STANLEY PARK NOTEBOOK

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by Nate Lewis

A DAY IN THE DIRT

The Dedicated Invasive Removal Team or DIRT is a volunteer group organized by the Stanley Park Ecology Society (SPES) to remove invasive species in Stanley Park.

On a rainy morning in early February, 12 volunteers met up outside of SPES’s headquarters at Stanley Park Pavilion. After some quick introductions, (I was one of two newcomers to the group that day,) we grabbed our tools and headed over to Lost Lagoon.

Dacyn demonstrates techniques for digging out blackberry roots. (Nate Lewis photo)

Dacyn Holinda, the conservation projects manager for SPES, pointed out the plants we are targeting, and those we should avoid disturbing, before we get to work. The focus that day was to remove Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, and bamboo.   

The ivy spreads across the forest floor like a living blanket, but its thin roots are relatively easy to remove which makes it a favorite to pull out, one volunteer told me. The big problem with this type of ivy is that it will climb trees, choking them. Then, and only then, will it flower, dispersing its seeds and thereby spreading further. 

The blackberries are a thornier matter. Luckily, a previous group has done much of the scratch-inducing work of cutting back the towering thickets, which can look daunting at best and impenetrable at worst. 

Today, some of us are tasked with targeting the remaining stalks and – most importantly, I’m told by a SPES intern named Kody – digging up the root balls, which are the source of the plant’s energy. These roots are thick and gnarly and require a good amount of torque to dislodge from the muddy ground, which is also covered in logs, branches, and plant detritus from previous sessions.

At one point work was stopped by the appearance of a bronze ground beetle – ID’d by Kody, who is a zoologist by training – which, upon being discovered, crawled up Kody’s sleeve in search of another dark spot to burrow.

John, a twenty-year resident of the West End, shows off a particularly big blackberry root. (Nate Lewis photo)

“I was always the kid who took animals home with me,” Kody told me, but he knows better now. The beetle was eventually located and removed from Kody’s coat with no harm done to either of them.

Maybe 150 meters away from the blackberry patch is the other spot where volunteers are working that day, a man-made island in Lost Lagoon that was installed in the 1990s. The problem is not the island, which was a good idea Dacyn told us. The issue is the thick, fast-growing, and invasive bamboo that was planted there. Bamboo doesn’t provide a good habitat for most of the species around the lagoon like nesting birds, turtles, or waterfowl, Dacyn said. 

Five volunteers, with as many clippers, continued the work on the island, trimming the bamboo to within a few centimeters of the ground.

The next step will be covering the island in a foot of mulch, Dacyn explained, since the roots can’t be removed without the use of heavy machinery. DIRT will come back to cut down any regrowth in the spring. Then, in the fall, they’ll stake native plant species over top to out-compete the remaining bamboo and create a more hospitable area for wildlife.

Some of the plants they’ve added to the shoreline of the lake include red-osier dogwood, stink currant, red huckleberry, and willow, among other species.

This is an example of how SPES is trying to mitigate the challenges of an artificial ecosystem like Lost Lagoon, which used to be a coastal saltmarsh.

The cove, “my pet idling place” as poet Pauline Johnson described it, would turn to a mud flat at low tide and be “lost for many days,” before it was sealed off from Coal Harbour and its “ever-restless tides” in 1916.

SPES rates the current ecological health of the area as poor.

“I personally have the opinion that it’s worth putting in time and effort, investing to try and promote [the health of the area] as much as you can until those more long-term decisions can be made,” Dacyn said.

Those long-term decisions – far beyond SPES’s mandate – include the possibility of reopening the lagoon to tidal flushing from Coal Harbour. In the meantime, SPES has plans to install more floating islands in Lost Lagoon in the future, planted with native species.

Back at the session, some of the DIRT volunteers shared their varying interests and motivations for coming out to the program.  

Erika, a wildlife biologist and birder, biked in from Burnaby to take part in the session. Erika tries to come out to DIRT as often as work allows, and while she’s only made it a handful of times, Erika is a regular participant at SPES’s monthly bird census walks in the park.

Kody is gaining valuable hands-on work experience with SPES after completing their zoology degree during the pandemic. For Steve, who lives in Coal Harbour, volunteering is a way to stay busy while working a six-day-on, six-day-off schedule at BC Ferries.

 Then there are recent retirees like John and Tim, who are looking to stay engaged and outside.

Tim tells me he was familiar with the problem of invasive species from his work as a landscape architect in Ontario. Since retiring, Tim has spent the past four winters living in the West End and has been volunteering with DIRT for just as long.

nvasive plants are put into piles for Park Board staff to pick up. Blackberry bushes used to cover this area before being removed by DIRT volunteers. (Nate Lewis photo)

During the height of the pandemic, Tim and a few other volunteers cleared a whole slice of land – just across the path from the bamboo island – that was covered in a “ten-foot-high wall of blackberries.” Coming out to DIRT was a great way to combat loneliness during that time, Tim said. Being back in the area and seeing that native plants have replaced the invasive ones is really nice, he added.

For John, it’s all about having fun, getting fresh air, and smelling those good forest scents. There’s a spot they cleared by the aquarium that is particularly rewarding to see now, John said, because the invasive plants have come back slowly or not at all in some places.

“As long as I can do it, I’ll have a place to come,” he said.

DIRT gets volunteers mostly through word of mouth, like John, who heard about the program through a friend. SPES also has an online presence through their website and social media posts, which Tim credits with getting him involved. There are even some university professors who, according to Dacyn, will recommend DIRT in lectures to students looking for volunteer experience.

Daycn said SPES benefitted from over 5,000 volunteer hours in 2022. DIRT runs three days a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

THE JEROMES

Harry Jerome was an Olympic sprinter, educator, and advocate from North Vancouver. In the 1960s, he won gold medals in sprinting at the Pan-Am and Commonwealth Games, won a bronze medal in the 100-meter dash at the 1964 Olympics, set numerous world records, and was regarded as one of the fastest men in the world. 

Harry and Valerie Jerome, Olympic sprinters from North Vancouver, 1960. (North Vancouver Museum Archives)

In the same period of time, Harry earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in physical education from the University of Oregon and taught for four years with the Richmond and Vancouver school boards. In the 1970s he worked in the federal and provincial governments to develop youth sports programming. He received the Order of Canada and was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame of BC and of Canada. 

Harry was 42 years old when he died suddenly from a brain aneurysm in 1982.                                                 

The statue of Harry Jerome is a highly visible commemoration of the sprinter, as it can be seen by anyone on the road, bike path, or seawall as they circle the eastern tip of Stanley Park. 

Less visible to the average visitor is a park bench honoring Valerie Jerome, Harry’s younger sister, a short distance from the statue. The bench, “here beside her brother Harry,” as the plaque reads, was dedicated to Valerie by friends and former students in the early 2010s, some 25 years after Harry’s statue was unveiled in 1986.

A Canadian Olympian in her own right, the plaque celebrates Valerie’s “career as an athlete, teacher, coach, and community activist.”

Valerie Jerome represented Canada at the 1960 Olympics – which was Harry’s first as well. A multi-event track athlete in short distance running, long jump, and high jump, Valerie won a bronze medal at the Pan-Am Games in the 4 x 100-meter relay.

After graduating from UBC with a bachelor’s degree in education, Valerie had a 35-year career as an elementary school teacher in Vancouver. She also ran in civic, provincial, and federal elections as a Green Party candidate over two decades. 

Since 1995, Valerie has given Black History Month presentations in local schools, which focus on her experiences of racism growing up in North Vancouver and later as a teacher in the Vancouver school system.

Valerie describes how the Jeromes were subjected to discrimination and racist attacks, both verbal and physical.

When the family moved to North Vancouver in 1951, their new neighbors delivered a petition to city hall – which failed – attempting to stop the Jeromes from living there and demanding the neighborhood remain white. On their first day of school at Ridgeway Elementary, Harry, Valerie and their two siblings were attacked by other white students, who threw rocks at them and yelled racial slurs.

On being a teacher, “it was a career I deeply loved but one that was incessantly beleaguered and made painful by the same systemic racism that I had faced as a student, and that continues to this day,” she wrote in a UBC alumni profile.

Valerie is a founding director of the Jerome Outreach Society (JOS), named in honor of Harry, which continues his legacy of building sports programs across Canada. JOS has been providing free sports training sessions and coaching for kids at low-income schools in the Lower Mainland since 2007.

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