What To Do With the Wood From Stanley Park
We’ve had some unusually strong wind storms here in Vancouver. Stanley Park–one of the city’s main attractions and, really, where its soul lives–got the brunt of these storms, and a lot of trees came down. You can see examples of the damage in this photo set.
In the long term, this isn’t a big deal–circle of life and all that–but some people are upset by the damage. It’s been seriously bad news for a couple of restaurants which operate in the closed-off section of the park. This is usually the gravy month for such businesses, and they’re shut down.
On the news last night, the parks board spokesperson said they might sell the wood from the fallen trees to pay for the cleanup and rehabilition. It was unclear what he meant by ’sell the wood’, but it sounded to me like he meant ‘in bulk’.
Here’s my alternative idea: give the wood (or some of it, at least) to local artists and artisans. They make sculpture, furniture, knick knacks and so forth, sell their wares and share the profits with the park.
There are two attractive points for the buyer: they know they’re supporting the rehabilitation of the park, and there’d be a certain cachet in owning something made out of Stanley Park wood. There’s only a limited amount of it, after all. I probably wouldn’t just donate to this cause, but I’d probably buy a cool picture frame on its behalf.
What do you think?
darren 
