Sure, you could describe English Bay Beach, but what would be the point? 

It’s sort of like describing the Eiffel Tower to people living in Paris or Parliament Hill to people in Ottawa — it’s the postcard image, the one you’ve seen and experienced again and again, the place where the fireworks happen and the Inukshuk stands, the “fabled front door” of the city, as Vancouver Sun writer Robert Sarti one called it. 

There’s the curved beach and adjacent grass, the lovely art deco bathhouse, the way it funnels into Denman and all the frenetic activity of the West End, but how it also eases off into Stanley Park and the residential buildings to the north. 

It’s Old Vancouver, the city’s First Beach (which is why Stanley Park’s beaches are called 2nd and 3rd), the beach you see in all the archival photos and videos, linked to the story of Joe Fortes (the city’s first lifeguard, and one of its few celebrated Black pioneers) all across from the Sylvia Hotel.

There’s a relaxed vibe to Clark that betrays its history.

As recently documented in Aaron Chapman’s book “The Last Gang in Town”, Clark Park was once the centre of a rougher side of Vancouver (particularly on the city’s east side), a time with less organized crime and more disorganized mayhem. The city was smaller and the stakes were too, but the violence no less real. 

That was the 1960s and 1970s. The east side has gone through successive waves of gentrification, the region’s gang centres have moved eastward, and the main thing Clark Park means for today’s generation is a lovely place to catch the sunset on a blanket with friends or family. 

That sunset — ideally viewed about midway up the giant hill that dominates the park — is truly lovely, but so are a lot of other things about Clark, just the second park in the city when it was established in 1889. 

There’s the large forested area near the top of the hill, neatly dividing the park from the lower section (soccer field, sandy playground with zip line and giant tires) to the upper section (baseball diamond, woodchip-based playground with a very inventive wooden climbing structure). There’s ample seating, a basketball and tennis court, and plenty of different paths one can use to explore the park.

The story of how VanDusen came to be is like a lot of stories about how Vancouver came to be: it involves railway executives and forestry money. 

Most of the middle of the city, you might remember, was given to the CP Railway company in the 1880s in exchange for the cross-country rail line ending in Vancouver (the idea that Indigenous people might have legal rights to the area barely acknowledged at the time).  

Bit by bit CP Rail developed the land, or leased it to groups like the Shaughnessy Golf Club. But by the 1960s the golf club had decamped to its current position south of UBC, and there was much consternation over how the land would (or should) be developed.

Eventually a compromise was struck: CP Rail would sell the land to Vancouver in exchange for being able to build more houses on their own lands; the city would then convert the land into a modern garden, with a million dollar donation from MacMillan Bloedel executive Whitford Juilan VanDusen making the numbers line up. 

At the heart of Commercial Drive is a park that beats to the same drum as the neighbourhood: a little bit discordant, but full of heart and intoxicating, authentic energy. 

Right on Commercial Drive, across the street from the Havana restaurant, Grandview is home to East Side Pride, rehearsals for a brass band, the end of the annual Dyke March, the city’s only bike polo court (don’t worry, you can use it for ball hockey), and all sorts of other community events, formal and informal, that enjoy the welcoming space. 

The openness of the park to everyone can cause some tension — the park board did an extensive renovation a decade ago in part to try and reduce open drug use the caused consternation with local businesses and residents — but overall there’s enough space to fit everyone, and enough space between the cenotaph area where adults gather and the playground at the bottom of the hill to alleviate problems. 

And that playground really does need to be highlighted: a comprehensive wooden theme, with a little tree hut and large stumps complementing the standard Giant Triangle Climbing Thingy and New Play Structure With Lots Of Slides that are all the rage these days. And it’s right next to a water park, which admittedly is a bit too small to appeal for kids over 4 or 5 years old, but there’s few places in the city with a new playground *and* a spray park, and Grandview does both well. 

Charleston Park is another park next to another bike path next to another body of water, and yes it’s exhausting, we get it, but by our measurement, 16 of Vancouver’s 38 great parks are next to the ocean. 

Is that due to the city placing greater focus on green spaces with waterfront views over inland areas? Our biases as a park ranking team? A fundamental reality of Vancouverism? 

No matter: Charleson is great — a large area right in the middle of the South False Creek neighbourhood, created as its centerpiece park to the planned community in the 1970s. 

The seawall walk and cycling path is flat, but the grass next to it is decently hilly, giving excellent contours to see Downtown from. It also provides a nice bowl shape for the large off-leash dog area in the middle of the park as well. 

(For the record, designated off-leash dog areas don’t get points because we like dogs — the proprietor of this website actually doesn’t — but because they fill an important need in the city and prevent the sort of conflicts that arise when an area becomes an “unofficial” dog park because of a lack of nearby spaces)

Douglas Park has the best playground, bar none, of any park in Vancouver, and if you have kids under 10 and live in or around Vancouver, you should go there.

That could be our entire review; it would certainly be blunt and get the point across, but it’s worth espousing on the exact merits of the Douglas Park playground, along with why playgrounds matter and why the one in Douglas sticks out in Vancouver.

First, the merits: the $760,000 playground, opened in 2018, is dominated by a sprawling wooden structure that has suspension bridges, slides, climbing walls and more slides coming out every which way.

It feels like something kids might construct in a Lord of the Flies scenario, a defensive battlement, and sits on top of ground that is mixed with woodchips and springy turf paths for accessibility. Complementing all this are a number of springy swing toys, modern swings, a sandy play area, a trampoline, a tiny log house and a number of balancing beam elements. 

Other Vancouver parks might have a bigger highlight (see: Creekside’s slide), or have an outstanding spray park (see: Granville Island), or have multiple playgrounds (see: Stanley), but none have an individual playground as good as Douglas. Little wonder it’s always packed.

“Here Vancouver Began,” read the plaque at New Brighton Park when it was named a historic site in 1968, one of those bits of quiet Indigenous erasure as the city created a narrative around its founding throughout the 20th century. 

But the northeast corner of Vancouver does have plenty of colonial history — it’s where the Hastings Townsite began, and with it the city’s first post office and roads, along with a historic hotel that gave the area its name.

And New Brighton integrates that history into its design, with the port activity on either side and a prominent grain elevator giving full reminder of the fact Vancouver primarily grew because it was a convenient intermediary point for raw materials reaching the rest of the world. 

Even without that historical context, one can appreciate New Brighton as one of the most unique parks in the city from a visual standpoint. And even without those views, New Brighton is still plenty fun. 

There’s the outdoor pool, for one — a large rounded square, with dedicated swimming lanes and more casual wading areas, only matched by Kits in the city for the size and joy it brings.

It is Vancouver’s newest park, Vancouver’s most expensive park — and it absolutely lives up to the hype. 

sθәqәlxenәm ts’exwts’áxwi7 (originally known as “Smithe and Richards Park”, for the intersection where it lies, and likely known to most for its anglicized name of Rainbow) had plenty of scrutiny and speculation when it opened.

Part of that was due its price tag (over $15 million, with a few extra million tacked on due to delays in construction), but a lot of it was due to its general concept: could a fancy, artificial, grassless, futuristic park actually work? In the middle of Downtown Vancouver? Or would it, after the novelty wore out, become a monument to architectural folly?

Well, the park worked when it opened. It kept working in the summer, when the coffee shop opened and art started hanging from the the giant arches the elevated walkway passes through. And it kept working through the rest of the year, long after the novelty passed from visiting it, with families regularly visiting at all hours of the day.

While so many of Vancouver’s great parks scream their Vancouverness, Maple Grove has a more universal feel, as though it could be dropped in any growing city in the 1950s and suddenly be packed with families enjoying its pleasures. 

There are two particularly noteworthy things about Maple Grove. The first is its pool, and while that might sound like repetition right after New Brighton, there are only five outdoor pools in the city, and Maple Grove’s has a unique shape, more of an elongated liver with little curves everywhere, providing plenty of exploring opportunities for youngsters.

The second is its trees. Or more specifically, the stumps: huge century-old beasts, kept in place in 1913 after the trees were logged, “so that children, years hence, would have an idea of the great stands of timber that once covered Point Grey”. Or at least so says the plaque. 

These are excellent for small children (or adults who are small children at heart) to run into and create their own little worlds.  But there are also plenty of regular trees — much more than most city parks, where they would likely have removed decades earlier to create more field space — and they provide a unique separation between each area of the park, along with a quieter section to explore or to picnic in.