A grieving former mayor built a two-thirds-scale Hollywood Bowl in a rainforest park in his wife's memory - and 15,000 people came to the free opening concert. Malkin Bowl, in Vancouver's Stanley Park at 610 Pipeline Road, opened on 8 July 1934 with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra playing to a Depression-era crowd sprawled across the lawns. The origin is pure civic legend: VSO conductor Allard de Ridder persuaded wholesale grocery magnate and former mayor W.H. Malkin to fund an outdoor band shell for the orchestra, and the Marion Malkin Memorial Bowl - named for his late wife - replaced the 1911 bandstand on the site, giving the symphony its summer home into the 1950s. Theatre Under the Stars made it a tradition: since 1940 - with a revival from 1969 after a bankruptcy hiatus - TUTS has staged family Broadway musicals under the open sky each summer, a Vancouver rite of passage that has survived a suspicious 1982 fire, endless rain delays and every shift in the city's entertainment economy. The concert history earns the reverence: between theatre seasons the Bowl hosts rock and pop under towering cedars - the Tragically Hip, Elvis Costello, the Flaming Lips, Massive Attack, Vampire Weekend and Mac DeMarco have all played the 2,000-seat lawn-and-bench amphitheatre, and the Levitation festival's Vancouver editions camped here in 2015 and 2016. The setting is the selling point: the stage's back wall is Stanley Park forest, raccoons patrol the aisles, and the walk out passes the rose garden toward Coal Harbour - an experience no purpose-built shed can imitate. A near-700,000-dollar upgrade winterized the facility so the building works year-round as rehearsal space. Practical notes: summer evenings turn cold after sunset - Vancouverites bring layers and rain shells regardless of forecast; the 19 bus reaches the park loop and parking fills on show nights, GA concerts are largely standing on the flat, and TUTS' alternating-night double bill means two musicals can be seen in one weekend.

Type: Outdoors

Address: 610 Pipeline Road, Vancouver, Canada

Website: https://www.tuts.ca

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 2000

Opening Date: 08/07/1934

Outdoor Area