Quote:
Originally Posted by Vin
A military base belongs to the Crown. The Feds could have seized it for their own. Under the then Governor General, the military reserve was given to the City of Vancouver, making public facilities such as the zoo and aquarium porssible.
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Meanwhile, here's what happened in the real world. The land was surveyed in 1859 by the British Navy, before the mill was built on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, and before Gassy Jack Deighton rowed round from New Westminster and squatted on the shore to establish his first bar.
The military reserve was declared because of the tall, straight trees that made excellent masts, the sort that the Navy needed for their sailing ships. There were first nations settlements on what became called The Coal Harbour peninsula.
Once the railway was going to arrive in the newly named City of Vancouver in 1886, the newly elected Council asked the Dominion Government if they could have the land as a park. The request was that 'the whole of that part of Coal Harbour peninsula known as the Government Reserve be conveyed to the City of Vancouver for a Public Park". By the time that approval was received from the Dominion Government in June 1887 the city had already surveyed a road around the park.
The Government of the Dominion of Canada previously claimed Crown Lands, and in turn have handed responsibility of many of the lands to provincial governments, and those are now known as provincial Crown land. However, the national government - the Feds as you referenced them - still held the military reserve when they allocated almost all of the land to the British Columbia Government when the colony of British Columbia became part of the Dominion of Canada in 1871, (and the provincial government still 'own' 94% of it). So early settlers after 1871 acquired their land from the provincial government, but in the case of Stanley Park and Granville Island (and the Sinclair Centre) the land was (and is) still held by the Federal Government, who leased, rather than gave what was later named as Stanley Park to the City Council.
As we know, unlike in most of the rest of Canada, in most of British Columbia Aboriginal title has never been transferred to the Crown, hence recent negotiations and in some cases compensation or development partnerships with first nations on both Federal and Provincial lands that are no longer required for Federal use.
Lord Stanley had no role in any of this. He didn't negotiate it, he wasn't in Canada, he was the minister in the British Government in charge of managing The British Empire in 1886, but there was a different Governor General. It was leaked to the press that Lord Stanley had been offered the job of Governor General at the end of 1887, and he took on the role in 1888. He didn't actually live in Canada - but he travelled widely, including to the new City of Vancouver. His predecessor, another British politician, Lord Landsdowne (a Liberal) had suggested that the park might be named for his successor, Lord Stanley, and the day after it was opened the Victoria newspaper referred to it as "Stanley" Park. Apparently, apart from the speeches, it wasn't a huge deal. The Daily Times reported that "Beyond a sparse display of bunting and the closing of business houses there was little or no attempt at decorations".
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, yeah I know it pretty well. Millennial hipster delusions to the contrary, the area won't survive on people getting drunk alone. Kind of the way Granville island merchants recoil in horror whenever some fixie-rider proposes cutting parking at Granville Island.
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