Zipline economics: when nature can't pay for itself

Carlo Dipersio has been called every name in the book: 'old fogey;' 'chief of the fun police;' 'killjoy.'

For the record, the Cape Cod resident says he doesn't hate children.

• Zipline approved by Vancouver Park Board

But he does have a problem with a zipline and its accompanying traffic going into the nearby Heritage Museum and Gardens — a space supposedly devoted to the preservation of history, art and rhododendrons.

But how do you say that without sounding like a drag?

"They make you feel like an old crank," says Dipersio.

Location, location, location

He lives across the continent from B.C., but Dipersio's dilemma will sound familiar to opponents of a zipline which recently received approval for Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Park.

It's not ziplines in and of themselves that bother people; it's the location, which raises the inevitable question: why isn't nature a draw enough?

Queen Elizabeth Park was fashioned out of an old industrial rock quarry at Vancouver's highest point.

The park offers a postcard view of the Lower Mainland. Six million people visit each year, touring paths which wind through waterways, gardens and flower beds.

According to a staff report, Greenheart International approached the parks board with a plan to construct a temporary 190-metre-long zipline in celebration of the park's 75th anniversary.

The company's Facebook page says construction starts this week.

Naturally, the park board gets a cut of the action: as much as 40 per cent of the gate if the proceeds top $400,000.

"Staff recommend this temporary event as it is very low impact, provides an additional activity for visitors to Queen Elizabeth Park, (and) will raise the profile of the park," the report concludes.

Who can say no?

And therein lies the lure of zipline economics: in an era when public parks are struggling for cash, who can say no to the promise of guaranteed visitors and income?

From Rwanda to Peru, Greenheart has built an international reputation for building canopy walkways and ziplines above some of the planet's most sacred parks and protected areas.

"This network is focused on creating draw card attractions that allow both visitors and the local community the chance to experience and benefit from conserving nature," the company's website says.

That's a worthy goal, but why can't people enjoy the plants, birds and animals that give a park its reputation without the ability to soar above them?

That concern has caused residents to band together in communities ranging from Cape Cod to Queensland, where environmentalists fear a proposed zipline in a national park would intrude on a rare koala habitat.

And what about the essential role a place like Queen Elizabeth Park plays in a community?

As a place of meditation and tranquility. A place to spend five minutes away from the constant throb of the city nearby.

A humanitarian legacy

It was that contemplative quality that drew Celia Brauer, along with others, to fight for a plaque by one of the park's old quarry walls honouring Raoul Wallenberg.

​The Swedish diplomat and businessman rescued 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. He died a prisoner in the Soviet Union in 1947. Wallenberg became the first person to receive Canadian citizenship posthumously.

Brauer is part of a group known as the second generation: children of Holocaust survivors. She says Queen Elizabeth Park made a perfect location for a memorial to Wallenberg's humanitarian legacy.

They chose a quiet spot close to a pond and waterfall where Jews celebrate Tashlich, a custom at the start of Rosh Hashanah where the faithful gather by a body of water to cast away their sins.

It sits under the zipline's path.

"A zipline is absolutely the antithesis of what should be there," says Brauer. "There are places to do what they want to do, and this is not the place."

Not that life sits still at that spot. It's a hidden treasure, a place to steal a moment of solitude before returning to the park's population of children, parents, tourists, brides and grooms.

Of course, it's hard to make that point without sounding like an old stick in the mud in a city recently dubbed by the Economist as "mind-numbingly boring".

But sometimes things look different on the ground.