There are some adequate streets in this great western port of Canada. When Vancouver planned such opulent boulevards as Granville and Georgia streets, it must have been thinking hard about posterity, which will want a lot of space if only to drive its superabundant motors. But splendid and wide and long though these and other streets be, the mass of people which lined them on Monday, September 22nd, was such as to set the most long-headed town planner wondering if, after all, he had allowed enough room for the welcoming of Princes.
From the vast, orderly throng massed behind the red and tartan of the Highland guard of honour at the station, thick ranks of people lined the whole of a long route to Stanley Park.
This crowd not only filled the sidewalks with good-tempered liveliness, but it had sections in all the windows of the fine blocks of buildings the Prince passed. Now and then it attempted to emulate the small boys who ran level with the Prince's car cheering to full capacity, and caring not a jot whether a "Mounty" of the escort or a following car went over them, but on the whole the crowd was more in hand than usual.
This does not mean that it was less enthusiastic. The reception was of the usual stirring quality, and it culminated in an immense outburst in Stanley Park.
It was a touch of genius to place the official reception in the Park. It is, in a sense, the key-note of Vancouver. It gives it its peculiar quality of charm. It is a huge park occupying the entirety of a peninsula extending from the larger peninsula upon which Vancouver stands. It has sea-water practically all round it. In it are to be found the greatest and finest trees in Canada in their most natural surroundings.
It is one big "reservation" for trees. Those who think that they can improve upon nature have had short shrift, and the giant Douglas pine, the firs and the cedars thrive naturally in a setting that has remained practically untouched since the day when the British seaman, Captain Vancouver, explored the sounds of this coast. It is an exquisite park having delightful forest walks and beautiful waterside views.
Under the great trees and in a wilderness of bright flowers and flags as bright, a vast concourse of people was gathered about the pretty pavilion in the park to give the Prince a welcome. The function had all the informality of a rather large picnic, and when the sun banished the Pacific "smoke," or mist, the gathering had infinite charm.
After this reception the Prince went for a short drive in the great park, seeing its beautiful glades; looking at Burrard Inlet that makes its harbour one of the best in the world, and getting a glimpse of English Bay, where the sandy bathing beaches make it one of the best sea-side resorts in the world as well. At all points of the drive there were crowds. And while most of those on the sidewalks were Canadian, there was also, as at "Soo," a good sprinkling of Americans. They had come up from Seattle and Washington county to have a first-hand look at the Prince, and perhaps to "jump" New York and the eastern Washington in a racial desire to get in first.
In this long drive, as well as during the visit we paid to Vancouver on our return from Victoria, there was a considerable amount of that mist which the inhabitants call "smoke," because it is said to be the result of forest fires along the coast, in the air. Yet in spite of the mist we had a definite impression of a fine, spacious city, beautifully situated and well planned, with distinguished buildings. And an impression of people who occupy themselves with the arts of business, progress and living as becomes a port not merely great now, but ordained to be greater tomorrow.
It is a city of very definite attraction, as perhaps one imagined it would be, from a place that links directly with the magical Orient, and trades in silks and tea and rice, and all the romantic things of those lands, as well as in lumber and grain with all the colourful towns that fringe the wonderful Pacific Coast.