a history in a landscape

Nestled within the far southeast corner of what is today Vancouver, British Columbia, lies a 40-hectare park, a window into the multifaceted relationship between urbanized centres and the natural world. Everett Crowley Park is situated on lands just north of a historic village, described in Musqueam history as Tsukhulehmuth (suk-hu-lay-mult), along the north arm of the Fraser River. It was once host to a large salmon-bearing stream, known as Kinross Ravine, surrounded by old-growth Douglas-fir, western hemlock, and western redcedar.

Beginning in in 1944, in the boom of Vancouver’s urbanization experiment, the lands were excavated and swiftly filled in by the Kerr Road Dump. The land was used as a primary municipal landfill site for 22 years, one dump truck unloading its waste every ninety seconds while the refuse site was in operation. It is estimated that four million cubic meters of garbage was dumped into the Kinross Ravine.

With the area largely eradicated of flora, the city began excavating the northeast corner of the parcel in the 1960s, collecting sand to be used for street trenches around construction-hungry Vancouver; the resulting Avalon Pond became the lowest topographical region in the soon-to-be neighbourhood. The Pond has since unintentionally served to collect rain and surface drainage from surrounding residential zones, creating a small wetland. The resulting naturalized space serves as a contemporary sanctuary for wildlife within the city, offering a unique glimpse into the story of an ecosystem in recovery.

challenges and hidden sanctuaries

Following the entourage of disturbances from logging to waste disposal, natural processes have begun to reclaim the land, in turn establishing an urban riparian zone of early successional deciduous woodland. However, as a result of past disturbance to the historic vegetation, soils, and native seed bank, much of Avalon Pond’s surrounding area is coated in expansive thickets of invasive Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, and reed canarygrass, competing for space and sunlight with low-lying native vegetation and saplings.

The Pond is host to a large bloom of invasive yellow floating heart (a type of pond lily), rooted in the substrate, forming dense mats over the water surface with the advent of each spring. With taproots and rhizomes penetrating deep into the once-barren earth, such hardy introduced and invasive species found an opportunity to thrive.

Through much deliberation on varied uses for the land, Everett Crowley Park was opened in 1987. Major strides have been made in recent decades in naturalizing the space with the support of lasting, place-based stewardship. A sign of success is the recent confirmation of northwestern salamanders — a sensitive amphibian species — in Avalon Pond. Long-time inhabitants include three-spined stickleback and families of mallards that choose the Pond as their nesting grounds each year.

Despite invasive species, the areas adjacent to the Pond now host a variety of native riparian plants such as salmonberry, rushes, pondweeds, and willows. Today, trees tremble in the breeze and birds sing as Avalon Pond spills out into a creek running to the southeast. In the face of this disjointed and destructive history, urban wilderness continues to thrive.

the waters ripple onwards

In this path to recovery from ecologically detrimental land uses, paired with decades of intensive exploitation, Avalon Pond stands testament to the resiliency of these shared environments, unearthing interconnected processes atop the altered ecologies of this watershed. In a meeting ground between manufactured and naturalized landscapes, invasive and native flora, such watersheds reclaim the wounded land, spreading their waters atop the roots of aspens, down the gullets of ravens, transpired through the leaves of ferns. The waters recall the histories, are we willing to listen?

As an act of fostering a heightened connection to this place, The Freshwater Monitoring Art Kit joined with a group of volunteers in collecting water samples from Avalon Pond during the chilly mornings of January. Data was gathered on the pond’s pH, hardness, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, and conductivity. Participants then collaborated with the body of water itself, making generative art to visually realize the collected data.

The event aimed to serve as a practice of communal documentation of this history, in bearing witness and providing gratitude for all that remains of these changed and changing ecosystems. We made art that invites reciprocity, while gathering scientific context in determining potential risks to human and ecosystem health atop the retired landfill site.

By inviting others to share in the experiences of gathering water data, the hope was for this project to play a role in a bettered understanding of the impact of these pasts on the current riparian ecosystems of the urbanized Vancouver landscape.

Editor’s note: The City of Vancouver’s Everett Crowley Park web page provides more information about the site’s history, use by First Peoples, trails, and landmarks (including Avalon Pond):
https://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/everett-crowley-trails.aspx

The following blog article provides details about the discovery of northwestern salamanders at Avalon Pond in 2023, as well as ongoing restoration efforts at the park:
https://champlainheightscc.ca/discovery-of-northwestern-salamander-at-avalon-pond-everett-crowley-park-ecp/ 

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