Introduction

Healing the Cut - Bridging the Gap was originally conceived in 1993 by artists Oliver Kellhammer and Janis Bowley as part of Vancouver's Grandview Cut Bridges public art competition.

At that time, the city had just completed a new bridge across the Grandview Cut at Victoria Drive. The cut is a man-made ravine, originally constructed in 1910 to accommodate the railway.

In the intervening years, the cut became covered in a lush deciduous forest of big leaf maple, red alder, cottonwood, wild cherry, salmonberry and sword fern. As the landscape around it became more urbanized, the cut's maturing forest became an increasingly important habitat for birds and mammals. Frogs and stickleback fish could be found living in the trackside water courses, which were cooled by the shade of the overhanging trees. Although artificial in origin, the Grandview Cut remained relatively undisturbed for over 80 years, eventually becoming one of the last large green spaces left in East Vancouver, containing a predominantly native ecology

The Grandview Cut is important to people too. Its cool verdure provides a visual reprieve from the dense cityscape surrounding it. Pedestrians crossing the cut's bridges can often be seen stopping in mid span to gaze down at the birds and trees or to watch a train passing below them.

<<-previous page

--start--

next page->>