The Adam Project | John Lawson Park, Ambleside — the seawall where the small one gets shoved

Young Adam is twelve, mouthy, and losing. The bullies catch him on the West Vancouver waterfront, and the film uses the strip between Ambleside and Dundarave for it — a stretch of seawall where the North Shore's expensive quiet runs straight into Burrard Inlet.

John Lawson Park is the anchor. It carries the name of the man who bought the land in 1907, planted the first daffodils, and ran the ferry that made West Vancouver reachable at all before the Lions Gate Bridge existed. His house still stands at the edge of the park as the local archives. The pier out front is short and wooden and usually has someone fishing off the end of it.

From there the Centennial Seawalk runs a flat mile and a half west to Dundarave, and this is the walk to do. The Lions Gate Bridge fills the view behind you, freighters sit at anchor in the middle distance, and the Vancouver skyline stacks up across the water. At Dundarave the path ends at another pier and a small commercial block on Marine Drive — including the pharmacy that the production redressed as the fictional Rainier Farmacy, where the older Adam patches himself up.

Do it at dusk. The mountains behind you go black first, the city opposite lights up second, and the whole thing takes about forty minutes if you don't stop, which you will.

John Lawson Park, 1755 Argyle Avenue, West Vancouver. Free, open always.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.