Queen Elizabeth Park. It’s the highest location in Vancouver, known for the Bloedel Conservatory (a somewhat bizarre, trapped-in-time, geodesic dome filled with tropical plants and an array of exotic birds), Seasons in the Park (a fancy restaurant with a spectacular view and a guaranteed retirement lunch / graduation dinner / 80th birthday brunch happening at all times) and immaculately kept gardens that fill a gigantic, man-made crater. That chasm was once a rock quarryused to build Vancouver’s first streets in the early 20th century. These days, Queen Elizabeth Park, atop Little Mountain, is a historic, lovely place to spend some much-needed quiet time away from the rush of the city.
This summer, you can add a new attraction to Queen Elizabeth Park’s serene setting: a zipline. A harness filled with a shrieking human, racing down a steel cable, over top of that tranquil quarry nursery, from the top of Little Mountain to the tulip gardens below. Queen Elizabeth Park is turning 75 this year, and what better way to celebrate three-quarters of a century of a whisper-quiet wonderland of wandering trails and babbling brooks then with… a zipline?
Queen Elizabeth Park is also a very popular and stunningly picturesque setting for weddings throughout the spring and summer. Picture it: a couple under the cherry blossoms giving their vows, surrounded by family and friends hanging on to every word through tears of joy, when some dude from Ladner flies over top of their heads letting out a Tarzan scream. That’s just what every Vancouver Bridezilla needs to send them into a complete freakout that will probably end in the frog pond.
From what I can tell from the scant releases online and some investigative phone calls, the Queen Elizabeth Park 75th Anniversary Zipline has received the green light, and is slated to temporarily be in place, at a fee of $15 per ride, from May to September this year.
The only thing is, it’s May already, and when I was poking around the park the other day, there was definitely no zipline to be seen. A groundskeeper who wouldn’t give his name told me he wasn’t sure what the status of the zipline was, just that there’s been “pushback”. He also confirmed there’s zero signs of construction of the zipline, “not even so much as a mark of chalk” as to where it might be built. He assumed it to be positioned at the edge of the cliff facing west above the quarry down to the garden below. If and when it does happen, revenue from the zipline is expected to be somewhere around $75,000, which is so perfect, since it’s the 75th anniversary of the park!
If you can’t tell, I’m not a huge fan of the zipline plan. Some parks should simply just be parks. We seem to live in an attention-deficit culture where everything must have a thrill attached to it to make it worthy of our attention.
Let’s say this: if the QE Park zipline does fly forward this summer, maybe a compromise can be made. Instead of the traditional walk down the aisle, what if the wedding couple were to zipline to the altar? That’s tasteful, right?
