Message From The Chair

My love affair with Vancouver’s East End began in the early 1990s when I had the good luck to come across a collection of short fiction by Chinese Canadian writers called Many Mouthed Birds edited by Jim Wong-Chu. I remember the evocative power of one particular short story in that anthology. The lovingly written tale about an elderly Chinese woman who roamed the back alleys of this neighbourhood with her grandson looking for pieces of broken glass with which she planned to make a special wind chime literally brought me to tears. The name of that compelling piece of short fiction by East End-born Wayson Choy was “The Jade Peony”. It was later expanded into a nationally best-selling novel by the same name. If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly urge you to do so.

My links to Strathcona go back farther though. My first visit to this neighbourhood was in the late 1970s when accompanied by the first friend I made at university, a young chap by the name of Paul Yee, I did a walking tour of Chinatown and this, the neighbourhood of his childhood. I remember being intrigued by Paul’s stories and drawn in by the whispering old buildings, many of them looking in far worse shape than they do now. The weight of their history was palpable. Every window, every doorway and front porch had stories to tell. So I guess if I fell in love with Strathcona in the 1990s, the ground for that love affair had already been laid in the 1970s. Paul, of course, went on to become an archivist, then later a historian and an award-winning author. His book Salt Water City is still the quintessential history of the Chinese in Vancouver and was another important window into the history of Vancouver’s East End for me. He now lives in Toronto, and ironically, I now live here. I was meant to live here…

After many years of living in the West End, I moved to a house on Odlum Drive in the East End in 1995. My partner and I moved to Hawks Avenue in Strathcona on Hallowe’en of 2000. Though we have lived here for just under a decade, those ten years have been more than enough for our new roots to go deep. Over the past decade I have immersed myself ever deeper in this neighbourhood’s history and lore. Having researched the histories of over 250 houses in this neighbourhood I have grown intensely passionate about Strathcona’s heritage. I have read and reread John Atkin’s book Strathcona Vancouver’s First Neighbourhood, and I have pored over the stories in < em >Opening Doors by Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter so many times my book is falling apart. Somehow it feels like I have always been an East Ender—that I have always lived in Strathcona. Perhaps that’s the magic of the place. I certainly feel it… and I think you do too.

My Goals as Chair of the SRA

Some months back when I was approached to see if I would be interested in taking over chairing the meetings of the Strathcona Residents’ Association I thought long and hard about what I would want to accomplish if I decided to take the plunge. I came up with three goals. First I wanted to work hard to raise the profile in our neighbourhood of the SRA and of the work we do through our various subcommittees.

Secondly, I wanted to make sure that the City uploaded our neighbourhood’s Vision Statement Strathcona 2010: A Clear Vision For Our Community on the City’s website’s Community Pages. From the 1940s and 50s onward it seems that it has been the visions of city and social planners and outside consultants that have mostly always had the last say on what happened in or to this neighbourhood. Though the people of this neighbourhood ultimately won the fight against the planned wholesale demolition of the East End, not to mention large swathes of Chinatown in the early 1970s, our neighbourhood is currently under tremendous pressure again on a number of fronts. It is absolutely crucial that the clearly articulated vision and desires of this community as laid out in “Strathcona 2010: A Clear Vision For Our Community” is front and centre. History shows us that if we don’t have a plan for ourselves, someone else will have a plan for us.

To further these two goals, my third goal was to establish a Strathcona Residents’ Association website, a website that unlike the City’s Community Webpage truly expressed and articulated this neighbourhood’s history and proud heritage, it many issues, goals, and aspirations.

I am very proud of the SRA Website and of the work the SRA Website Committee has done to make this happen. It is my sincere hope that this website will be of service to this community, both as a reference, as a touchstone, and ultimately as an inspiration. We live in such an amazing, diverse, unique, quirky, history-proud, spirited and culture-filled neighbourhood. Successive waves of immigrants from all parts of the world found their first Canadian home in this community of cottages and row houses built cheek-by-jowl. Some of the houses are built so close together on the narrow lots that their eaves touch and sometimes overlap. It is this proximity, this sense of shared space imbued with so much history that makes Strathcona such an exciting place to live. Living so close together requires and hopefully inspires neighbourliness. Strathcona is a neighbourhood like no other in this city. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I love it… and if you find that you are a fit, then lucky you!