Unique Riverview botanical gardens deserve provincial protection

For immediate release
August 1, 2007

Plans for real estate development of the Riverview lands threaten a unique botanical garden and woodland that have been carefully tended on the Riverview lands since their establishment in or around 1905, the B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union said today.

"The Riverview botanical garden is one of a kind," said Darryl Walker, a BCGEU vice president who was first hired at Riverview in the early 1970s.

"Obliterating the parklands for condo development would just be the latest in a series of bad decisions at the facility," said Walker. "Years ago we lost an incredible agricultural resource when Colony Farms was closed down."

Colony Farms was an experimental farm operating on the Riverview lands, providing valuable advice for dairy farmers, as well as experience and meaningful work for some of the residents at what was then called Essendale. Now the botanical gardens are threatened.

"The Riverview gardens cover acres and are open for the public to enjoy," Walker said. "The gardens are the third oldest in Canada, and are home to some species of trees that are not found anywhere else in the country."

The land was first homesteaded around 1905 by patients with their attendants from what is now called Woodlands. They cleared the land and worked the property.

It's thought that many of the trees in the garden were started from seeds at UBC, collected by a provincial botanist. "These parklands were granted to the people of British Columbia and should be kept as park forever," said Walker.

Walker re-iterated concerns raised by advocates for the homeless, that the social housing included in the proposed development will be too little, too late and too far away from the streets of the Downtown Eastside, where they are most needed.

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For further information contact Darryl Walker (604) 880-8629 or Chris Bradshaw, BCGEU Communications
(604) 291-9611