Stanley Park
A thousand acres of old-growth forest on a downtown peninsula — bigger than Central Park, as old as Vancouver itself.
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The city leased this land for $1 a year in 1886, and most of it still looks like it did then. Half a million trees crowd a peninsula that colonists originally set aside for military fortifications guarding the harbour entrance. The park was never designed by a landscape architect — it simply evolved, and the old forest shows it.
What to look for
- The historic lighthouse on Brockton Point, the park's easternmost point — the land around it was originally set aside for military fortifications to guard the harbour entrance
- Trees pushing 76 metres (249 ft) tall and hundreds of years old in the forested interior
- Lions Gate Bridge at the park's north edge, spanning Burrard Inlet to the North Shore
Free public park on Vancouver's Downtown peninsula, bordering the West End and Coal Harbour neighbourhoods to the southeast.
Stanley Park is one of 13 sights worth the detour in Vancouver, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Vancouver pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Vancouver
- BC PlaceA stadium that broke the same world record twice — first with the largest air-supported roof ever built, then with the largest cable-supported retractable roof.
- Rogers ArenaBuilt for C$160 million and opened in 1995, this is the rink where Vancouver's hockey soul lives — and where the city briefly renamed it Canada Hockey Place for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
- Pacific ColiseumThe rink where Vancouver first played NHL hockey — and where 2010 Olympic skaters competed on the same ice.
- Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports CentreCanada's first national hockey team was born on this ice in 1963 — and the Vancouver Canucks still practice here.
- Richmond Olympic OvalThe rink where Olympic speed skaters raced in 2010 is now a public arena where you can climb a wall, row a tank, or lace up hockey skates — all under one roof.
- Vancouver Art GalleryWestern Canada's largest art museum, housed in a Francis Rattenbury courthouse since 1983 — the gallery's original home even survived a 1938 sit-down strike with its paintings untouched.