Point Grey

Ferry and Point Grey © 2002 Michael R. Barrick

And now for the accompanying useless facts:

On the peninsula in the background is the University of British Columbia. UBC is *not* part of Vancouver. If you go to UBC you may have noticed things like how the pavement on the roads changes as you cross the boundry into the University or that the police stations on campus are RCMP and not Vancouver police. Did you ever wonder why that is? Or did you just assume that the University owns the land? They don't. The university endowment lands are feifdom, with the provincial government as the lord. Land can be privately owned within the fiefdom and the university is left alone to administer its allotment of the endowment lands (about 1/3 of the total area, the rest is a park), but ultimate responsibily for the civic administration of the land resides with the Crown, thus it is not the City of Vancouver that paves the roads, but the Ministry of Highways and why the university is policed by RCMP and not Vancouver police. It's also why Wreck Beach became such a funky place. Until the GVRD came into existance the rules that applied to other Vancouver beaches like Kits or Jericho did not apply. There were no rules to stop the nude sunbathing, fires, consumption of alcohol etc. because of the weird political void the beach existed in. Now it is managed by the GVRD and while the same rules apply, a blind eye is turned to the them because of the beach's legacy.

For what it is worth, Granville Island is in a similarly weird political space. The "island" is artificial - it is build on garbage ("dirty fill") dumped intentionally into False Creek when the early city fathers were still of a mind to fill the whole thing in to get it out of the way (all the "land" beween Science World and Clark St. is reclaimed). The island is owned and administered by the federal goverment via the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC).