Synopses & Reviews
In the early hours of 15 December 2006, a powerful windstorm ripped
through Vancouver. The city's residents awoke to discover Stanley
Park, their most treasured landmark, transformed into a tangle of
splintered, fallen trees. Their anguish revealed more than just an
attachment to their memories of the park - it marked the end of a
romanticized vision of timeless natural space.
In Inventing Stanley Park, Sean Kheraj traces how this
tension between popular expectations of idealized wilderness and the
volatility of complex ecosystems helped shape one of the world's
most famous urban parks. Using an environmental history approach,
Kheraj not only describes the natural and cultural forces that moulded
the park's landscape, he also reveals the roots of our complex
relationship with nature. Released to coincide with Stanley
Park's 125th anniversary, this book offers a revealing
meditation on the interrelationship between nature, culture, parks
policy, and public memory.Sean Kheraj is an assistant professor in the
Department of History at York University.
Synopsis
In early December 2006, a powerful windstorm ripped through
Vancouver's Stanley Park. The storm transformed the city's
most treasured landmark into a tangle of splintered trees and shattered
a decades-old vision of the park as timeless virgin wilderness. In
Inventing Stanley Park, Sean Kheraj traces how this tension
between popular expectations of idealized nature and the volatility of
complex ecosystems helped shape the landscape of one of the
world's most famous urban parks. This beautifully illustrated
book not only depicts the natural and cultural forces that shaped the
park's landscape, it also examines the roots of our complex
relationship with nature.
Table of Contents
Foreword /
Graeme Wynn
Introduction: Knowing Nature through History
1 Before
Stanley Park
2 Making
the Park Public
3
Improving Nature
4 The
City in the Park
5
Restoring Nature
Conclusion: Reconciliation with Disturbance
Notes
Bibliography