The ThunderBlogs

Situated between Canada Place and the Centerm Terminal at Centennial Pier sits Crab Park at Portside. This piece of beachfront with an interesting history provides locals with rare public waterfront access along the south shore of Burrard Inlet.

On Sunday afternoon Crab Park was visited by an array of locals looking to soak up the last of the summer sun. A young couple let their black Labrador off his leash. He raced across the dog park to a group of children happily playing. On the other side of the field an impromptu soccer game amongst a group of twenty-somethings kicked off. An elderly gentleman explored the shoreline. He settled on a location and set his line. Crab Park is a dubious fishing ground and after an hour the old man had nothing to show for his efforts.

Crab park offers a little bit of everything to anyone lucky enough to find it. It is fitting that luck would bring people here since the early inhabitants of Burrard Inlet knew the location originally as Luckylucky, the Native phrase for Grove of Beautiful Trees. In the early 1980s, a group called Create a Real Available Beach, or CRAB, led by Downtown Eastside activist Don Larson, lobbied for the creation of the idyllic waterfront park, which was finally opened in 1986. It wasn’t until 2004 that the name was officially changed to CRAB Park at Portside.

Not many people come to the park, those that do cross the bridge at the north end of Main Street. On Sunday afternoon as the sun set a mild age couple strolled across the bridge and stopped to read the plaque dedicated to the “On to Ottawa Trek.” On June 3, 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression, the location was the starting point of a worker movement that would eventually contribute to the downfall of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett’s Conservative Government.

The park retains a strong connection to the community. A large boulder rests along the edge of the path beside the beach. It is a memorial to the women murdered in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It was dedicated on July 29, 1997. Fresh flowers and handwritten notes are still left around the base of the memorial. The inscription makes special mention of the “native aboriginal women,” who were the primary demographic of the murdered women. The memorial is a sobering landmark and a reminder that not far from the park is Canada’s most socially troubled postal code.

Crab Park users are worried their secret oasis will not last much longer. The rapid gentrification of Gastown, and the potential development of the adjacent land to the west of the park has led to plans for a pedestrian greenway, including an overpass above the CPR rail yards to connect the north end of Carrall Street with the sea wall and Crab Park. The once peaceful park will not be so quiet once the rest of Vancouver finds out about it.