Stanley Park - History

History

The area of the park is the traditional territory of several different indigenous tribes. On the Burrard Inlet and Howe Sound regions, Squamish had many villages in this park. On the lower Fraser River area, Musqueam used the area for resource gathering. Where Lumberman's Arch is now in Stanley Park, a large Squamish village once presided called X̱wáýx̱way meaning Place of masks. The dwellings traditionally used was a longhouse built from cedar poles and slabs. One longhouse was measured at 200 feet (61 m) long by 60 feet (18 m) wide. These houses were occupied by large extended families living in different quadrants of the house. The larger houses were used to ceremonial potlatchs where a host would invite guests to witness and participate in ceremonies and the giving away of property.

The park itself was a rich resource for gathering food and materials. The Squamish "cut down large cedar trees in Stanley Park for making canoes and other purposes" utilizing "nothing but stone chisels and a big round stone for a hammer." Where present Second Beach is, a place called "St’i’tekekw’" to Squamish was used to gather "a clay material or muddy substance formally obtained right in the bed of a small creek... which, when rolled into loaves, as (my people) did it, and heated or roasted before a fire, turned into a white like chalk" This material was used in the making of mountain goat wool and dog wool blankets. The Squamish name references this material. Another home for local natives was where present Prospect Point is. This place is called "Schi'lhus" meaning High Bluff. Coal Harbour was known as a fishing spot for herring. August Jack, a local historian who once lived at Schi’lhus, remembered his early days when him and his brother were "fish-raking in Coal Harbor" and "got lots of herring in (the) canoe". Deadman's Island (properly called Deadman Island on official charts and maps) located in Coal Harbour was once used a burial island, possibly a reason for its macabre name. The popular landmark Siwash Rock is called "Slah-kay-ulsh" meaning "he is standing up." In their oral history, a man was transformed into this rock by the three Transformer brothers. The hole in the rock was where Slah-kay-ulsh kept his fishing tackle, according to Andrew Paull.

First contact between Europeans occurred in 1791, with Spanish Captain Jose Maria Narvaez and British Captain George Vancouver. Captain Vancouver recorded in his journal "Here we met about fifty Indians, in their canoes, who conducted themselves with the greatest decorum and civility, presenting us with many cooked fish, and undressed, of the sort already mentioned as resembling the smelt. These good people, finding we were inclined to make some return for their hospitality, shewed much understanding in preferring copper to iron." In his A Voyage of Discovery, Vancouver describes the area as “an island ... with a smaller island lying before it,” indicating that it was originally surrounded by water, at least at high tide. No other contact was recorded for decades, until around the time of the Crimean War when British admirals arranged with Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Joe Capilano that in the case of an invasion, the British would defend the south shore of Burrard Inlet and the Squamish would defend the north.

According to Capilano’s daughter, the British gave him and his men 60 muskets. Although the attack anticipated by the British never came, the guns were used by the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh to repel an attack by an indigenous raid from the north. Stanley Park was not attacked but this was the beginning of it being considered a strategic military location by the British.

The peninsula was designated as a military reserve in the early 1860s in a survey conducted by the Royal Engineers. It was again considered a strategic point in case Americans might attempt an invasion and launch an attack on New Westminster (then the colonial capital) via Burrard Inlet. Although the area was logged by six different companies between the 1860s and 1880s, this military designation saved the land from development. In 1886, as its first order of business, Vancouver’s City Council voted to petition the Dominion government to lease the reserve for use as a park.

To manage their new acquisition, city council appointed a six-man park committee, which was replaced with the Vancouver Park Board in 1890 that was to be elected rather than appointed (a rarity in North American cities). The Vancouver Park Board manages 192 parks on over 12.78 square kilometres (3,160 acres) of land, but Stanley Park remains by far the largest.

On September 27, 1888 the park was officially opened, where it was named after Lord Stanley, Governor General of Canada at the time. The following year, Lord Stanley became the first Governor General to visit British Columbia when he officially dedicated the park. An observer at the event wrote:

When Lord Stanley made this declaration, there were still a number of indigenous people living on lands he had claimed for the park. Some, who had built their homes less than twenty years earlier, would continue to live on the land for years. Most of the dwellings at the Squamish village of X̱wáýx̱way were reported as vacant by 1899, and in 1900, two of such houses were purchased by the Park Board for $25 each and burned. One Sḵwx̱wú7mesh family, “Howe Sound Jack,” and Sexwalia “Aunt Sally” Kulkalem, continued to live at X̱wáýx̱way until Sally's death in 1923. Sally's ownership of the property surrounding her home was accepted by authorities in the 1920s, and following her death, the property was purchased from her heir, Mariah Kulkalem, for $15,500 and resold to the Federal government.

In 1908, twenty years after the first petition for the lease, the federal government renewed the lease of Stanley Park to Vancouver for ninety-nine years, renewable in 2007. and rolled over in 2008.

Deadman's Island, a small island off Stanley Park is the site of Vancouver's Naval Reserve Division HMCS Discovery. During the 1860s to early 1880s, early settlers along Burrard Inlet also used the island, along with Brockton Point, as a burial ground and cemetery. Burials ceased when the Mountain View Cemetery opened in 1887, just after Vancouver had become a city. During a small pox outbreak in the late 1880s, Deadman Island became a "pest house" for quarantined victims of the disease and burial site for those who did not survive.

The park was designated a National Historic Site of Canada by the federal government in 1988. It was deemed significant because the relationship between its "natural environmental and its cultural elements developed over time" and because "it epitomizes the large urban park in Canada."

Squamish First Nations Chief Ian Cambell proposed in 2010 renaming Stanley Park as Xwayxway Park after the large village formerly located in the area.