Thirty-four years ago, Don Larson set out to create a waterfront park for the people of the Downtown Eastside.

“Our intent was to get a waterfront park so that people living in small rooms could go down and have green grass and be able to touch and go in the water,” says Larson, founder of the Crab — Water for Life Society. His efforts resulted in the creation of Crab Park, the only public green space with access to the water in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Now at age 70, Larson is fighting a new battle—this time against Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s proposed Centerm expansion. The port authority intends to expand the pier by 15 per cent, basically adding nearly three hectares (seven acres) by extending out (to get a better sense of this number, consider that all of Crab Park is slightly under three hectares in size). According to Port Metro Vancouver, this would increase the number of containers that can be handled at the terminal by approximately two-thirds.

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