Northwestern Scenes I // Downtown Eastside history
Northwestern Folk Poetry - Part 1
Northwestern Scenes I
—
Babylon was never Babylon
To those who lived within her.
Vancouver, great city of facades
Twists in the wind, the rain
In the echoes of artificial applause
—
“DTEStopia” graffiti crawls unused walls
Sun bakes the loaves I step over, smells
rising make Vancouver beg like a—
like a city bent double, hobbling for a fix of rain
to rinse us, for we are unclean.
—
Citizens weep for attention
Desperate, starving to be noticed
Some for beauty, others pain
All for their worth; It cannot be found
Within the city.
—
The daily migration of crows
Across today’s backlit sunset
Reflected in North Shore & Downtown glass
Reveals that God still works here;
For it makes me feel small.
Vignettes on life in Vancouver. My commentary on many different aspects of city experience, many centred around my work over the last nearly 8 years in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). The DTES is one of the poorest areas in Canada, ravaged by a drug crisis exacerbated by housing shortages and prolonged by a Heart Crisis. Areas like this are unfortunately not uncommon in many North American big cities, but Vancouver’s DTES is unique in that it is highly contained. This small land of different laws is only 7 square chaotic blocks (or so, the boundaries are not fixed).
But the rest of this city is not off the hook. Vancouver is a city of largely complacent citizens concerned primarily with outward appearances (body image, public persona, performative activism) with little regard for building lasting relationships, meaningful productivity, or caring for their neighbours.
I’m critical because I love this city; I’ve grown up here and seen the good and bad. Great people live and work here. But I shall write what I see — the True stories.
Moving away from poetry for a moment:
I am in the very preliminary stages of a novelization of some of my experiences, and tying in a narrative-style exposition of the history of the DTES. I’m curious what your thoughts are on whether this is interesting and perhaps even some thoughts on the tone; I’ve included a short excerpt below.
I am inspired by the masterful work Steinbeck did in Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden for Oklahoma, Texas, and California during the turn of the century and the 1930s. The DTES itself traces a cross-country lineage from those times, still felt in the city today. This is the beginning of one of the exposition sections about that history, specifically how Hastings Street (the core of the DTES) came to be.
Now more than a century ago Hastings Street was conceived and gestated in the womb of the Pacific Northwest. Not dissimilar to Seattle or Portland, Vancouver was the last big Canadian stop at the far end of the continent in the 1880s. This spot was the terminus of a country with the ink of confederation barely dry. Railroads and ports developed rapidly and trade over the ocean began to rake in money from international markets. The exports came from mineral mines of nickel and copper, the vast schools of salmon and herring on the coast and up the Fraser, and the innumerable noble trees. These weren’t like the flighty seasonal Eastern trees men were used to. These were massive, bold trees that didn’t hide on mountaintops or treacherous valley; they flocked, un-shy and eager to the edges of the inlets, fjords, and rocky ocean beaches where the men cut them in droves. Once the easy-to-reach places were culled and the treeline receded, logging camps were established along the rivers and corduroy road offshoots of small towns in the Fraser Valley towards Fort Hope, established up the Indian Arm and off to Port Moody. Many trees were felled, limbed and prepared for log-boom journey down the long slow Fraser to Fort Langley, New Westminster, and Steveston, or down the inlet to Vancouver. Once they reached their destinations the old majestic bodies were milled and prepared for use. Milled for banks and homes and railways. Milled for pubs and hotels and gambling haunts. Milled for progress. Most of the massive trunks made their way to Vancouver and New Westminster, locked in the conflict of each establishing themselves as the premier city of the region.
The Great Vancouver Fire of 1886 burned much of the city and resulted in twice as many logs being pulled out of the river for rebuilding. This massive quantity was brought up to the strip of dirt road starting in Burnaby’s port intake and extending all the way into the heart of downtown Vancouver: Hastings Street. The naked trees were hooked and pulled by teams of massive horse, muscled and sweaty, who skidded them along to building sites around the city. Day after day logs went by, and the hard men who worked to build Vancouver came to call Hastings Street by a new name. Skid Road was born – at least, that’s how it was told in those parts. Perhaps the idea came from a different Pacific port town, but Skid Row, as they call it today, is a myth of the West.
As a native son of Vancity and lifelong fan of Steinbeck, I would read this novelisation!
Have you ever read Cloudstreet by Tim Winton? It does for Australia what EoE and GoW did for USA. Might be worth a read to have a picture of another similar-but-different approach for telling these kinds for stories.
Good stuff! I grew up in North Vancouver and in the 70s had jobs in and around the DTES, one the old Army and Navy Department Store. Memories, of Woodwards, The Smiling Buddha, the Only Seafood Cafe, coming back.