This is the final story in a three-part series about a man who has lived in Vancouver’s Stanley Park for the past three decades. Read part one here and part two here.

Stanley Park looks quite different now than it did in 1990.

The lush green forest is becoming a shadow of its former self, with thousands of trees felled and removed.

And having lived in the park for 34 years, Christenson Bailey realizes it all.

The 74-year-old set up his small tarp camp deep in the park more than three decades ago to make art, be inspired and live in peace.

He has lived off flashlights and candles, hunted wild geese and ducks for food, and stayed on good terms with park rangers.

Bailey says he used to hear certain birds singing every morning, but those melodies have fallen silent.

In one area of ​​the forest, there used to be a small stream where the owls came to bathe.

“Really beautiful,” Bailey says. “They don’t do that anymore.”

Every time a plane flies overhead, Bailey needs to cover her ears.

“I receive hundreds (of planes) in a week. And in summer it is more,” he says irritably.

But changes never bother Bailey for long.

While walking through the park during an interview, Bailey sees a logging truck carrying dozens of fallen trees. It’s part of the Vancouver Parks Board’s efforts to combat an infestation of hemlock moths.

The sight of so many majestic trees being razed to the ground from Vancouver’s most beloved park may weigh heavily on some.

Surprisingly, Bailey is at peace with it.

“Life goes on,” he says as the truck passes by. “This environmental element does not exist without a continuum. In the universe, the only positive perspective that can be shown is that life continues.”

1:03
Living by candlelight: Stanley Park’s oldest resident in search of the light

So too must Bailey’s life continue. And he knows it.

He started making plans to hit it out of the park in 2019, which involved trying to reset some major aspects of life.

“I didn’t wear, say, blue jeans for a couple of decades, and I only wore them as a symbolic experience to re-engage with society,” he recalls. “(I experimented with) buying some jeans to see how it felt.”

That same year, Geoff Bodnerak, the caseworker who had been trying to help Bailey obtain some form of government identification, left his position for personal reasons and the task was never completed.

The Vancouver Police Department and other city agencies are assisting him now, in preparation for his transition into housing.

So far he has resisted and the police are hesitant to arrest him.

“I knew that to get him out of the park it would have been by force,” says the sergeant. Susan Sharp of the VPD Mounted Unit, operating out of Stanley Park.

“I know that’s not something the police or the rangers would be willing to do.”

Where could Bailey live after spending more than three decades in relative isolation in a forest?

Bodnerak tells Global News that he believes Bailey would have a hard time getting into housing and would find it “very claustrophobic.”

Bailey himself says he would like to become an artist-in-residence somewhere, or live in a shipping container, or even move back to Montreal.

He wants to be “ideally in a natural environment.”

0:43
Christenson Bailey reflects on her time living in Stanley Park

Bailey is a very different man from the one who entered the park in 1990: a former bartender and corporate worker who made the decision to change everything.

“I could call myself enlightened, you know? I got rid of a lot of burdens,” Bailey says of his self-development, which he attributes to meditation, art and the tranquility of the forest.

He describes his “analytical ability” as “woefully disordered” before arriving at Stanley Park. He now proudly states that that is no longer the case.

“Learning yourself the truths between yourself and what you’re doing without any third party, without anyone else, that’s your guide to moving forward and building from that.”