August 19th - Chiba Gardens

What a challenge this was! While doing my research, I came across a memorial garden in Waterfront Park named for North Vancouver's sister city: Chiba Japan.

It turns out the cities became sister's to each other in 1969. The local government at the time decided to honour this event by building a park.

While doing my research however, I came across very little information on where this park was located. So while at Lonsdale Quay today, I asked one of the people in the info centre if they could help me locate this. It turns out, even they couldn't help me! They had an idea that this park existed but no idea where it was! I stumped the tourist guides! I never thought that that was possible!

Armed with a sense of where I was going, my husband and I retraced our steps through Waterfront Park and found this little gem of a park:

Although this park is very small, it would have been a very peaceful park to sit and enjoy the water and the plants. However, if I were the city of North Vancouver, I would clean the park up a little bit. The beer cans and garbage cans that were tossed into the park made it a bit of a mess. I would also clean the trails up a little bit as the people of Chiba Japan may feel a bit disrespected if they ever come and see what has happened to their honour park!

Despite this, it was worth the visit!

Thanks for reading

Lynn