An intruder into Pleasantville: The barge that wouldn’t leave


After nine months at Sunset Beach, the selfie favourite is being dismantled.

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The days are numbered for Vancouver’s most unlikely tourist attraction, the English Bay barge.

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Work crews from Vancouver Pile Driving have been busy dismantling the barge for the past couple of weeks. The top walls are gone and now crews seem to be carving concrete ballast out of the hull.

Not so long ago, the barge was a rock-solid, 5,500-tonne industrial workhorse that stubbornly resisted attempts to tow it off the beach. Now, it’s basically a shell that will soon disappear into wherever industrial detritus disappears.

For many, it will be a welcome return to normal. Having a big ugly reminder of the industrial waterfront wreaking havoc with the picture-postcard beauty of Sunset Beach was unseemly.

But others will miss the barge, for the very same reason. It was so out of place, so random, so nondescript and industrial it was almost charming.

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Parts of modern Vancouver feel more like a tourist resort than a working city. The barge brought a bit of industrial grit to the English Bay waterfront.

“It’s beautiful because it reminds us of the industrial nature of the city, the actual guts of the city as opposed to this (city of) pristine gleaming glass towers reaching up to the sky and the mountains,” said urban planner Andy Yan.

“It doesn’t belong. It’s an intruder into this Pleasantville.”

Heritage expert Don Luxton liked the barge because it disrupted the homogeneity of the West Side waterfront, where over the decades the Vancouver Park Board took away man-made structures in a bid to go natural.

“We’re so afraid to use the waterfront, it’s crazy,” he said. “They’re trying very hard not to have human activity there.”

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A woman poses for a selfie after the Vancouver Parks Board set up a Barge Chilling Beach sign near the barge at English Bay, Dec. 15, 2021.
A woman poses for a selfie after the Vancouver Parks Board set up a Barge Chilling Beach sign near the barge at English Bay, Dec. 15, 2021. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG

In early Vancouver, Luxton argues, the shoreline at English Bay was more vibrant.

“There were piers, there were dance pavilions, there were roller rinks, there was public amusement, public entertainment,” he said. “We used the waterfront like any city in the world does, you allow people access to it. Now all you can do is walk by it.”

The barge may not have the allure or use of a pier or dance pavilion, but it was very popular, the background for countless selfies. Even the Park Board got in on the joke, installing a “Barge Chilling Beach” sign at Christmas.

This upset some activists who painted over the sign with an Indigenous name for English Bay, “I7iyelshn”, which means “soft underfoot.” The Park Board wound up taking the sign down after a couple of weeks.

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Yan thinks he removal of the barge is symbolic of a larger issue, the attempt to eliminate some of the quirkiness that makes Vancouver distinct. He points to Downtown South, which used to be a mix of small industrial buildings, houses, rooming houses, bars and artist spaces. Now it’s almost all condo towers with townhouses on the bottom.

“The market forces have a terrible tendency of homogenization and concentration, as opposed to diversity and heterogeneity,” said Yan.

He worries this could completely change the character of the 500 blocks the City of Vancouver is looking to densify with its Broadway plan. Sometimes he thinks planners over-plan things.

“The Broadway plan is trying to make Broadway into downtown Vancouver, Downtown South,” he said.

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“It’s kind of the difference between an English rose garden and a wild flower patch in the field. Formal English rose gardens have to be completely planned and maintained, as opposed to seeing a field of wild flowers.”

The English Bay barge may not be a flower, but it wasn’t part of any grand plan — it just broke free of its moorings and floated around until it washed up at Sunset Beach during a torrential rainstorm last Nov. 15.

It was an accident, and soon there will be no trace of the barge left. But the memory of the barge that wouldn’t leave will make many Vancouverites chuckle for years to come.

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Scenes from English Bay as the barge is dismantled, Aug. 8, 2022.
Scenes from English Bay as the barge is dismantled, Aug. 8, 2022. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG
The barge on July 26, before the demolition began.
The barge on July 26, before the demolition began. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG
The view of the barge from English Bay. It seems even bigger looking from the water.
The view of the barge from English Bay. It seems even bigger looking from the water. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG

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