Denise Katrak, director of marketing for Northeastern’s global campuses, recommends taking yourself on a scenic walk to a 32 million-year-old rock outcropping right in downtown Vancouver.
Denise Katrak, director of marketing for Northeastern’s global campuses, moved to Vancouver about 20 years ago.
“It’s really hard to live anywhere else once you’ve lived here,” says Katrak, who grew up in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and once worked with Doctors Without Borders in the Middle East.
“There’s no place that compares in terms of the natural beauty that you see around,” she says.
Vancouver is walkable, Katrak says, and has a robust transit system that allows its citizens to easily access various natural destinations and scenic spots.
Katrak recommends anyone who visits the Northeastern campus in downtown Vancouver to spend some time along a seawall that goes around the perimeter of Stanley Park and is the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path.
Start your stroll in Coal Harbour, right by the Vancouver Convention Centre (about a 15-minute walk from the campus), and follow the seawall west toward Stanley Park.
“You’ll get amazing views of the water, and you can check out restaurants along the way,” Katrak says.
Once you’re in Stanley Park, there’s multiple small stops you can make along the way for such attractions as First Nations totem poles, Brockton Point Lighthouse from the early 1900s, Prospect Point lookout with views of the Lions Gate Bridge, North Shore Mountains and Burrard Inlet, and Siwash Rock, a 32 million-year-old sea stack with a Douglas fir tree on top and a touching Squamish first nations’ legend.
Stanley Park was once home to many Indigenous peoples who never gave up the land or legally signed it away to Britain or Canada.
Walking around the whole park might take you a couple of hours, so Katrak suggests taking a bike or limiting your walk to Coal Harbour.If you choose to continue walking or biking along the seawall, you will eventually end up at the English Bay where you can check out a “very Canadian,” but “really nice” chain restaurant, Cactus Club cafe or spend some time on the beach.