This is the scene today at Prospect Point in Vancouver's Stanley Park. Looks like an industrial clearcut, doesn't it? A ferocious windstorm buffeted the park in December 2006. Here's a January 2007 feature I wrote for CTV.ca: After the windstorm: Restoring Stanley Park.

Here's a set on Flickr taken on Dec. 17, 2006 -- two days after the storm.

And here's an alternate take on the above image:

It was very sad walking around and seeing the damage. Vancouver is blessed to host Stanley Park, but in a real sense, I think of it as a national park. Visits there were always a favourite part of any trip to Vancouver as a young boy -- or, for that matter, as an adult. If I lived there instead of T.O., I might have been among the people getting misty-eyed when seeing the damage in the immediate aftermath.

This is looking downhill, out towards Burrard Inlet:

And here is a (literally) small, yellow sign of rebirth. It reads "Planted area: Stay on trails":

However, remember this last paragraph from my feature:

But there's one sad reality. While Stanley Park will undoubtedly remain a great park, "it won't be the same again in our lifetimes," Mooney* said.

* Patrick Mooney, professor of landscape architecture, University of British Columbia

Many of the trees that were lost were 200 years old. There's no fast way to grow a 200-year-old tree.

Some of them have been put to good use. Here's an excerpt from a CP story about the Tribal Journeys canoe paddle that landed at Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island last night:

The first to ask permission to come ashore was Coast Salish master carver Carey Newman, 32, designer of the Cowichan Spirit Pole.

The three-metre-long western red cedar story pole had been transported to 51 B.C. communities over 95 days. More than 10,000 people helped carve Newman's design, which begins with a frog at the bottom, then four salmon swimming in a river, with a wolf above, and finally topped by an eagle with folded wings.

The full story of the pole will be revealed Sunday at the opening ceremonies of the North American Indigenous Games being held on Cowichan territory in nearby Duncan, B.C.

"I think of the woman who carved on her 100th birthday, of the mothers carving for their unborn children, of the thousands who helped carve it into a story," said Newman.

The log is a gift from the Squamish First Nation, which salvaged it from Vancouver's Stanley Park after a devastating storm several years ago.

Newman had to wipe tears away as he reminisced about the 95 days the pole spent on the road.

"This pole is called Victory of Spirit, and I feel like this tour was a victory of the spirits," he said.

To the spirit of Stanley Park.