I began, perhaps fittingly, at the birthplace of the city: Maple Tree Square. Where a township called Gastown, and Granville, changed its name to Vancouver. A tip of the tricorn to Captain George Vancouver, who sailed into what’s now Burrard Inlet on a summer’s day, 1792. But the Captain arrived behind Spanish explorers, who already mapped the area, met the locals, and were more or less done with the place. But the Spaniards welcomed Vancouver, gave him a feed with good wine, and shared their cartographical findings.
Of course the area was in no way newly discovered. Coast Salish Nations have lived here for at least five millennia. In this particular pocket of forest and shoreline, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples. But soon after that shipboard dinner in which Captain Vancouver no doubt reached for seconds while getting his head around the fact he too had placed second, new immigrants began to arrive from across the Pacific. And while Vancouver has rich history involving settlers from Polynesia, South Asia, and Japan, this story involves a transplant from China, and the first Classical Chinese Garden outside of Asia. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden.
From above, Vancouver is distinctly peninsular, a face-like jut of land, its profile looking west with a prominent chin, unruly hair, and the historical Garden precisely where a left eye would be. One with an emerald hue. A place I’d explored many times, yet knew there was more to uncover.
From that alleged birthplace of the city I made my way to Vancouver’s Chinatown and the Classical Garden, where a city worker was trimming bamboo, a bushel of leaves at his feet. Everything in this compact space feels significant. Which it is. Culturally, historically, geologically, artistically. A discombobulation of airiness and nature tucked in the urban.