Ah, Stanley Park. It is the place where I had my first job, where I learned to make good milkshakes and ice-cream floats, played my first game of tennis and of golf, saw my  first live musical, my first penguin, my first swan, and learned about life and love. Stanley Park is to Vancouver what the Prater is to Vienna, only more so

Stanley Park is a place of entertainment, a place of groomed lawns and gardens, and yet a wilderness, where nothing is tamed. This city park exceeds in splendor not only the Prater but the Wiener Wald (the Vienna Woods). It is a refuge of the soul for city dwellers huddled in the high-rises that surround its edges.

I had my last real walk through and around Stanley Park in 1972 with my Uncle Eugene. We walked from his now non-existent home on Pacific Street to  English Bay and then along the shoreline until we reached Second Beach. We then returned home along paths through the forest. My last, brief visit to the park was in 1999, so fleeting, it hardly counts.

So, why am I telling you this? The cause is the novel by Timothy Taylor called simply Stanley Park. The memories this title evoked made me want to read the book. I am not sorry that I did.

Taylor wrote an evocative account of Vancouver, the park and its people. One may not necessarily agree with some of the naive political and economic ideas expressed in this story, but in the end, who cares. What the author has created goes beyond trivialities.

Briefly, the story is that of a young chef, Jeremy Papier. Trained in France, he wants to duplicate in his own way what he learned in the kitchen of a small restaurant in a small town at the source of the Seine. Local bounty is his dream. To use only local ingredients to create great food is his desire.

While many pages are filled with wonderfully descriptive passages about food, about the process of cooking, and the ingredients needed to create a specific dish, the story has several side tracks. There is Jeremy's father, an anthropologist who has moved into the bowel of the park to study the strange characters that live and forage within it.

There is the true story of two young children, who died in the park and whose bodies were discovered in 1953. Who they are has never become known, why they died has never been solved. Taylor weaves his own tale around these children and so gives reason for why one of the strangers is at home there.

The tale is also one about love and lust, about loss and gain. It is about loyalty and betrayal. And, it is a lesson about how not to use credit cards. Taylor tells why it is not wise to rob Peter to pay Paul and vise versa. It is a tale of a man consumed by the passion for food above all else, who is willing to sacrifice all to fulfill it.

One does not have to be from Vancouver to enjoy this book and its rich description of the park and other places of interest. One does not even have to be a lover of good cuisine. By the end of reading the book one will want to know the place more, and one may well want to taste some of the food that Jeremy conjures up, though the ingredients may not necessarily appeal to ones palate.