the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, sharing one landmark building, plus a public observatory.
• Vancouver Maritime Museum with the St. Roch in dry dock, and a ferry dock on the shore below it.
• The City of Vancouver Archives, whose purpose-built home has stood in the park since the early 1970s, and the Vancouver Academy of Music with its recital hall.
• Large open lawns used for kite flying, picnics, the summer theatre tents and festival programming.
• The Crab, George Norris’s stainless steel sculpture of 1968 rising from the fountain at the museum entrance, and Gate to the Northwest Passage on the shoreline.
• The waterfront path linking east to Granville Island in about ten minutes and west to Kitsilano Beach and its pool, continuing as an unbroken shoreline walk of roughly four kilometres to Jericho.

Things to do — and who it’s for

• Museum-goers — three separate institutions and a planetarium within a two-minute walk of each other make this the densest concentration of exhibits in the city outside downtown.
• Theatre audiences — Shakespeare from June into September under canvas, with real sunsets happening behind the stage.
• Families — a planetarium show, a historic ship you can walk inside, a giant metal crab and an enormous lawn to run off the rest of the energy.
• Kite flyers and picnickers — reliable west wind, open ground and a view that makes an ordinary sandwich feel like an occasion.
• Walkers and cyclists — the park is a link in the seaside route, with Granville Island in one direction and beach after beach in the other.
• Anyone interested in the city’s real history — the story of Sen̓áḵw is legible here in a way it is almost nowhere else in Vancouver, and the new Squamish development rising beside the park is the visible continuation of it.

Getting there & practical

The park sits on Kitsilano Point, on the south side of the mouth of False Creek, directly across the water from the downtown peninsula and the West End. There is no SkyTrain station in Kitsilano, so from downtown the usual approaches are the buses that cross the bridge into the neighbourhood — routes 2 and 22 both work — or, far more pleasantly, the small passenger ferries, which call at the dock below the maritime museum on routes from Granville Island and the West End. On foot, Granville Island is about ten minutes east along the waterfront path and Kitsilano Beach a similar distance west. The park itself is free and open at all hours, and the lawns, the sculptures and the shoreline cost nothing at any time of year. The museums and the Space Centre are separate institutions with their own paid admission and their own opening hours, generally daytime with some late evenings, and the theatre festival sells tickets for its own performances. There are washrooms in and around the museum buildings, cafés on site during opening hours and many more a short walk into the neighbourhood. Dogs are welcome on a leash. Parking exists but fills quickly on summer evenings when the theatre is playing, which is the strongest argument for the ferry. Allow two hours for the park and one museum, and a full day if you intend to do the museums properly and stay for a performance.

When to visit

Summer is the park at full volume: the theatre tents up and running from June, long evenings, kites everywhere, the lawns busy until the light finally goes and the ferry queue at the dock stretching after each show. Spring is soft and green, with blossom in the surrounding streets, the museums quiet on weekday mornings and the wind reliable for kites. Autumn is the local’s season — clear light, freighters sharp against the mountains, the lawns empty again and the museums at their most comfortable to visit. Winter is grey and wet more often than not, but this is exactly when the indoor half of the park earns its keep: a planetarium show, an hour aboard a polar schooner and a walk along an empty shoreline with the city lights coming on across the water is one of the better wet-January afternoons Vancouver offers.

Good to know

The most important history here is not the museums’. This headland was Sen̓áḵw, a Squamish settlement that became a permanent village in the mid-1800s and was designated Indian Reserve No. 6 in a Royal Engineers survey of 1869. Chief August Jack Khatsahlano, after whom the neighbourhood of Kitsilano is named, was born there in 1877. In 1913 the provincial attorney general engineered an illegal sale of the reserve: the residents were pressured into accepting payment, loaded onto barges and removed, and their homes were burned. The Dominion government later cancelled the transaction, but the Squamish were never permitted to return. The land passed between public bodies and private hands through the twentieth century — from the 1940s part of it served the air force as a storage depot — and in 1967 it became a park. A portion of the reserve was returned to the Squamish Nation in 2000, and the courts restored expropriated land in 2003; the towers now rising beside the park are the Nation’s own development on that ground, one of the largest Indigenous-led housing projects in Canada. The park itself dates from Canada’s centennial year: the federal government transferred the land to the Vancouver Park Board on 28 October 1966, William Livingstone laid out the landscape, and the park opened on 30 May 1967, named for Georges Vanier, the Governor General of Canada who had died that March. The Centennial Museum and the planetarium opened here in 1968 in Gerald Hamilton’s building, funded in part by the forestry magnate H.R. MacMillan; George Norris’s stainless steel Crab, six metres of it, went into the fountain at the entrance the same year. The maritime museum had been founded in 1959, also as a centennial project, and its A-frame went up in 1966 around the St. Roch, the RCMP vessel bought by the city in 1954 and declared a national historic site in 1962. Alan Chung Hung, born in Canton in 1946 and living in Vancouver from 1969, won a competition in 1979 and installed Gate to the Northwest Passage on the shoreline the following year. Bard on the Beach arrived last and smallest: one tent, one production and about six thousand people in 1990, growing into Western Canada’s largest professional Shakespeare festival, playing to tens of thousands each summer on the same grass.

Visitor tips

• Arrive by ferry if you can. The crossing from Granville Island or the West End takes minutes, lands you below the maritime museum and removes the entire evening parking problem.
• Bring a windproof layer even in July — this headland is open to the west, and the breeze that makes it the city’s best kite ground also makes it colder than the streets behind it.
• For theatre evenings, get there early enough to walk the shoreline before curtain: the light on the downtown skyline in the hour before a performance is the free half of the show.

Questions & answers

Is the park free? Yes. The lawns, the paths, the shoreline and the outdoor sculptures are free and open at all hours. The Museum of Vancouver, the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and the Vancouver Maritime Museum each charge their own admission, and the summer theatre festival sells its own tickets.

What was Sen̓áḵw? Sen̓áḵw was a Squamish village at the mouth of False Creek, designated Indian Reserve No. 6 in 1869. Its residents were forcibly removed in 1913 after an illegal sale arranged by the province and their homes were burned. Land was returned to the Squamish Nation in 2000 and by court decision in 2003, and the Nation’s own housing development is now being built beside the park.

Who was Vanier? Georges Vanier was Governor General of Canada from 1959 until his death in March 1967. The park was named for him and opened on 30 May 1967, in the year of Canada’s centennial.

What is the ship in the park? The St. Roch, an RCMP schooner that between 1940 and 1942 became the first vessel to sail the Northwest Passage from west to east, under Henry Larsen. She later made the passage in a single season and became the first ship to circumnavigate North America. She is preserved in dry dock inside the maritime museum and is a national historic site.

When can I see Bard on the Beach? The festival runs from June into September in two tents pitched on the park’s lawns. Performances are ticketed; the tents themselves, and the atmosphere around them, are part of the park’s summer for everyone.

How do I get here without a car? Take a bus across into Kitsilano — routes 2 and 22 serve the area — or ride one of the small passenger ferries from Granville Island or the West End to the dock below the maritime museum. There is no SkyTrain station in this neighbourhood.

Why is the museum roof that shape? Gerald Hamilton designed the sweeping cone in the 1960s to echo the woven cedar-bark hats of the Northwest Coast peoples. It is regularly mistaken for a flying saucer, which the museum has long since made peace with.

Is it good for kite flying? It is generally regarded as the best kite ground in Vancouver. The headland is open to the west and takes the wind directly off English Bay, and the lawns are large enough to fly without tangling with anyone.

Can I walk to Granville Island or the beach from here? Yes, both. Granville Island is about ten minutes east along the waterfront path and Kitsilano Beach a similar walk west, from where an unbroken shoreline route continues for roughly four kilometres to Jericho.

Are dogs allowed? Yes, on a leash across the park and along the shoreline path. Note that the museums themselves do not admit dogs other than service animals.