We made a stop at Queen Elizabeth Park located along our route into downtown Vancouver today before checking into our hotel. Like Butchart Gardens, this municipal park has been reclaimed from the overgrown hillsides of a rock quarry once used for building the city's first roadways in the early 1900s. Before the arrival of Europeans, this site was an old growth forest, and home to gray wolves, elk and bears with a salmon stream running through it. None of these creatures are found there today, nor is the old growth forest.
Finding ourselves with some time available for exploration, our quest was to see how this site compared with our favorite park in Victoria-Butchart Gardens. The answer is, only to some degree. The meticulous maintenance of Butchart Gardens with its wide variety of plants outshines this municipal park, but it is evident that Queen Elizabeth Park holds its own in popularity. The paths were well populated with visitors. There is no entrance fee which is a plus.
The paths wind up and down through several garden areas and through several stands of trees. A small waterfall and some ponds adorn the park grounds creating several attractive photo sites. There are expansive views of downtown Vancouver with its surrounding mountain ranges near the park's restaurant. A few steps away is the Bloedel Floral Conservatory with its exotic plants, flowers and tropical birds. We enjoyed a bronze statue of a photographer with his three subjects situated between these two buildings, then watched a child play in a water fountain nearby. A bride and groom held our attention as their real life photographer took pictures of them in the lower gardens.
Notably, the surrounding blocks of homes near the park are being bought up and demolished. New apartment buildings are rising in their footprints. It is strange to pass block after block of boarded up homes awaiting their demise. Even more amazing are the "Sold Out" signs pasted across each development's signage. Vancouver is in demand. Construction is booming both here and downtown. Apartment or condominium living is becoming the norm. In a very short period of time, the older homes with their tree adorned yards will be gone, just like the old growth forest of Queen Elizabeth Park.
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