"Seylynn is equivalent to Ground Zero for west coast Canadian skateboarding. Most of Vancouver's first wave of pro skaters were spawned in one way or another from the flowing cement of Seylynn bowl. It holds a special place in many a skateboarders' soul."
—Alex Chalmers

This year, something happened to the Seylynn snakerun, located in North Vancouver's picturesque Seylynn Park and adjacent to Lynn Creek—the park's natural beer cooler. What happened, you ask? Well, Seylynn turned 30, making it the oldest functioning outdoor concrete park in Canada.

George Faulkner, a Vancouver video editor and long-time Seylynn local, spent the better part of 3 years conducting interviews, doing research, and compiling photos and video clips for his documentary, The Seylynn Story, released in 2006.

"I started with old tapes and photos, and wanted to put together a 5 minute piece of my friends skating the park in the ‘80s. Then I started asking around and realized I didn't know quite as much as I thought about Seylynn," explains Faulkner. "After putting the word out that I was making the documentary, people would start calling to give me old newspaper clips, photos, and video from the park. That's how I ended up getting Super-8 opening day footage from Seylynn."

George also got a TransWorld Skateboarding cover in 1989, backside ollieing one of the hips at Seylynn.

"I was 17. Grant Brittain took the photo. It was a really quiet day at the park with my brother Gord, and Sean Mortimer [author of Stalefish]," he says. "My friend framed it for me a little while ago alongside Rob "Sluggo" Boyce's backflip cover at Griffin park. Chris Miller had a Thrasher cover in '86 doing a frontside tweaker over the third hip at Seylynn."

For Part 1 of this 2 column series (click here for Part 2), I sat down with George Faulkner to talk about a few historical merits of this iconic Canadian skatepark—a park that's skated with a unique blend of old and new.

The Beginning
"Seylynn's opening day was October 7th, 1978. It was created by 4 main people: Monty Little, Rob Leshgold, Niko Weiss and Calen Sinclaire. They came together and created it about a year after the West Van park, which was potentially the first outdoor skatepark in Canada. The West Van park still exists, but it was buried in dirt."

Design
"The rad thing about Seylynn is that it's unique compared to all the other snake bowls in the Lower Mainland. It's really user friendly and natural to carve. The main designer was Calen Sinclaire and he wasn't a skateboarder at all—he was an eccentric sculptor. He used to ski, so as they were building the park and piling up the waves, he would run down the snakerun before it got poured to make sure it felt right. The park was also built with the intention just to snake down into the bowl, but people soon learned how to carve all the way back up by pumping over the hips."

"All of Seylynn was finished with one concrete pour, so it's one solid structure, even though the concrete is only a few inches thick. Most parks are poured a lot thicker, and in sections, which can cause cracking and crumbling. There has been minor chipping and cracking at Seylynn, but it's pretty good for being 30 years old."

The '81 Flood
"Right next to Seylynn is a floodplain. In '81 a flood came and just washed all the dirt from underneath the park. At that point, they were almost going to demolish it, but one of the Park Superintendents at the time, Dirk Oostindie, fought to keep the park and helped to get the rock foundation on the side of Lynn Creek built to withstand flooding so the park wouldn't fall into the water. But because of the way the park was built, in one pour, it hung over the edge of the creek intact during the '81 flood and didn't crumble—people were still skating it."

Expo ‘86
"I remember showing up at Seylynn a few days before the Expo '86 contest, when all the pros got there. It was amazing. Neil Blender, Lance Mountain, Christian Hosoi, Natas Kaupas, Steve Caballero—they'd get the hang of the snake run pretty fast. Some of the main amazing dudes I saw there were Chris Miller [Founder of Planet Earth apparel and Adio footwear], Caballero and Vancouver legend, Carlos Longo. Around Expo, it was a really popular time for skateboarding, so there was a thick wall of people around the whole park. After Expo, it was gung-ho since everyone wanted to learn airs and do all the stuff they saw the pros do at the contest."

Be sure to check out Part 2: The Bowl Series, which has kicked off annually at Seylynn for 14 years and running.

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Other In The Park columns:
The Tuff City Park, Tofino, BC
Vic West, Esquimalt, BC
The Schoolyard Park, Mapleridge, BC