WALKING AND TREE-IDENTIFICATION IN NORTH VANCOUVER DISTRICT – MAY 23, 2026

Saturday, June 13, 2026 Wendy Cutler

Trip report by Nina Shoroplova

If you drive along Dollarton Highway to Dollarton, a neighbourhood in North Vancouver District, and take Dollar Road to its end, you will reach part of Burrard Inlet, with Belcarra across the water to the east and Simon Fraser University campus across the water in the southeast. Little Cates Park is just south of the end of Dollar Road and that is where some of us Nature Vancouver amateur botanists met on May 23 for a walk.

We met under a huge red alder, identifiable by its recurved leaf margins, and then looked at two common laburnums on the shore, and across Burrard Inlet to Belcarra. Photos by Nina Shoroplova and Caroline Penn.

Scottish-born Robert Dollar was a lumberman who built a huge mill in North Vancouver at the bottom of what’s now the neighbourhood commemorating his name. The cement waste burner is still there but his mill is long gone. His legacy lives on in Dollarton neighbourhood and Dollar Road. Captain and Mrs. Charles Cates were founders of the Vancouver-based Cates Towing Company, which later became Seaspan. Their surname lives on in Little Cates Park and in Cates Park, also known as Whey-ah-Wichen, a name in the language used by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, meaning “facing both directions.” is remembered by the Lowry Trail.

Our walk took in four separate terrains, the first being Little Cates Park, which is surrounded by bigleaf maples.

Next came the trail from Little Cates Park to Cates Park, from which we could glimpse or actually see Burrard Inlet. Native trees and shrubs and some invasives grew either side on this trail.

Native western hemlock was in spring flush with spring-green needles. Everywhere, its seeds have fallen on tree stumps which became soil for its airborne roots. Photos by Caroline Penn.

Cates Park is a mixture of indigenous and ornamental plants, and offers plenty of parking.

The brown larch cone with bract tips extending beyond the seed scale helped us identify this tree as a *Larix occidentalis.* The light green cones began growing this year. Photos by Caroline Penn.

Pin oak (on the left) and northern red oak (on the right) are two of the oak species in the red oak group. Leaves have lobes with bristle tips and acorns take two years to mature in this group. Photos by Caroline Penn.

6_Penn_IMG_9765_9763_river_birch — A planted path of river birch trees demonstrated the peeling bark and the unusual, papery fruit. Photos by Caroline Penn.

Finally came the Lowry Trail, commemorating Malcolm Lowry, a Canadian poet and novelist who lived in a shack on the beach that also faces several directions. It was a hilly route back to our starting point.