Vancouver sweethearts keen to do it the French way and mimic hundreds of thousands of other lovers will soon have a city sanctioned spot for their love locks.
Park board commissioners voted Monday to find an artist who could create a worthy structure for the locks, but left the question of where it should stand to the public.
The vote comes amid fear that Burrard Bridge could come to resemble Paris’ Pont des Arts, where about one million love locks are weighing down the bridge and putting a burden on the minds of officials.
John Coupar, the board chairman, said he thought Vancouver could “outdo some of these other cities of love such as New York and Paris” by putting up its own structure.
“I’m hoping that I’m feeling the love in the room tonight,” said the Non-Partisan Association member, who later changed gears and voted against the motion when fellow commissioners amended its language.
“I personally think it’s a tremendous waste of good metal,” said Vision commissioner Catherine Evans, who added that she didn’t want to stand in the way of other peoples’ tastes and later supported the motion.
Michael Wiebe, a Green Party commissioner, said he was a fan of love locks and even had one of his own on the Pont des Arts — at least until officials there began cutting the locks off.
Wiebe said the Pont des Arts is so popular that lovers who can’t wait their turn have started locking on to surrounding bridges instead. And in some cities, love lock structures themselves are proliferating to make enough room for never ending waves of sweethearts.
The idea of love lock structures spreading like weeds around some of Vancouver’s most beautiful locations was not something that appealed to fellow Green Party commissioner Stuart Mackinnon.
“This is not a universally loved idea,” he said.
“Love locks are neither original, nor are they, in my view, aesthetically pleasing.”
He added that he did not think the locks needed to be rusting away in the areas put forward by park staff in their recommendation to the board, including English Bay Beach, Kitsilano Beach and Queen Elizabeth Park Plaza.
Other commissioners, including some from the NPA, agreed with Mackinnon and voted to put the question of location up for public consultation.
Coupar did not agree with undoing the work staff had done over the past year to shortlist a location and unsuccessfully voted against the motion.
“We’re going back to where we were a year ago,” said Coupar.
“This is just really an attempt to thwart an installation for love locks.”
