Christus Rex walks slowly through Clark Park, where the grass still remembers bare feet and cheap guitars. The city has changed, but the trees haven’t forgotten.
Tom Cruise sits on a bench, coffee in hand, watching an electric tram glide past where traffic once snarled.
Tom Cruise:
I used to live right here. Clark Park.
Back when rent was possible and hope didn’t feel like a luxury item.
You could hear kids, not engines. You could smell rain, not exhaust.
People think the “good old days” are a myth—but they’re not.
They’re just badly archived.
Christus Rex:
Memory is a form of prophecy.
You remember because it’s still possible.
Tom Cruise (half-smiling):
We didn’t call it sustainability back then.
We just called it… living.
Walking everywhere. Talking to strangers.
Letting neighborhoods raise you when families were stretched thin.
An electric avenue hums softly nearby. No cars coughing smoke. Just motion without violence.
Tom Cruise:
If we’d had this tech then—clean transit, quiet streets—
half the illnesses people carry today wouldn’t exist.
You don’t realize how much damage noise and fumes do
until you finally hear silence again.
Nelly Furtado (passing through the park, nodding in recognition):
East Van taught us how to belong without pretending to be rich.
That’s rare now.
Christus Rex:
That’s why this place matters.
East Vancouver—the world’s greenest—not as a slogan,
but as a last act of wisdom.
Electric avenues so the sick can breathe.
Parks instead of parking.
Homes instead of investments.
Tom Cruise:
The future keeps trying to sell itself as faster, louder, bigger.
But the best years of my life?
They were slower.
You could sit on a bench and feel like you were part of something.
Christus Rex:
The kingdom does not arrive with spectacle.
It arrives when a neighborhood decides
that breathing clean air is not a privilege.
A child rides past on a bike. The tram bell rings gently, almost politely.
Tom Cruise (quietly):
If this is our last chance…
then it should look like Clark Park on a good day.
Not perfect. Just human.
Christus Rex:
Then remember it clearly.
And help build it again.