As a youth growing up on Vancouver’s eastside, VanRamblings’ parents told us that the area known as Spanish Banks ‘belonged’ only to the people of the west side, and that we would not be welcome to ‘use’ their park, nor frequent their part of town. For the entirety of our youth, our only palpable knowledge of Spanish Banks came through the photos we saw of this pristine waterfront, either in photos in the daily newspaper, or on TV.
In the late 60s, when we met the woman who would be our spouse, she —
as an habitué of Vancouver’s west side (where a favourite aunt, uncle and cousins of hers lived) — pooh-poohed the nostrum of VanRamblings’ parents; thus we became infrequent visitors to the patch of waterfront on Vancouver’s west side, even as VanRamblings’ ‘parents voice’ continued to remonstrate our discomfort level was somewhat alleviated, but not entirely.
In the 1980s, when we moved to the west side (long story that, the details of which we’ll save for another time), we managed to overcome our undue prejudices, and by 1988 a walk along Spanish Banks and through the trails of UBC became a daily feature of our lives, as it remains to this very day.
The video published on VanRamblings on this Saturday takes in a walk, yesterday, along Spanish Banks, from Locarno Beach along and through to Tower Beach, in an area just east of the University of British Columbia.
Although Vancouver’s absolutely lovely and bewitching Spanish Banks is not the Annapolis Valley’s Annapolis River (about which we’ve written frequently in recent days, as part of our vacation travelogue), tranquil and calming, VanRamblings believes there is much to recommend about our favourite stretch of beach within the city of Vancouver (our favourite stretch of beach in British Columbia may be found along Long Beach, or Chesterman Beach, near Tofino, about which we’ll write another time).
Please enjoy today’s video presentation, and if you live or are visiting Vancouver may we recommend a stroll along Spanish Banks (after all, the beach is yours), one of the true natural wonders of Canada’s west coast.
