A West End reader wants to see Alexandra Park, located across the street from English Bay, renamed Joe Fortes Park.
Lyn Guy emailed to say shes been watching with interest as nearby Morton Park undergoes extensive renovations to better accommodate the sculpture installation A-maze-ing Laughter.
And while Guy is pleased about that work, she says it also highlights the neglect Alexandra Park is suffering. In 1911, the park was named after the long-deceased Queen Alexandra, the consort of Britains King Edward VII.
I am pleased as punch that an almost invisible patch of land has made it this far as a visible icon for Vancouver, Guy wrote in part. Now, if we could just push to change the under-used Alexandra Park (named for a lesser queen?) with the bandshell in its drab, old-man-in-a-brown-raincoat look
Guy says the park and its aging bandstand, built in 1914, are used largely by the homeless and she believes that with creative landscaping, the tiny green space could once again become a popular family destination.
Fortes, who died in 1922, moved to Vancouver in the 1890s and eventually moved to a cottage on English Bay, where hes credited with teaching thousands of children to swim and saving dozens of swimmers from drowning.
Ive been choked ever since the city allowed Fortes cottage to be demolished when it could have been rolled across and onto the park and made into a museum or information centre, wrote Guy of the beach-front cabin where the lifeguard lived out his days. [Renaming the park] would make up for such a lost chance.
Communication Breakdown
In Wednesdays Courier I wrote that the park board ended the contract of the mediator who was helping most of the citys community centre associations negotiate a contract with the park board.
Apparently that was news to NPA park board commissioners John Coupar and Melissa De Genova. Coupar told me he had no idea Terry Harris had been removed as mediator until he read it in the Courier.
Kate Perkins, whos been acting as lead on the negotiations on behalf of the associations, told me she was also surprised by the move. Perkins says the associations had no problems with the way Harris was handling the mediation. Perkins added the associations will now work with the park board to find a new facilitator.
sthomas@vancourier.com
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