Guide:

Bruce Macdonald is an avid local historian who as a child lived between the sites of these two historic creeks which roughly paralleled Valley Drive. At his birth in 1948 he was actually living right at the source of Tatlow Creek, 20th Avenue and Balsam Street.

Bruce's book, "Vancouver: A Visual History" is a decade by decade, map-based history of Vancouver that took 10,000 hours to produce. He has worked for many years with Mount Pleasant's Brewery Creek Historical Society, the City of Vancouver and local developers to map out the path of Brewery Creek with markers and plaques. Last year he completed a new history of Brewery Creek and Mount Pleasant for the City of Vancouver.

Special Instructions:

Walk is child and bike friendly. Rain or shine. Donations welcome.

Description:

Not long ago, Tatlow Creek and Macdonald Creek were actively draining most of Kitsilano and Arbutus Ridge, whose upper flat areas were a giant swamp until the 1920s. When I was a small child we still had skunk cabbage in the narrow slot between our garage and fence with our next door neighbours. Is there a single native plant left today along the route of those creeks? The system of land pre-emption in the new colony of British Columbia was institutionalized by Colonel Moody on January 1st, 1860. The last time I did this walk, I was amazed to discover evidence of the original reason why Colonel Moody himself and other prominent white people rushed to this area to make some of the first land claims in British Columbia. When I wrote my book, Vancouver: A Visual History, I was similarly amazed to discover why Valley Drive (one of my earliest childhood memories) which parallels the route of these two creeks, is the sole street in the area to "violate" the grid system.

Why not come on this tour and maybe we can discover other interesting facts about this once wild neighbourhood!

The walk will end at the ocean by Point Gey Road and the foot of Macdonald Street about noon. For the return trip to 20th Avenue, city buses are available if you so desire. They leave 1st Avenue and Macdonald at 11:55 and 12:19 and take 4 minutes to get to 19th Ave at a cost of $2.50 per person one way.