Western Street to Northern, Station to Terminal
In the long ago, the canoes would have threaded their way through the Separated Points and glided across the relatively warm, shallow and extremely rich waters of the calm estuary here. Flocks of water fowl lingered at the edges, and one could look down through glass waters into eel grass and crabs, schools of fish, the pock marked sand of clam beds, mud sharks lurking under wide fronds of sea weed…
The lines of steel rails are the ‘new paths’ of the continent; from 1912-1917, the estuary was filled in to create a space for rail yards accessible to the port area on Burrard Inlet.
Among the rails and warehouses the land is busy healing, and making the best of the situation, offering a seasonal bounty of food and fibre: grasses, blackberry, bindweed, tansy, goldenrod and more all find a place here; there are still cottonwoods and scotch broom determined to be here, and wild clovers fixing nitrogen in the toughened ground.
