# 29 January 1975: "Whistling Smith" (Ian McLaren, Michael Scott, Barrie Howells producers; Marrin Cannell and Scott directors), featuring a Vancouver police officer patrolling Gastown amid that area's social challenges.
As Vancouver's leading cabinet minister, Basford is credited with helping to scuttle plans for an expressway along the city's waterfront that would have levelled the Gastown and Chinatown neighbourhoods, for encouraging local planning and neighbourhood improvement, and for helping win federal support for the construction of thousands of units of co-operative housing in the city.
It was down the park's hillside that the clearing crews of the CPR entered Gastown a few steps ahead of the firestorm that destroyed the city on June 13, 1886, heading for their quarters in the Regina Hotel at Cambie and Water where they had themselves stored water and wetted blankets as safety precaution (it was the only building in that part of the city to survive the fire).