When the first world war ended, there were technically three separate municipalities in Vancouver — Point Grey, South Vancouver, and the Vancouver we know today — and they each built separate parks to honour those that served. But while Vancouver named its memorial “Victory Square”, both South Van and Point Grey opted for “Memorial Park”, which is how we ended up with the geographic signifiers of “West” and “South” being added after the three communities amalgamated.

Now that you know that boring origin story, we can enjoy what a balanced park Memorial West is. It’s another park with a community centre, but rather than putting the building in the centre and awkwardly surrounding it with a bunch of fields, the Dunbar Community Centre is in the far northeast corner, allowing the rest of the park to flow naturally together. 

And that greatly helps: one section of the park is devoted to baseball, another to a play area (it’s old and wooden, but there’s a zip line), another to lawn bowling and tennis, and another to a small forest, with a couple walking paths and benches amongst the trees and meadow grass.  

In the middle of this lies a charming old wooden field house, along with public toilets and a concession stand for baseball. All told, four city blocks, all used up efficiently.

It’s all very pleasant, all well-proportioned, all old-fashioned without being excessively so, all good but not great, all very Dunbar.