"Summer in Stanley Park" commemorates the life of Tuk, the polar bear who lived for more than thirty years in a cement enclosure in Vancouver's now defunct Stanley Park Zoo. He arrived as an orphaned cub in the early 1960s and decades later, as the zoo was gradually closed during the 1990s, Tuk became the last remaining animal, thought too old to relocate. He eventually died in 1997, solitary, senile and in ill-health. Tuk remains the longest-lived members of his species on record. He knew no other life than that of his cement pen, although perhaps a time of snowy freedom as a cub lingered in his memory.

There is a legendary story of Tuk involving a tiny kitten. As the story goes, one day in the early 1980s, a young man ran by the polar bear enclosure, pulled a kitten out of his jacket and threw it into the polar bear's pool. As horrified onlookers watched, Tuk rose, stretched and slipped into the water, emerging moments later with the kitten gently grasped in his teeth. He then lay by the pool, cradling the tiny kitten protectively between his paws and licked it dry.

As with many captive polar bears, Tuk's fur took on a yellow colour (some have been known to turn green), possibly caused by algae growth in the hair shaft. Tuk's unnatural fur colour contributed to the demise of the zoo when during a 1990s municipal election campaign, it was used as an example of why the zoo should be closed. An anti-zoo slate was elected to the Vancouver Parks Board and the zoo was subsequently shut down.

Tuk is a Vancouver icon — one which touched the lives of many, my own included. My joy of visiting him as a child turned to sorrow as I grew older and came to understand the deprivation he endured during his long life of captivity. In "Summer in Stanley Park" he is depicted whiling away a summer afternoon, enduring the crowds of onlookers and dreaming wild, arctic dreams.