| Summary: | On verso of image: The entrance to Stanley Park, Vancouver, famed for its thousand acres of primeaval forest and beautiful marine drives. Filed in British Columbia--Vancouver In 1886 Vancouver's first City Council made a momentous decision by petitioning the Federal Government to lease 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of a largely logged peninsula for park and recreation purposes. Following the establishment of the fledgling city's first official "greenspace", Council decided to set-up an autonomous and separately elected committee to govern all park and recreation matters in Vancouver. And so the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation was born, the only elected body of its kind in Canada. The system now includes over 192 parks (1278.41 hectares) but its heart remains in the cool, lush, evergreen oasis of Stanley Park named for Lord Stanley, Governor General of Canada in 1888 when the park was officially opened. Yearly visits to this, North America's third largest urban park, are estimated at 8 million people. Originally home to Musqueam and Squamish First Nations people, Stanley Park as you see it today was not one designer's grand scheme but more an evolution of a pioneer city's hopes and dreams; a place for its citizens to recreate themselves through active sport or passive repose. [Source: Vancouver Park Board web site, http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/parks/parks/stanley/history.htm]
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