Babes in the Wood: A Poem About Stanley Park < The Happy Monk Baking Company

Stanley Park is a jewel in Vancouver, but I’ve never felt at ease walking deep inside the park’s forest trails.

There is something awry here. Nothing I can put a finger on, just a feeling I get when I venture too far. Once, when cycling alone on the trails, I came upon a small area with a firepit, clothes strewn about and figures in the distant woods and underbrush. I was a little spooked and hurried away.

I wrote a blog post about the Stanley Park forest (Silence and Secrets in the Stanley Park Forest, February 2024) that touched on this unease.

256 hectares of well-used forest

It is immense. Of Stanley Park’s 400 hectares, some 256 hectares are forest. Sixty-five percent is wooded land, along with a 10 km perimeter road, a sea wall, and a few more minor routes that venture into the woods themselves. Gardens, a zoo and aquarium, open-air theatres, and several restaurants are big attractions, including the network of trails that wind through most of the forest land.

There are 27 km of trails winding through the rainforest parkland. Many of the trails are remnants of old logging skid roads when the forest was aggressively logged in the late 1800s.

Park rangers report a small population of homeless people living in the park forest. In one case, a resident used the roots of fallen trees and underbrush to fashion living spaces.

There is something romantic about setting up a tent in the midst of a city forest, but its proximity to the big city adds a note of danger. It could be my imagination, but I’ve clung to my instincts.

Babes in the wood

Another shadow over the Stanley Park forest is the unsolved murder case known as “The Babes in the Woods.” In 1953, a park worker uncovered the skeletons of two children. Authorites believed they’d lain hidden, undiscovered for five years. A hatchet was found nearby that was allegedly used in the murder of the two boys.

Newspapers sensationalized the story. It captured the fears and outrage over how the two innocents had died and never been discovered. But despite the outcry for answers, the case went cold.

In 2022, however, police identified the two little victims through DNA and forensic genealogy. Derek and David D’Alton were seven and six years old, respectively, when they died. The murderer and circumstances remain a mystery. 1.

Keeping a safe distance

I love Stanley Park. I crave walking the sea wall again, riding a bicycle along the forest roads, sitting on a log at the sea wall beaches, Siwash Rock and the 360º view of the Vancouver setting.

Is it an overactive imagination, though, that makes me keep a safe distance from the deepest Stanley Park forest? Bad karma? Bad vibes?

Whatever the reason, the forest seems tainted to me, as if the trees harbour secrets and aren’t happy with our presence.

The Babes of Stanley Park

A pair of children’s bodies lay in this forest
Five years, half-buried by leaves and muck,
Their skulls bludgeoned,
Their tiny corpses laid root to root,
Alongside rotting wood and worms,
Fern and Salal and the drip of water.

Tree trunks enlarged around them.
A green canopy spread overhead.
Giant guardians watching over
The murdered babes of the woods
Mourned by few but barely missedIn the furied metropolis next door.

There is restlessness in this city-close woodland,
Unease amid the silence.
Secrets blanketed by fallen branches and hummus earth
Hidden streams, animal bones,
And the sound of distant traffic
Speeding down the causeway that runs through its core

As if roots were connected by some cord
From city to forest.
Fir and cedar pushing up through stump rot
Of fallen ancestors logged a century and a half ago,
Exhaust fumes wafting through the needles and leaf sprays.
Brushing softly, like a mother’s hand, against the cheeks of trunk faces.

— David Morton

happymonkbaking

369 746

Happy Monk Instagram Feed

256 hectares of well-used forest

Babes in the wood

Keeping a safe distance

happymonkbaking

Share this:

Like this:

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Discover more from The Happy Monk Baking Company