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Thanks to West Coast Sheen for having me here,
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and thanks to the previous speakers, um, for reminding us
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that the stuff that I'm going to talk about here
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continues on in different forms, um, today,
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and that, um, people still continue to fight back.
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Um, what I'm gonna do is, uh, I've been doing research into the black history of this province
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for about 15 years now,
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and uh, Vancouver in particular,
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uh, and particularly a little neighbourhood called Hogan's Alley,
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that was in the east end, uh, and is right where the Georgia Viaduct is today.
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Uh, which was the nucleus of the original Black community of Vancouver.
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Um, over the years of doing just various work around this topic
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um, I wrote for a bunch of different sources, uh, in a bunch of different ways
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um, sort of ad hoc over the years
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and uh what I did when I went to put together this my latest book, which is called After Canaan
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uh, which is a book of 7 essays,
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I put all of the writing that I had done on Hogan's Alley and blacks in vancouver into one essay.
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And, um, it's the longest essay in this book
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and it's, um, as far as I know it's the single longest piece of writing, um,
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the single longest historical work on blacks in Vancouver.
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So there have, there has been a book of black history in the province
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that goes back to the 19th century,
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but the black history of Vancouver has not really been written yet in a comprehensive way.
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Hopefully someone will come along and do that.
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I do focus on this particular neighbourhood,
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it was sort of the, uh, where the majority of blacks in the city lived
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in the middle of the 20th century,
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but there are other black histories around the city as well
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and that should be acknowledged.
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I'm also gonna show some images and, um,
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I'm not going to read from the essay,
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if I'm reading an essay it doesn't work that well.
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It's better I think to talk, uh, extemporaneously like that
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so I have uh a way of guiding myself through this talk.
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So, I'll keep it relatively short and hopefully there'll be a bit of a chance
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to, um, answer some questions and have a bit of a dialogue.
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I think that's often where really interesting ideas come out anyway.
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What I'm gonna do is give a talk that runs through
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a kind of old but tried and true formula
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and that's the who, what, where when and why
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that's as good a way as any of organizing all of this stuff that I've gathered in my head
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on this topic over the years.
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Um, so the title there is "Vancouver Vs Hogan's Alley: Urban Renewal, Negro Removal,
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and The Myth of Livability", and uh, those topics will come up as we go along.
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But the first is who: who was the black community of vancovuer, and it's origins.
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Um, it was a group of people who came here
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not so much uh as part of that original group that came to BC in the 19th century,
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um, although some of the black pioneers from Victoria, um, came over to Vancouver,
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and that was one stream,
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and another stream was from the US that was probably the largest one,
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so lots of folks came up from the states,
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including Vancouver's most famous black family,
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which would have been the Hendrixes, Jimi's grandmother.
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Um, another stream came from Alberta, a lot of folks who were originally from the States themselves,
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came from Oklahoma
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to settle places like Amber Valley in northern Alberta.
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Uh, a lot of them came out to Vancouver in the 1930's during the depression.
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And so a lot of the old families are from alberta as well.
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American derived.
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But a lot of this immigration is before the main era of immigration wave,
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came from the Caribbean and Africa.
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Um, Nora Hendrix is a pretty good example of uh that group of people
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who were American derived, working class, um,
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a lot of them kind of mavericks in a way
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who sort of stepped out of, uh, out of the frame in some kind of way
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and decided to move to this crazy place with very few black people.
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_ what kind of personality traits they had to do something like that.
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These were folks who were brave enough to do that.
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um, a lot is made of Jimi Hendrix, but I always say that Nora was the real star
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of the black community here,
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and uh she was someone who helped to establish the first black church
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which is the _ Episcopal Church.
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Um, a few things too about women in the community.
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So, uh, if you look at the pioneers that came from, during the Gold Rush era to Victoria
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a lot of those migrants and that wave of migration were male
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and, uh, not so many women.
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This migration stream was different,
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it was families coming up, and so there were a lot of women in the community.
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It wasn't sort of one of those bachelor communities of immigrants.
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Um, it did coalesce because of the job ghetto of porters,
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so black men who were porters, and thats why Hogan's Alley is right at the train station,
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um, but the ones who created the most lasting institutions in the community were the women.
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So there were a series of what were called "chicken houses"
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which were restaurants that sold southern fried chicken in the community.
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Uh, Vie Moore was probably the most famous one, she had a place called Vie's Chicken and Steak House
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that was right down in Hogan's Alley.
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There was a whole archipelago of these different women-owned restaurants that were in the community
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Also, some doubled as bootlegging places, speakeasies, after hours.
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Also the church, the church was largely established by the women of the community,
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and that was a longstanding institution.
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Um, they shut it down just shortly after Nora Hendrix finally took sick
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She ?
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Um....
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So what was it, what was the neighbourhood like?
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It's a little bit confusing.
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Often people call it a black neighbourhood,
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and I correct them and say it's not quite true.
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It was a multi-ethnic neighbourhood, uh,
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I have to say Italians can call Hogan's Alley their original neighbourhood too,
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in the city, because it was an Italian enclave,
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it was right next to Chinatown as well.
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So it was really intermixed, there were all sorts of people who lived there.
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It was basically an immigrant enclave.
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The reason why it gets described as a black neighbourhood, why some say that,
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is that the majority of blacks in the city lived there at the time.
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Um, there's also a little bit of a debate about Hogan's Alley proper,
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and the East End, and so when you talk with some of the elders,
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they like to remind us that Hogan's Alley was sort of one section of it,
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and really, folks lived all through the east end.
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Hogan's Alley itself kind of had a series of institutions which, the church was there,
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Vie's was there
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some of the other night clubs were there
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and so it was sort of like maybe the commercial, most well known aspect commercially
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but people lived all around through Strathcona
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Um, still, it was a sort of pseudo-segregation,
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though there was no official segregation against the black community in vancouver
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the way there was against First Nations people and Asians,
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so there was no law on the books
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that blacks couldnt live here or there.
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Um, but i call it pseudo segregation because there are all sorts of stories
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of people saying you couldnt rent anywhere in the city just because of racism.
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So an unofficial kind of segregation existed.
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And this was a neighbourhood where you could go rent somewhere and people would leave you alone.
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It was that neighbourhood where sort of an ad hoc group of immigrants from all different places
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um, and at the edge of Chinatown, that's part of it too.
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So, um, pseudo segregation is the best way to describe that, I think.
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Um, it may also explain why there was, why there was some fluidity
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out of the neighbourhood later.
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But I'll get to that.
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Um, during the 1930's, a lot of the writing that went on about Hogan's Alley
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in The Province and The (Vancouver) Sun,
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um, referred to it as a slum,
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it also befell victim to a program that was, that called itself "slum clearance"
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um, described that way over and over again, um
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Now, whether or not it was a slum, when you talk to the elders, it's interesting.
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You get different stories from different people,
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and some people say "yeah it was a slum and you're lucky not to have lived there,
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and I'm glad I'm out of there...and... stop talking about it."
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All the way over to other people who were saying
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"well, you know, it was poor, but it was like a village in a lot of ways,
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because you knew everybody, and yknow, yeah,
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there was some violence and crime, but there was also this church there,
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there was also families that grew up there, uh, hard working people,
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all sorts of different types, right?
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There was a whole community that lived there."
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Um, and so just to call it a slum is inaccurate.
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Um, so it was a poor community, that's without doubt.
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Um, it was working class, uh, there was some crime there.
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A lot was made of that in the papers,
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in a way it seems like the only time people ever wrote about Hogan's Alley
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was when it was, uh, when there was either high profile crime that happened there
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uh, or they were talking about bulldozing the place because of the crimes that were happening.
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Those are the two news stories that seemed the most common.
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So to find out what went on, you really would have to talk to people, and read between the lines
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about what else was happening.
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Um, a little bit about the name too.
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Um, Hogan's Alley, uh, there are a bunch of different stories about where the name came from.
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But, uh, it seems that the most accurate one is
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there was a comic strip in the 19th century called Hogan's Alley,
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and another one called The Yellow Kid, by an artist named (Richard F.) Outcault
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who was an Anglo-American comic strip artist
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he kind of invented the form of comic strips in a way.
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And, uh, Hogan's Alley in his comic strip was this kind of Irish neighbourhood.
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So this is a time before Irish people were unanimously considered white.
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So this is back when this immigrant population that were not considered model minorities,
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and really were not totally accepted as white Americans.
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And so he has this uh imaginary neighbourhood in Hell's Kitchen, New york, called Hogan's Alley,
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this is this completely chaotic and a scene of urban squalor
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I think I have a picture...
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And that's it there. And the caption is:
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"What they did to the dog catcher in Hogan's Alley"
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Which is, kick his ass apparently.
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Um, but this became a kind of euphamism for slum,
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for wild chaotic neighbourhood kind of crazy place where things are out of control,
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all across North America.
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So you actually see Hogan's Alleys in a bunch of different places
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because it was this sort of generic term for the part of town that you shouldn't go to.
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And there was also Hogan's Alley in Rossland, here in BC,
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which was the red light district there.
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So, and I think that the FBI or CIA, their shooting gallery,
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so where they train people, where they train their agents to shoot
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is called Hogan's Alley.
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Where you get citizens popping up and criminals and you're supposed to shoot the gun and the knife
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and not the woman with the baby or whatever.
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Um, they call it Hogan's Alley.
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Anyways, so, it was this epithet originally.
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It's come to be the term for the neighbourhood.
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It's sort of lost in time I think, as uh the comic strip stopped appearing.
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And, um, that's the name we have for it now.
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Uh, where, was it, so, I'll show the map.
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It's uh, that's the area, so this is one archival map of the neighbourhood.
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So, I'll just step over here.
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So there's Gore, Union, Prior, Main Street is right here
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So it's not like this any more, uh,
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you know where you are?
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The Georgia Viaduct sits here right now,
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right? That's where the Georgia Viaduct _ offramp is,
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it connects onto Prior Street, to Venables.
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So, there's a new condo is there, there the Jimi Hendrix shrine is there.
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All this stuff is gone
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As well as this.
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This is that green space.
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It's not actually a park, people think it's a park,
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but it's actually owned by the city not the Parks Board
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Cuz it was supposed to be, uh, the rest of this freeway plan,
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uh that was going to cut Chinatown in half,
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it doesnt exist there because they stopped it.
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But not before they wiped out Hogan's Alley.
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This is the heart of Hogan's Alley.
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People get confused sometimes about whether or not it was this
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it was running north/south
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or this east/west thing.
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Well it was both, it was this T-shaped part right there
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and it carried on um where it kind of stopped being Hogan's Alley
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which was an unofficial name
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seems to be about here
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this is where the church was.
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And just from kind of oral histories,
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people say that most of the black families lived here.
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There's a few apartment buildings here, that were mostly black.
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Um, so I want to say that that was more the Italian end
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and this was sort of the black end,
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but then that is really porous actually
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So Vie's Chicken and Steak House was over here
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the porter's quarters was here, that was really way back
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before World War I.
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That was really the origins of it as a black site.
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The porters union had a kind of like a way station for black porters
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who didn't have a place to stay, who had hit Vancouver, so they would stay there.
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And that's probably why it became associated with the black community.
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Um, now, so that is I think why it's there, it's because if you look sort of down the map_
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00:14:15,655 --> 00:14:19,938
you get the train station, so, this is the place that people first hit
233
00:14:19,938 --> 00:14:22,612
I guess, if they'd gotten off that train
234
00:14:22,612 --> 00:14:24,985
and uh that's where they ended up staying.
235
00:14:24,985 --> 00:14:29,270
Um, I'll speak a little about tha freeway plan, because it came up.
236
00:14:29,270 --> 00:14:31,677
Um, that freeway plan goes way back.
237
00:14:31,677 --> 00:14:37,125
They were planning to put some kind of inter-urban freeway in Vancouver
238
00:14:37,125 --> 00:14:40,535
going back into the '40's
239
00:14:40,535 --> 00:14:43,510
Exactly how it was going to look was a little uncertain.
240
00:14:43,510 --> 00:14:45,253
But the plans would coalesce over the years
241
00:14:45,253 --> 00:14:50,467
and it dovetailed at a certain point with this concept of slum clearance
242
00:14:50,467 --> 00:14:56,250
um, and it became this really unholy conflict with different ideologies.
243
00:14:56,250 --> 00:15:01,304
So on the one hand, uh, this idea that in order to improve people's neighbourhood,
244
00:15:01,304 --> 00:15:04,546
you should knock down all of their houses and put up some high rises
245
00:15:04,546 --> 00:15:06,385
that they should go live in.
246
00:15:06,385 --> 00:15:09,393
This was the ideology that they called urban renewal.
247
00:15:09,393 --> 00:15:12,502
It happened all across North America
248
00:15:12,502 --> 00:15:17,922
and um it's responsible for creating the projects of the States
249
00:15:17,922 --> 00:15:22,501
The infamous projects, Cabrini-Green, places like that,
250
00:15:22,501 --> 00:15:26,446
widely known as a failure of social planning, right?
251
00:15:26,446 --> 00:15:30,424
This happened in just about every neighbourhood and every city in North America
252
00:15:30,424 --> 00:15:31,538
in one form or another
253
00:15:31,538 --> 00:15:35,878
Invariably it happened to a, um, black community or a Chinese_
254
00:15:35,878 --> 00:15:41,226
haven't found a place where it didn't happen in a poor neighbourhood
255
00:15:41,226 --> 00:15:43,065
Um, it's just really uniform.
256
00:15:43,065 --> 00:15:44,769
So basically, there's this switch to the car,
257
00:15:44,769 --> 00:15:48,284
so this is the same period where they're ripping up street cars,
258
00:15:48,284 --> 00:15:50,223
and they're switching everything over to the car
259
00:15:50,223 --> 00:15:53,265
and people are expected to live in the suburbs and commute to the city.
260
00:15:53,265 --> 00:15:55,605
It's a huge social shift, right?
261
00:15:55,605 --> 00:15:58,245
Uh, and so they decided well we have to have a freeway
262
00:15:58,245 --> 00:15:59,649
running, connecting the suburbs to the city,
263
00:15:59,649 --> 00:16:01,688
and where do we put it?
264
00:16:01,688 --> 00:16:02,965
We put it in the poorest neighbourhood,
265
00:16:02,965 --> 00:16:07,243
in the neighbourhood that's the least able to defend itself, um, the black neighbourhood.
266
00:16:07,243 --> 00:16:08,781
That happened here
267
00:16:08,781 --> 00:16:11,388
Exactly according to that plan.
268
00:16:11,388 --> 00:16:13,828
It's not talked about, nobody will cop to it,
269
00:16:13,828 --> 00:16:16,135
it's not _ to find anybody who will say this was the plan,
270
00:16:16,135 --> 00:16:20,786
but it's just the uniformity of how it took place all across the continent.
271
00:16:20,786 --> 00:16:23,133
It's pretty clear how it worked.
272
00:16:23,133 --> 00:16:28,608
Um, now in Vancouver, things didn't quite go according to the plan
273
00:16:28,608 --> 00:16:32,218
They had this huge eight lane freeway that was supposed to sweep
274
00:16:32,218 --> 00:16:36,275
from First Avenue to Clark to Venables, up Prior.
275
00:16:36,275 --> 00:16:40,213
This was the onramp to the part that went downtown
276
00:16:40,213 --> 00:16:43,656
But it was also supposed to dogway through Chinatown, rip Chinatown in half
277
00:16:43,656 --> 00:16:47,003
and go all the way to the Burrard Inlet.
278
00:16:47,003 --> 00:16:49,545
And there was even a proposed third crossing of the Inlet
279
00:16:49,545 --> 00:16:52,420
that was gonna be there to be either a tunnel or a bridge.
280
00:16:52,420 --> 00:16:57,567
Um, now none of that happened because the community got up in arms and stopped it
281
00:16:57,567 --> 00:17:00,409
when these plans saw light of day.
282
00:17:00,409 --> 00:17:03,083
They were trying to keep it as secret as they could over the years
283
00:17:03,083 --> 00:17:05,027
Bits and pieces leaked out,
284
00:17:05,027 --> 00:17:06,163
people knew something was up,
285
00:17:06,163 --> 00:17:09,305
cause they were passing a series of bylaws that made it, uh,
286
00:17:09,305 --> 00:17:12,347
that outlawed people from making certain improvements
287
00:17:12,347 --> 00:17:14,787
or from putting curbs in, and things like that.
288
00:17:14,787 --> 00:17:16,826
And all this area where you see a bunch of people live
289
00:17:16,826 --> 00:17:20,877
was designated industrial during this era.
290
00:17:20,877 --> 00:17:23,651
And you see, it's all houses, all housing lots, right?
291
00:17:23,651 --> 00:17:26,994
It's not industrial, industrial land.
292
00:17:26,994 --> 00:17:31,506
Um, but that was part of the plan to edge people out.
293
00:17:31,506 --> 00:17:34,147
And they actually did build projects here in Vancouver too,
294
00:17:34,147 --> 00:17:39,300
so the McLean Park projects, and the Reineer project were built because of this.
295
00:17:39,300 --> 00:17:42,008
The idea was that everybody living here would go live in those.
296
00:17:42,008 --> 00:17:45,317
Um, exactly the same plan as the States.
297
00:17:45,317 --> 00:17:48,091
Now what was different here was um
298
00:17:48,091 --> 00:17:52,075
one, they did it late. It took them a long time to get it started.
299
00:17:52,075 --> 00:17:55,017
Partly _ the way Canada copies things from the States
300
00:17:55,017 --> 00:17:58,660
10 years later, basically that's what happened.
301
00:17:58,660 --> 00:18:01,000
So by the time they were trying to initiate this plan,
302
00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:04,710
it was the 60's, and people were, instead of the 50's and 40's,
303
00:18:04,710 --> 00:18:07,523
when they were doing these things in New York and other big American cities,
304
00:18:07,523 --> 00:18:10,398
so people were very empowered, it was a different era.
305
00:18:10,398 --> 00:18:13,005
It was after the Civil Rights movement, right?
306
00:18:13,005 --> 00:18:15,479
And so, um, people weren't having it.
307
00:18:15,479 --> 00:18:21,736
And um there was an organization called SPOTA, Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association
308
00:18:21,736 --> 00:18:25,580
that spearheaded this campaign.
309
00:18:25,580 --> 00:18:27,986
Um, and they stopped it.
310
00:18:27,986 --> 00:18:30,828
So, now, that's sort of the story that we hear most often,
311
00:18:30,828 --> 00:18:33,100
and that's the myth of livability we're talking about.
312
00:18:33,100 --> 00:18:34,905
So if you hear Harcourt, Mike Harcourt tell the story,
313
00:18:34,905 --> 00:18:37,618
um, he saved Vancouver, right?
314
00:18:37,618 --> 00:18:39,256
It's paradise now.
315
00:18:39,256 --> 00:18:40,426
[audience laughing]
316
00:18:40,426 --> 00:18:41,496
That's a book title.
317
00:18:41,496 --> 00:18:43,735
Um, City Making In Paradise.
318
00:18:43,735 --> 00:18:50,120
Well, what they don't mention is, um, this is the part of the plan that did go ahead, right?
319
00:18:50,120 --> 00:18:53,703
So they struck ground and started knocking these places down,
320
00:18:53,703 --> 00:18:56,343
expropriating these building, going back to '67.
321
00:18:56,343 --> 00:18:59,719
And the real protests took a while to get started,
322
00:18:59,719 --> 00:19:02,059
so people were angry about it, they were trying to stop it.
323
00:19:02,059 --> 00:19:07,507
Um, you know, but not before this was destroyed.
324
00:19:07,507 --> 00:19:11,223
Even so, the black community was mostly leaving before that point,
325
00:19:11,223 --> 00:19:15,101
it was really during the late 50's, early 60's, when were go,
326
00:19:15,101 --> 00:19:17,440
and were not moving into the McLean Park projects,
327
00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:20,649
they did not move there.
328
00:19:20,649 --> 00:19:24,867
And, uh, that's the point where the black community of Vancouver integrated.
329
00:19:24,867 --> 00:19:27,040
So if you have a friend coming from out of town who says
330
00:19:27,040 --> 00:19:28,310
"where are all the black people in Vancouver?"
331
00:19:28,310 --> 00:19:33,057
you say, "well, they used to be there, and then they knocked it down and put these projects up
332
00:19:33,057 --> 00:19:37,502
and the black folks didn't move into them, they moved everywhere. They scattered all across the city".
333
00:19:37,502 --> 00:19:43,925
Um, but still those numbers didn't get smaller, they got bigger, right?
334
00:19:43,925 --> 00:19:46,733
So it's not like the community evaporated or something like that.
335
00:19:46,733 --> 00:19:48,438
It's really the community integrated.
336
00:19:55,176 --> 00:19:58,673
So, thats the negro removal part.
337
00:19:58,673 --> 00:20:04,923
In the States, where our African American cousins are, are more sardonic and wittier,
338
00:20:04,923 --> 00:20:07,297
they called urban renewal negro removal, right?
339
00:20:07,297 --> 00:20:10,138
Because they saw it happening over and over again.
340
00:20:10,138 --> 00:20:14,054
In our case, uh, blacks removed themselves,
341
00:20:14,054 --> 00:20:18,132
and I think that, you know, I've looked at the statistics really closely
342
00:20:18,132 --> 00:20:20,405
and tried to locate where there's anothe black locus,
343
00:20:20,405 --> 00:20:22,845
and the closest thing is right where we are right now actually,
344
00:20:22,845 --> 00:20:26,729
in Mount Pleasant and, I guess largely because of the new waves of African immigration.
345
00:20:26,729 --> 00:20:32,745
But otherwise, there is no black enclave int he Lower Mainland, anywhere.
346
00:20:32,745 --> 00:20:35,152
When you look at the map, when you look at stats Canada,
347
00:20:35,152 --> 00:20:37,759
it looks as if, you know, black folks were given a directive
348
00:20:37,759 --> 00:20:42,043
to live as far apart from other black folks as they possibly could [audience laughing]
349
00:20:42,043 --> 00:20:46,088
plan into action, it's really just spread out everywhere across the city.
350
00:20:46,088 --> 00:20:52,205
Whether or not it's a good or bad thing, I think it's a good thing,
351
00:20:52,205 --> 00:20:54,645
it's better than being segregated, right?
352
00:20:54,645 --> 00:20:56,583
You have the right to live wherever you want to live.
353
00:20:56,583 --> 00:21:00,601
It has had some downsides to it.
354
00:21:00,601 --> 00:21:06,083
One is, um, you know, the community is not recognized as existing.
355
00:21:06,083 --> 00:21:10,462
It's really ironic, if you look at newspaper articles from the Hogan's Alley period,
356
00:21:10,462 --> 00:21:15,013
um, it's pretty clear that, um, Vancouverites were quite aware
357
00:21:15,013 --> 00:21:17,186
that they had a black population in the city.
358
00:21:17,186 --> 00:21:19,392
You know, they had all sorts of fucked up ideas about who they were,
359
00:21:19,392 --> 00:21:21,865
but they were aware that they were there, right?
360
00:21:21,865 --> 00:21:23,470
And if you look at today,
361
00:21:23,470 --> 00:21:25,609
you know,
362
00:21:25,609 --> 00:21:26,545
it's uh
363
00:21:26,545 --> 00:21:28,323
you'll hear people say, how many people have heard people say
364
00:21:28,323 --> 00:21:29,860
"there are no black people in vancovuer"?
365
00:21:29,860 --> 00:21:33,905
A black person talking to someone will say to you "there are no black people here..."
366
00:21:33,905 --> 00:21:35,142
[audience laughing]
367
00:21:35,142 --> 00:21:41,660
You know, well, there are more, there are more here now that there were back then
368
00:21:41,660 --> 00:21:42,427
percentage wise, right?
369
00:21:42,427 --> 00:21:47,184
So there are 20,000, more than 20,000 black folks in the Lower Mainland.
370
00:21:47,184 --> 00:21:49,992
And that's not huge compared to other minority groups,
371
00:21:50,376 --> 00:21:52,261
but that's a lot of people.
372
00:21:52,261 --> 00:21:55,069
If all those people lived in one neighbourhood?
373
00:21:55,069 --> 00:21:57,454
We'd have a whole bunch of things that we don't have right now,
374
00:21:57,454 --> 00:22:02,663
like a community centre, or some civic markers that we were in certain places.
375
00:22:02,663 --> 00:22:07,944
Um, we'd have some remnants of whatever community had existed.
376
00:22:07,944 --> 00:22:14,115
I often say when people ask me "ok if you're not against integration, um, then yknow,
377
00:22:14,115 --> 00:22:20,381
what do you wish would have happened in a place like Hogan's Alley? So what would you have preferred?"
378
00:22:20,381 --> 00:22:24,763
And I often say, yknow, if things, if they hadn't destroyed it,
379
00:22:24,763 --> 00:22:27,427
if they'd left it alone, if they'd let it just develop organically,
380
00:22:27,427 --> 00:22:33,493
uh, yknow, even if they hadn't funded it, or yknow tried to improve anybody's lives,
381
00:22:33,493 --> 00:22:35,432
if they'd just left it alone,
382
00:22:35,432 --> 00:22:39,319
I think what you would have had in Hogan's Alley was something similar to, um,
383
00:22:39,319 --> 00:22:42,988
what you have on Commercial Drive, in terms of Little Italy, right?
384
00:22:42,988 --> 00:22:47,307
It was, we know that Commercial Drive is/was Little Italy,
385
00:22:47,307 --> 00:22:49,075
not a whole lot of Ialians living there, right?
386
00:22:49,075 --> 00:22:52,234
But there's a lot of cafes, and there's Il Mercato, there's things that,
387
00:22:52,234 --> 00:22:57,012
there's still institutions that are there, that are remnants of, um,
388
00:22:57,012 --> 00:23:00,728
the time when it was an Italian enclave residentially, right?
389
00:23:00,728 --> 00:23:03,766
And I think that's sort of what you would have had there too.
390
00:23:03,766 --> 00:23:07,934
You still would have had certain places, certain institutions, and chicken houses,
391
00:23:07,934 --> 00:23:11,243
and um whatever had evolved over the years, right?
392
00:23:11,243 --> 00:23:14,118
I still think people would have integrated,
393
00:23:14,118 --> 00:23:18,502
I don't think you would have had um, maybe this kind of en masse, really fast integration,
394
00:23:18,502 --> 00:23:21,069
but I think people gradually would have,
395
00:23:21,069 --> 00:23:24,970
you would still have this recognition that yeah the city has a black community,
396
00:23:24,970 --> 00:23:28,360
yes they used to live there, and everybody knows it, right?
397
00:23:28,360 --> 00:23:32,012
Um, what they took away from us with this freeway plan
398
00:23:32,012 --> 00:23:36,766
was I think that memory of the city as a black site.
399
00:23:36,766 --> 00:23:42,153
Um, that's why, yknow, I persistently defend Black History Month
400
00:23:42,153 --> 00:23:47,261
as a fantastic institution and as something that's really well suited to Vancouver.
401
00:23:47,261 --> 00:23:51,505
In a place where you don't have a physical site, we have this time of year, right?
402
00:23:51,766 --> 00:23:56,051
Where people get together intentionally, uh, at events like tonight,
403
00:23:56,051 --> 00:23:57,522
and talk about this history.
404
00:23:57,522 --> 00:24:00,636
Y'know, if it weren't for this, it really would fade away,
405
00:24:00,636 --> 00:24:02,836
really would be even more sporadic than it is.
406
00:24:02,836 --> 00:24:08,159
And so, another reason to thank the organizers for doing this.
407
00:24:08,159 --> 00:24:12,246
Um, so, people are there, they get together intentionally,
408
00:24:12,246 --> 00:24:18,866
um, we don't have those sort of organic institutions that might have been there,
409
00:24:18,912 --> 00:24:25,377
but, um, what I've been doing over the years and a lot of other people have in various different ways
410
00:24:25,377 --> 00:24:28,020
is trying to intentionally memorialize the community.
411
00:24:28,020 --> 00:24:32,032
So, in 2002, I can't believe it's so long ago, _
412
00:24:32,032 --> 00:24:37,686
In 2002, uh, I helped to establish a group called the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project
413
00:24:37,686 --> 00:24:45,682
um, which originally we just, we just wanted there to be a plaque of some kind down there,
414
00:24:45,682 --> 00:24:48,515
some marker that there was this black community there.
415
00:24:48,515 --> 00:24:50,559
But when we got into the work of it,
416
00:24:50,559 --> 00:24:53,194
we realized that, um, a couple things:
417
00:24:53,194 --> 00:25:00,218
One, um, most Vancouverites it seemed like didn't even know that there was this black community
418
00:25:00,218 --> 00:25:01,556
that had been there.
419
00:25:01,556 --> 00:25:04,073
And so we realized that, well, yknow, wanting to get a plaque was one thing,
420
00:25:04,073 --> 00:25:10,186
but informing people that this existed, that this was the history, um, became a large part of our task.
421
00:25:10,186 --> 00:25:12,757
And two: WE didn't know that much about it.
422
00:25:12,757 --> 00:25:19,073
So everybody in our group, nobody descended from, uh, any of those original groups,
423
00:25:19,073 --> 00:25:21,441
although we ended up hooking up with people who did,
424
00:25:21,441 --> 00:25:22,448
uh, who came and did work with us.
425
00:25:22,448 --> 00:25:31,101
So... the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of some of the elders
426
00:25:31,101 --> 00:25:33,237
uh, have also worked with us,
427
00:25:33,237 --> 00:25:40,883
So [coughing] we ended up being this kind of information gathering group
428
00:25:40,883 --> 00:25:46,008
and sort of, I like to think of, um, an activist group or sort of a pressure group,
429
00:25:46,008 --> 00:25:48,754
to kind of keep the name Hogan's Alley in the media as much as possible,
430
00:25:48,754 --> 00:25:51,673
remind people that there is this black community here,
431
00:25:51,673 --> 00:25:53,299
there was a black community here,
432
00:25:53,299 --> 00:25:55,110
uh, it's around.
433
00:25:55,110 --> 00:25:59,661
And uh, trying to gather up wahtever information there is, um, out there.
434
00:25:59,661 --> 00:26:03,477
So, I'll show a few of those things now.
435
00:26:03,477 --> 00:26:08,670
So, this is, sort of jumping around a bit with these images...
436
00:26:09,831 --> 00:26:13,268
Um, for example, this is an article from 1952.
437
00:26:13,268 --> 00:26:20,003
That's actually the, uh, one of the few pictures that we have of the black church in in its time.
438
00:26:20,003 --> 00:26:23,531
Although it's not showing the church, it's taken from the top of the steps of the church,
439
00:26:23,531 --> 00:26:25,391
looking outward.
440
00:26:25,391 --> 00:26:29,134
And that's the Krump [sp?] family there, and they're coming up the steps of the church.
441
00:26:29,134 --> 00:26:30,892
And this was an article Bruce Ramsey did.
442
00:26:30,892 --> 00:26:33,513
Every once in a while, if you read all the newspaper articles, yknow,
443
00:26:33,513 --> 00:26:40,739
on maybe a 7 to 10 year cycle, um, reporters kind of realize there's a black community
444
00:26:40,739 --> 00:26:44,362
and have some article that's like "Hey _"
445
00:26:44,362 --> 00:26:46,555
and then it sort of goes away for several years,
446
00:26:46,555 --> 00:26:48,771
and it comes back and someone says "hey there are black people here!"
447
00:26:48,771 --> 00:26:49,964
and they write an article about it.
448
00:26:49,964 --> 00:26:51,418
That's why Black History Month is good,
449
00:26:51,418 --> 00:26:58,754
because, instead of this cycle, it's once a year [audience laughing] so it's a good thing.
450
00:26:58,754 --> 00:27:03,217
Um, so yeah, that's one image of... the other thing I like about this is
451
00:27:03,217 --> 00:27:07,162
that a lot of the photos of black folks in Hogan's Alley,
452
00:27:07,162 --> 00:27:08,740
not a lot of people had cameras back then,
453
00:27:08,740 --> 00:27:11,870
it seems like, when they did take photos, they're often interior shots,
454
00:27:11,870 --> 00:27:13,524
so it could be anywhere.
455
00:27:13,524 --> 00:27:18,214
But I like he fact that you see behind you the False Creek Flats there,
456
00:27:18,214 --> 00:27:23,648
that's Prior Street, it kind of gives you an image of black folks in this city.
457
00:27:26,786 --> 00:27:29,625
This is an image of, um, Vie's Chicken and Steak House.
458
00:27:29,625 --> 00:27:31,364
This is another example, right?
459
00:27:31,364 --> 00:27:35,709
Instead of having images, you have uh, you know, an artist's rendering of it.
460
00:27:35,709 --> 00:27:39,586
So this is Keith McKellar's, uh, drawing, from a great book called Neon Eulogy
461
00:27:39,586 --> 00:27:45,079
where he Vancouver sites, mostly, uh, on the East Side.
462
00:27:45,079 --> 00:27:47,079
Um, Vie's was a very important institution.
463
00:27:47,079 --> 00:27:52,162
So it was the longest running of those chicken and steak houses, um,
464
00:27:52,162 --> 00:28:00,196
and, um, Vie's granddaughter's writing a biography of her grandmother
465
00:28:00,196 --> 00:28:02,843
so it'll be great to read that book when it comes out.
466
00:28:02,843 --> 00:28:07,301
An amazing woman who had descended from the original black pioneers from Victoria.
467
00:28:07,301 --> 00:28:12,054
Um, ran a brothel there for a while.
468
00:28:12,054 --> 00:28:15,893
Um, cashed out at a certain point, got out of the game, moved back to Vancouver,
469
00:28:15,893 --> 00:28:18,224
used the money to buy Vie's.
470
00:28:18,224 --> 00:28:23,212
And was actually was I think one of the only black property owners in _ town.
471
00:28:23,212 --> 00:28:25,738
Most people weren't.
472
00:28:26,830 --> 00:28:30,203
And that's Vie's.
473
00:28:31,721 --> 00:28:39,391
[audience comment] I'm a little confused, could you go back to that, to there?
474
00:28:39,391 --> 00:28:45,297
So you said that African Canadian community lived largely over by Jackson,
475
00:28:45,297 --> 00:28:52,301
and you said the freeway construction largely wiped out the area opposite Jackson, right?
476
00:28:52,301 --> 00:29:00,196
So, where's the evidence of this place where it actually becomes part of the highway construction
477
00:29:00,196 --> 00:29:01,450
?__?"]
478
00:29:01,450 --> 00:29:05,537
[Wayde] Yeah, well, it was more the destruction to the neighbourhood itself, right?
479
00:29:05,537 --> 00:29:08,834
That was, yeah, I'm sort of mixing up the eras too.
480
00:29:08,834 --> 00:29:10,574
That was sort of a later era.
481
00:29:10,574 --> 00:29:14,268
If you go way back to the original black community, there was a series of, um,
482
00:29:14,268 --> 00:29:16,772
cabins, that appear,
483
00:29:16,772 --> 00:29:19,376
right along this part.
484
00:29:19,376 --> 00:29:21,003
A bunch of cabins.
485
00:29:21,157 --> 00:29:24,484
And they were actually cited as the reason for the urban renewal plans.
486
00:29:24,484 --> 00:29:28,802
Cause they were, uh, kind of a weird architecture compared to the rest of the neighbourhood.
487
00:29:28,802 --> 00:29:32,412
They were these sort of single dwelling cabins, I guess where, kind of for bachelors
488
00:29:32,412 --> 00:29:38,649
And that was where, there was a kind of, that was a bit of a black part [black mark?] of Hogan's Alley
489
00:29:38,649 --> 00:29:40,553
for a certain period
490
00:29:40,553 --> 00:29:42,306
The porter's quarters were there, Vie's was there.
491
00:29:42,306 --> 00:29:45,522
So a lot of the businesses and things were down here.
492
00:29:45,522 --> 00:29:48,122
The church was here and there was _.
493
00:29:48,122 --> 00:29:50,026
But that's sort of a bit later too.
494
00:29:50,026 --> 00:29:51,930
So there's a different overlapping of eras _.
495
00:29:51,930 --> 00:29:54,441
But like I said, I mean, the reason why black folks left,
496
00:29:54,441 --> 00:30:01,849
it really wasn't, uh, it wasn't like Africville [in Halifax, Nova Scotia], it wasn't like, people were all living there,
497
00:30:01,849 --> 00:30:03,211
the land was expropriated, and then it was bulldozed, right?
498
00:30:03,226 --> 00:30:03,726
It wasn't like that.
499
00:30:03,726 --> 00:30:08,370
It was much more like the plans were instituted 10 years beforehand,
500
00:30:08,370 --> 00:30:14,361
people were,um, given the message thatt this neighbourhood is going down, right?
501
00:30:14,361 --> 00:30:20,537
We're building these projects, and you're gonna live there.
502
00:30:20,537 --> 00:30:23,742
So people got out, it wasn't as thought they were, yknow,
503
00:30:23,742 --> 00:30:26,389
had their house expropriated out from under them.
504
00:30:26,389 --> 00:30:28,050
Bulldozed, right?
505
00:30:28,050 --> 00:30:30,945
It was more like, people got out of their own accord.
506
00:30:31,237 --> 00:30:33,749
[audience comment:] Do you want to just contextualize Africville?
507
00:30:33,749 --> 00:30:35,654
Yeah, I don't know if people know,
508
00:30:35,654 --> 00:30:37,616
Africville, I mean, I'm not an expert on Africville either,
509
00:30:37,616 --> 00:30:40,992
as I understand it, that was um, in Halifax.
510
00:30:40,992 --> 00:30:47,064
It was a black community that was, it was a much faster expropriation as far as I know.
511
00:30:47,064 --> 00:30:51,126
And it was taken over and... what was put there?
512
00:30:51,126 --> 00:30:56,784
[audience comment] I think it just ended up being a vacant space for a long time.
513
00:30:56,784 --> 00:30:59,965
It was supposed to be a roadway, or some other kind of urban development
514
00:30:59,965 --> 00:31:01,622
that actually didn't materialize.
515
00:31:01,622 --> 00:31:04,144
[Wayde] Yeah. This same idea, that same language of blight, right?
516
00:31:04,144 --> 00:31:08,012
That the neighbourhood was a blight on the civic body
517
00:31:08,012 --> 00:31:11,823
and had to be renewed in some kind of way, which meant knocked down.
518
00:31:12,746 --> 00:31:16,351
Um, the last little bit, just before I stop,
519
00:31:16,367 --> 00:31:20,786
um, is the why. Why is it important?
520
00:31:20,786 --> 00:31:25,623
I think, um, partly, to talk about Hogan's Alley and remembering it knocks down several myths.
521
00:31:25,623 --> 00:31:28,809
One is that myth of black absence in the city, right?
522
00:31:28,809 --> 00:31:30,128
So yeah, folks are here.
523
00:31:30,128 --> 00:31:32,519
Um, yknow, if you look at those numbers,
524
00:31:32,519 --> 00:31:35,433
it's a little bit less than 1% of the population.
525
00:31:35,433 --> 00:31:38,417
So, you think, "I don't see a lot of black people in the city",
526
00:31:38,417 --> 00:31:40,715
you have to sort pf re-train your eyes.
527
00:31:40,715 --> 00:31:43,758
It's kind of like, well, look on the streets,
528
00:31:43,758 --> 00:31:46,590
and, uh, out of every hundred people who walk by, one of them is black.
529
00:31:46,590 --> 00:31:47,891
Does that sound a bit like Vancouver?
530
00:31:47,891 --> 00:31:48,912
Yeah it does.
531
00:31:48,912 --> 00:31:51,012
Well, that's because that's how Vancovuer is...[audience laughing]
532
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:53,835
That's how it works.
533
00:31:53,835 --> 00:31:56,575
So the myth of black absesce is something I'm always pushing against.
534
00:31:56,575 --> 00:32:00,508
Um, one of the things, I mean, there are more black folks in Greater Vancouver
535
00:32:00,508 --> 00:32:04,028
than there are in Nova Scotia,
536
00:32:04,028 --> 00:32:07,117
and people don't believe me when i say that,
537
00:32:07,117 --> 00:32:09,941
but I'll send you to Stats Canada to look at the numbers.
538
00:32:09,941 --> 00:32:15,389
Um, there's a lot folks here, it's just a very big city with a lot of other people here too.
539
00:32:15,389 --> 00:32:17,241
So it's, an optical illusion.
540
00:32:17,241 --> 00:32:22,447
[audience comment] And, and to your point too, Nova Scotia has held on to the historical presence.
541
00:32:22,447 --> 00:32:28,758
[Wayde] Yeah, it's older, it's older presence, it's very rooted, uh, more homogeneous in certain ways,
542
00:32:28,758 --> 00:32:31,451
And so it's been, we know, well,
543
00:32:31,451 --> 00:32:34,674
I'm not sure that's true that everyone knows there's a black community there,
544
00:32:34,674 --> 00:32:38,371
but I think they have a high profile nationally, more than we do, that's for sure.
545
00:32:38,371 --> 00:32:40,182
Um, another myth that it knocks down
546
00:32:40,182 --> 00:32:42,509
is the myth of black ahistoricality.
547
00:32:42,509 --> 00:32:46,823
yknow, blacks haven't been here for, yknow, a long time,
548
00:32:46,823 --> 00:32:51,640
but blacks have been here, yknow, from before this was a province, right?
549
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,046
In the colonial days.
550
00:32:53,046 --> 00:32:54,782
All the way back, including in Vancouver.
551
00:32:54,782 --> 00:32:59,826
So, some of the first black folks who were here were, uh, here at the very beginning.
552
00:32:59,826 --> 00:33:04,377
So, there are blacks all through the history, um.
553
00:33:04,377 --> 00:33:07,290
There are different waves of immigration, that's true,
554
00:33:07,290 --> 00:33:10,229
and there's some sort of, uh, waves and recessions,
555
00:33:10,229 --> 00:33:13,373
but uh, but they've been here all along.
556
00:33:13,373 --> 00:33:14,866
So that's another myth that it knocks down.
557
00:33:14,866 --> 00:33:17,706
The other is this uh, this whole, Vancouverism,
558
00:33:17,706 --> 00:33:22,712
that Vancouver is this model of urban planning,
559
00:33:22,712 --> 00:33:26,668
this sort of self-congratulatory, let's all pat each other on the backs
560
00:33:26,668 --> 00:33:29,424
about how wonderful Vancouver is and how horrible those other cities are
561
00:33:29,424 --> 00:33:32,056
that did those terrible things to people.
562
00:33:32,056 --> 00:33:37,071
Y'know, it's like, uh I'm always saying, if you read like Douglas Copeland talk about Vancouver
563
00:33:37,071 --> 00:33:40,426
he said something like "Vancouver never lost its innocence
564
00:33:40,426 --> 00:33:42,969
because it never put a freeway into the city
565
00:33:42,969 --> 00:33:45,006
and so on and so forth, right.
566
00:33:45,006 --> 00:33:48,031
Well, I want to debunk that. That's not true.
567
00:33:48,031 --> 00:33:50,074
There WAS a community that paid the price for this.
568
00:33:50,074 --> 00:33:54,505
We DID have urban renewal here and it did mess with people for years and years and years,
569
00:33:54,505 --> 00:33:56,019
it made their lives really hard,
570
00:33:56,019 --> 00:33:59,218
and eventually pushed this one community out altogether.
571
00:33:59,218 --> 00:34:04,796
So, um, it was a pernicious plan, it did happen here, and it was the same as everywhere else.
572
00:34:04,796 --> 00:34:09,374
So there's nothing really particularly wonderful about Vancouver's planning history at all.
573
00:34:09,374 --> 00:34:11,344
Um, and that leads up to my last point,
574
00:34:11,344 --> 00:34:13,931
which is that, uh, where we're sort of left with,
575
00:34:13,931 --> 00:34:15,736
so often when people ask me about Hogan's Alley
576
00:34:15,736 --> 00:34:17,567
and they ask what should be done down there now,
577
00:34:17,567 --> 00:34:21,485
and what do you think the community should be like now?
578
00:34:21,485 --> 00:34:26,497
And [coughing] um, the answer is pretty simple.
579
00:34:26,497 --> 00:34:28,946
It's the same thing that should have happened then,
580
00:34:28,946 --> 00:34:32,522
which is, you know, the people who live there now,
581
00:34:32,522 --> 00:34:37,838
not the people that own there, or the people who are speculating there, yknow, or anything like that,
582
00:34:37,838 --> 00:34:41,855
but the people who live there are the experts on what should happen in that place, right?
583
00:34:41,855 --> 00:34:46,081
So the people who live their now in, yknow, what used to be called Hogan's Alley,
584
00:34:46,081 --> 00:34:48,305
who now talk about it as the Downtown Eastside,
585
00:34:48,305 --> 00:34:52,443
um, the parallels are very clear between how
586
00:34:52,443 --> 00:34:54,697
that neighbourhood is spoken about now,
587
00:34:54,697 --> 00:34:59,843
and how the slum of Hogan's Alley was spoken about, uh, back then, right?
588
00:34:59,843 --> 00:35:04,935
It's the same kind of, uh, othering voice that talks about, uh, that talks about, uh,
589
00:35:04,935 --> 00:35:07,675
this community as though they're a problem
590
00:35:07,675 --> 00:35:10,183
that we need to figure out what to do with, right?
591
00:35:10,183 --> 00:35:13,712
And really the answer is that people down there know what should be done to their neighbourhood
592
00:35:13,712 --> 00:35:15,849
They are the experts on what should happen to the neighbourhood.
593
00:35:15,849 --> 00:35:17,335
Consult with them
594
00:35:17,335 --> 00:35:18,356
That's everybody that lives there,
595
00:35:18,356 --> 00:35:22,118
people who are renting there, people who live on the streets there, um
596
00:35:22,118 --> 00:35:23,558
people who are using that neighbourhood
597
00:35:23,558 --> 00:35:25,787
are the ones who should decide what happens down there.
598
00:35:25,787 --> 00:35:29,456
That's what didn't happen uh, dusing the 40's, 50's and 60's,
599
00:35:29,456 --> 00:35:33,821
And that's why we had the situation that destroyed the community.
600
00:35:33,821 --> 00:35:36,189
Now it's no longer really the black community at all, right?
601
00:35:36,189 --> 00:35:41,158
So that's not, um, the claim that we have on it is really this historical claim,
602
00:35:41,158 --> 00:35:45,756
so I'm pushing for some kind of memorial in physical form down there.
603
00:35:45,756 --> 00:35:48,310
There are a few things at play, and things that have happened,
604
00:35:48,310 --> 00:35:51,607
I used to say you know there's no marker down there that there was ever a black community,
605
00:35:51,607 --> 00:35:54,533
and now that that's changed I can't say that anymore.
606
00:35:54,533 --> 00:35:56,530
There's the Jimi Hendrix shrine is there.
607
00:35:56,530 --> 00:36:04,312
It's very eccentric, a very Vancouver memorial [audience laughing]
608
00:36:04,312 --> 00:36:07,397
And there's, very very recently, there's the Hogan's Alley Cafe
609
00:36:07,397 --> 00:36:09,660
right at the corner of Gore and Union.
610
00:36:09,660 --> 00:36:12,087
So the name is down there now.
611
00:36:12,087 --> 00:36:15,245
So, um, there are some things there now.
612
00:36:15,245 --> 00:36:17,996
I'd like there to be something a bit more official and, uh, something that's
613
00:36:17,996 --> 00:36:21,468
maybe interpretive, to maybe give some sense of the history.
614
00:36:21,468 --> 00:36:23,233
So we'll keep pushing for that.
615
00:36:23,233 --> 00:36:24,673
I think some things are in play.
616
00:36:24,673 --> 00:36:27,831
There's um, yknow, there's some stuff happening,
617
00:36:27,831 --> 00:36:31,967
so I feel like we've hit that critical mass of uh educating people,
618
00:36:31,967 --> 00:36:36,097
Now people kind of know about the history, there are some things happening,
619
00:36:36,097 --> 00:36:39,905
I think over the next few years, there will be some memorial there.
620
00:36:39,905 --> 00:36:41,763
Uh, in some kind of form.
621
00:36:41,763 --> 00:36:44,339
So, um, tha's great.
622
00:36:44,339 --> 00:36:52,072
Um, but, uh, the other thing too is to continue talking about it,
623
00:36:52,072 --> 00:36:55,230
and keeping it as a living history, so, yknow, sometimes,
624
00:36:55,230 --> 00:37:01,871
I know somebody said the thing about how memorials are is that they allow us to forget about something.
625
00:37:01,871 --> 00:37:09,069
And I hope that's not the case, I hope it's, uhu, I hope we can keep, continue to connect up the
626
00:37:09,069 --> 00:37:11,438
past to what's going on now.
627
00:37:11,438 --> 00:37:13,713
And previous speakers are a good example of that, so,
628
00:37:13,713 --> 00:37:16,039
recognizing that racism still happens,
629
00:37:16,039 --> 00:37:17,510
still happens against black people,
630
00:37:17,510 --> 00:37:21,135
still happens in very particualar ways against black people, um,
631
00:37:21,135 --> 00:37:23,894
we maybe hear those scripts player over and over again,
632
00:37:23,894 --> 00:37:26,159
and we have to continue to fight them,
633
00:37:26,159 --> 00:37:28,388
Um, things have changed, , it is a different world,
634
00:37:28,388 --> 00:37:29,967
it's not the exact same demographic,
635
00:37:29,967 --> 00:37:31,778
um, things do move around a bit,
636
00:37:31,778 --> 00:37:34,750
but there are some fundamental issues that we still face
637
00:37:34,750 --> 00:37:37,212
and uh I think we have to continue fighting them.
638
00:37:37,212 --> 00:37:41,066
My role in that right now is to fight for this memory,
639
00:37:41,066 --> 00:37:43,655
so, um, I'll continue to do that.
640
00:37:43,655 --> 00:37:46,766
I'll stop when I just show you one photograph.
641
00:37:47,612 --> 00:37:50,943
I hadn't seen this photograph until, uh, Sunday night.
642
00:37:50,943 --> 00:37:56,496
So at East End Blues and All That Jazz, which was where Vancouver Moving Theatre
643
00:37:56,496 --> 00:38:02,243
did a wonderful,uh, show that had some of the voices of some of the original residents
644
00:38:02,243 --> 00:38:04,658
of Hogan's Alley, the elders from the black community, um,
645
00:38:04,658 --> 00:38:09,302
created this fantastic review,
646
00:38:09,302 --> 00:38:12,460
it's kind of like a cabaret history of the community.
647
00:38:12,460 --> 00:38:15,589
Um, that's over now, it ran on Sunday night.
648
00:38:15,589 --> 00:38:18,822
But, um, Chip Gibson, who was there, was narrating it
649
00:38:18,822 --> 00:38:22,491
and shared with us this image, so I took this from the program.
650
00:38:22,491 --> 00:38:26,658
This is an image of the congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,
651
00:38:26,658 --> 00:38:31,450
around 1935, at a picnic at Stanley Park.
652
00:38:31,450 --> 00:38:34,319
And when I saw this, it was just like, that's it right there,
653
00:38:34,319 --> 00:38:38,604
that's the kind of thing we're trying to keep alive.
654
00:38:38,804 --> 00:38:42,761
The memory that this is Vancouver, right?
655
00:38:45,499 --> 00:38:49,599
Um, folks dressed very nicely [audience laughing]
656
00:38:54,353 --> 00:38:59,689
Um, so now I'll open it up to questions and we can have a bit of a discussion.
657
00:39:03,846 --> 00:39:07,497
[audience comment:] Wayde, I just want to say about the Stanley Park picture,
658
00:39:07,497 --> 00:39:09,361
um, hi everybody, my name's Vanessa,
659
00:39:09,361 --> 00:39:16,082
I grew up in his city as well, and I know our family, the Caribbean community would meet in Stanley Park,
660
00:39:16,082 --> 00:39:20,332
the cricket matches used to look like that, and we used to have that many black people
661
00:39:20,332 --> 00:39:22,189
in Stanley Park_ playing cricket, but...]
662
00:39:22,189 --> 00:39:23,861
[Wayde] Anyone take a picture?
663
00:39:23,861 --> 00:39:25,626
[audience laughing]
664
00:39:25,626 --> 00:39:27,483
[commenter: I know! I was thinking that, but I don't think we have one.
665
00:39:27,483 --> 00:39:30,956
But I think I might have to take a little digging around for that]
666
00:39:30,956 --> 00:39:33,010
[Wayde] What this shows me, that's the other thing,
667
00:39:33,010 --> 00:39:36,632
the archive, this stuff is not in the city archives, right? There's some stuff there.
668
00:39:36,632 --> 00:39:43,343
Where it is right now is in family albums and in people's attics and things like that.
669
00:39:43,343 --> 00:39:45,293
...terrified if things get lost.
670
00:39:45,293 --> 00:39:51,528
And you can see this is a damaged photo, but , that keeps me awake nights
671
00:39:51,528 --> 00:39:56,726
Thinking... what gets tossed out or thrown away or forgotten_
672
00:39:56,726 --> 00:40:00,247
[audience comment] First of all, this is really great, very enlightening, but I have a question.
673
00:40:00,247 --> 00:40:10,347
[can't make out] I was curious as to _any of this _ archives ...
674
00:40:10,347 --> 00:40:16,671
So I take it that none of this was documented at that time, I don't know...
675
00:40:16,671 --> 00:40:19,241
I was curious as to, is any of this in the municipal archives?
676
00:40:19,512 --> 00:40:22,559
and if so, why isn't it being implemented in the curriculum_]
677
00:40:22,559 --> 00:40:25,940
...?
678
00:40:25,940 --> 00:40:33,566
so, like looking at maybe 2036, which is the _ point, you know, getting this stuff...?
679
00:40:33,566 --> 00:40:38,026
[Wayde] It's interesting, you know, in terms of curriculum, it seems like the stuff about
680
00:40:38,026 --> 00:40:40,682
the black pioneers, from Victoria, from the Gold Rush,
681
00:40:40,682 --> 00:40:43,824
that that's entered first or something like that.
682
00:40:43,824 --> 00:40:46,106
I've done a couple talks at high schools where I'm talking about that,
683
00:40:46,106 --> 00:40:48,070
and they're like "yeah yeah we know, we did a section on that"
684
00:40:48,070 --> 00:40:53,644
?_
685
00:40:54,225 --> 00:40:59,406
Maybe that was a special class, teacher.
686
00:40:59,406 --> 00:41:02,248
Um, but it does seem like that's a little more well known,
687
00:41:02,248 --> 00:41:06,516
and that's sort of the next thing.
688
00:41:06,516 --> 00:41:09,999
In terms of the archives, I mean I know the archives are very open to acquiring this kind of stuff
689
00:41:09,999 --> 00:41:15,015
It's a funny thing _ at a certain point one of the members of the group,
690
00:41:15,015 --> 00:41:19,134
uh, Sheilagh Cahill, was saying, we went to the archives, couldn't find much stuff,
691
00:41:19,134 --> 00:41:22,631
and she was saying, you know, they're not looking hard enough.
692
00:41:22,631 --> 00:41:25,825
It's like, there's stuff in the back, stuff that got in boxes back there
693
00:41:25,825 --> 00:41:27,596
that they just haven't found,
694
00:41:27,596 --> 00:41:29,000
there's something on he black community,
695
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:30,108
there's gotta be, right?
696
00:41:30,108 --> 00:41:32,175
And I was like, there's nothing in the back, it's not a conspiracy,
697
00:41:32,175 --> 00:41:34,009
they're not trying to like keep it from us.
698
00:41:34,009 --> 00:41:35,785
They're archivists, if they've got a picture they'll put it up.
699
00:41:35,785 --> 00:41:38,600
She's like, no no, they're not looking hard enough for it.
700
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:41,775
And so she was, her prompting really, we wrote a letter to them
701
00:41:41,775 --> 00:41:45,480
saying well we're this group, we're hoping that you have some material on the black community
702
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:47,625
we have very very little.
703
00:41:47,625 --> 00:41:51,836
And so, I was more thinking this could get them to thinking about acquiring stuff, right?
704
00:41:51,836 --> 00:41:56,811
And it took a while, it was about a year later and they wrote back to me
705
00:41:56,811 --> 00:42:00,108
and they said, well, yknow, we got your letter and we were thinking about it,
706
00:42:00,108 --> 00:42:01,603
and you know, we looked through our files,
707
00:42:01,603 --> 00:42:04,444
and we found a box in the back.
708
00:42:04,444 --> 00:42:07,492
[audience laughing]
709
00:42:07,492 --> 00:42:08,421
I swear to you.
710
00:42:08,421 --> 00:42:11,997
And it was the images from the expropriation.
711
00:42:11,997 --> 00:42:14,179
It was the city's photographs they took of the,
712
00:42:14,179 --> 00:42:18,220
of the, um, buildings that were extant in the late 60's,
713
00:42:18,220 --> 00:42:20,193
um, to price them,
714
00:42:20,193 --> 00:42:22,366
And they found this huge thing _[audience laughing]
715
00:42:22,366 --> 00:42:28,924
So, yknow,...?...
716
00:42:28,924 --> 00:42:33,135
But anyway, they were, they've also put up a big section on African Canadian stuff.
717
00:42:33,135 --> 00:42:36,645
They've actually, at that, before then it was really hard to find stuff,
718
00:42:36,645 --> 00:42:39,280
because nothign was organized by the community, it was just,
719
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,834
you already had to know a person's name to find them, images of a black person
720
00:42:41,834 --> 00:42:46,130
and now, that's easier to find.
721
00:42:46,130 --> 00:42:47,447
You can go looking for the black community.
722
00:42:47,447 --> 00:42:49,520
But we still don't have a lot of stuff.
723
00:42:51,074 --> 00:43:12,554
[audience comment] People don't always recognize?
724
00:43:12,554 --> 00:43:14,366
[Wayde] Yeah I think that's very true.
725
00:43:14,366 --> 00:43:18,917
And I think that's partly why, um, yknow, it takes a person that's a bit outsiderish
726
00:43:18,917 --> 00:43:23,886
like myself, who's like yknow very light skinned, not a member of that particular community,
727
00:43:23,886 --> 00:43:28,205
um, my dad came as an immigrant in the 50's, he didn't live down there,
728
00:43:28,205 --> 00:43:31,920
um, an academic, they were a few steps removed from all of that stuff
729
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,728
partly, it takes a person who's kind of thinking of it in these cultural terms,
730
00:43:35,728 --> 00:43:38,206
and not just like their family's history sometimes.
731
00:43:38,206 --> 00:43:40,233
Although, there are people who have hooked up with us who are
732
00:43:40,233 --> 00:43:44,562
within the community, from the community, who were activists during that period,
733
00:43:44,562 --> 00:43:50,111
and they were much more interested in thinking culturally about it collectively
734
00:43:50,111 --> 00:44:00,852
[audience comment, cannot make it out]
735
00:44:00,852 --> 00:44:05,171
[anothe audience comment] probably the oldest person in the room _
736
00:44:05,171 --> 00:44:10,206
I was born in Vancouver, in 1945,
737
00:44:10,206 --> 00:44:14,784
and I didn't know anything about Hogan's Alley.
738
00:44:14,784 --> 00:44:18,360
Um, the only black person I ever heard about was Joe For...
739
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:19,892
[Wayde] Joe Fortes
740
00:44:19,892 --> 00:44:24,443
[audience commenter] because he, well my mom called him Joe Ford, he taught her to swim
741
00:44:24,443 --> 00:44:32,013
Down at English Bay, when she came out from Winnipeg in I'd say she was 8,
742
00:44:32,013 --> 00:44:40,140
so that would've been in uh, 1916, they moved here from Winnipeg, and Joe For taught her to swim
743
00:44:40,140 --> 00:44:49,289
And that was, as far as I knew, until I was in university and spent a lot of my time
744
00:44:49,289 --> 00:44:54,011
?with the Caribbean students right?
745
00:44:54,011 --> 00:44:58,344
I mean that was the only black in Vancouver,
746
00:44:58,344 --> 00:45:17,663
uh, until, so that would be mid 60's, early 60's. ?
747
00:45:17,663 --> 00:45:22,502
[Wayde] It's funny, you get things like, in, um, Rosemary Brown's autobiography
748
00:45:22,502 --> 00:45:27,415
she talks about, yknow, coming to the city with your husband in the 50's,
749
00:45:27,415 --> 00:45:30,574
and there's this big chunk of autobiography where they're just like
750
00:45:30,574 --> 00:45:33,546
trying to rent from places, experiencing all this racism,
751
00:45:33,546 --> 00:45:35,589
trying to figure Vancouver out,
752
00:45:35,589 --> 00:45:38,285
and they're like, this is so weird, there's no black people in this city, it's bizarre.
753
00:45:38,285 --> 00:45:48,151
And then they, years, they bump into, uh, a black couple and they realize there's Hogan's Alley.
754
00:45:48,151 --> 00:45:50,729
they realize there's this East End black community.
755
00:45:50,729 --> 00:45:51,797
And they really had no idea it was there.
756
00:45:51,797 --> 00:45:57,602
So, that's possible__ the circles you're in.
757
00:45:57,602 --> 00:46:02,263
[audience] Thank you, that was awesome. Um, I don't know if you have any answer to this,
758
00:46:02,263 --> 00:46:07,354
but um I'm wondering if there's any specific stories or histories that you know of
759
00:46:07,354 --> 00:46:11,209
of the black community's relationship to other communities of colour,
760
00:46:11,209 --> 00:46:15,065
particularly Indigenous communities_ it's not an easy answer,
761
00:46:15,065 --> 00:46:21,147
and hearing some of the Chinese elders talk about some of the different stories
762
00:46:21,147 --> 00:46:25,433
of the Chinese community's relationship to Indigenous communities in particular.
763
00:46:25,433 --> 00:46:30,346
So, during the race riots there was a lot of untold stories of the Musqueam and Squamish
764
00:46:30,346 --> 00:46:33,686
taking in a lot of folks from Chinatown during the race riots.
765
00:46:33,686 --> 00:46:37,540
But at the same time, a lot of conflict around the laying of the railroads, of course.
766
00:46:37,540 --> 00:46:40,373
So I'm wondering if there are stories in the black community_
767
00:46:40,373 --> 00:46:47,478
the relationship_ Chinatown, or the Musqueam, Squamish, or particularly the relationship
768
00:46:47,478 --> 00:46:49,946
?__.
769
00:46:49,946 --> 00:46:54,862
[Wayde] Yeah, well, in terms of BC, that's a very big question.
770
00:46:54,862 --> 00:46:57,556
Maybe I'll just talk about Vancouver specifically.
771
00:46:57,556 --> 00:47:00,375
I mean, it's kind of, it's a really interesting question.
772
00:47:00,375 --> 00:47:04,986
It's kind of one of the untold sides of the story, right?
773
00:47:04,986 --> 00:47:09,373
_that whole proximity to Chinatown, there's a whole lot of attraction for Chinese folks.
774
00:47:09,373 --> 00:47:11,348
I know Nora Hendrix talks about it kind of jokingly,
775
00:47:11,348 --> 00:47:16,039
about trying to cook sould food while shopping in Chinatown
776
00:47:16,039 --> 00:47:17,295
[audience laughing]
777
00:47:17,295 --> 00:47:20,358
And it can be done, right.
778
00:47:20,358 --> 00:47:21,844
Things like that.
779
00:47:21,844 --> 00:47:23,609
I'd love to have some of those recipes.
780
00:47:23,609 --> 00:47:26,292
See these are some of the things that are lost.
781
00:47:26,292 --> 00:47:30,853
But yeah, there was a lot of interaction, um, and when we look at,
782
00:47:30,853 --> 00:47:37,308
there's a photograph of the congregation, there's a later one, of the African Methodist Episcopal
783
00:47:37,308 --> 00:47:39,601
church that has some Asian faces in it.
784
00:47:39,601 --> 00:47:46,039
So you're like, I'd love to know who these people are, and what the interactions were like
785
00:47:46,039 --> 00:47:48,426
It's just kind of here and there sporadically.
786
00:47:48,426 --> 00:47:50,164
But in terms of First Nations people,
787
00:47:50,164 --> 00:47:54,013
this is another one of those stories that I can't figure out where I heard this,
788
00:47:54,013 --> 00:47:56,767
I have the memory of it now, but I can't remember if I've read it somewhere,
789
00:47:56,767 --> 00:47:58,810
or if somebody told it to me.
790
00:47:58,810 --> 00:48:09,128
But, um, somebody, um, said that at Vanier Park, like where um the um...
791
00:48:09,128 --> 00:48:15,981
Planetarium is, right, that that used to be called Brown Skin Beach, when Kits was,
792
00:48:15,981 --> 00:48:20,527
So sites were segregated, Vancouver wasn't segregated as a city,
793
00:48:20,527 --> 00:48:22,604
but sites were, and Kits Beach was,
794
00:48:22,604 --> 00:48:27,742
so black folks and native folks couldn't got there to swim, probably Asians couldnt either,
795
00:48:27,742 --> 00:48:32,498
And um, so they would go there, what was left of the beach there at Vanier Park,
796
00:48:32,498 --> 00:48:37,727
and it was called Brown Skin Beach because that was where indians and black folks would go swim.
797
00:48:37,727 --> 00:48:42,324
Um, I wish I could corroborate that, but it's one of those things you hear
798
00:48:42,324 --> 00:48:46,690
and you should have writen down where that was or who told you.
799
00:48:46,690 --> 00:48:48,408
But I don't know. I haven't heard anything since,
800
00:48:48,408 --> 00:48:50,922
so if anybody knows anything more about that, let me know.
801
00:48:50,922 --> 00:48:56,906
But yeah, it was such a mixed neighbourhood, yeah.
802
00:48:56,906 --> 00:48:59,418
James Douglas is Victoria...
803
00:48:59,418 --> 00:49:11,792
[audience comment, cannot make out]
804
00:49:11,792 --> 00:49:15,870
[Wayde] Yeah, he [Jimi Hendrix] was here sporadically, it was kind of like, it sounds like,
805
00:49:15,870 --> 00:49:20,984
I mean, his parents were pretty bad alcoholics and had lots of problems,
806
00:49:20,984 --> 00:49:26,024
and um it sounds like when they, when things completely broke down in Seattle,
807
00:49:26,024 --> 00:49:30,081
his dad would send him up to Vancouver to live with Nora.
808
00:49:30,081 --> 00:49:33,123
And so he was never here really for a long uninterrupted stretch of time.
809
00:49:33,123 --> 00:49:36,752
He was here long enough to go to school here, he went to elementary school
810
00:49:36,752 --> 00:49:38,516
for awhile.
811
00:49:38,516 --> 00:49:43,137
Um, so, but it would be a portion of a school year, that kind of thing.
812
00:49:43,137 --> 00:49:47,456
So, and, mostly as a kidm when he was little.
813
00:49:47,456 --> 00:49:52,797
And later on as a young man would start playing music and stuff like that, he would play up here.
814
00:49:52,797 --> 00:49:56,512
So he did a bunch of shows here, before he hit it really huge, right.
815
00:49:56,512 --> 00:50:00,041
And um, there are stories of him playing The Smiling Buddha and places like that.
816
00:50:00,041 --> 00:50:03,084
So he was here, but it wasn't really like this was his home town.
817
00:50:03,084 --> 00:50:04,589
It was more like...
818
00:50:04,589 --> 00:50:09,794
[audience comment, cant make out]
819
00:50:09,794 --> 00:50:12,617
[Wayde] I think becaue she [Nora Hendrix] was one of those people who was, her life really
820
00:50:12,617 --> 00:50:15,692
spans the whole history of the period.
821
00:50:15,692 --> 00:50:19,267
She was really here kind of at the beginning of it, very very early.
822
00:50:19,267 --> 00:50:24,097
She was here at the foundation of the church, helped to establish it,
823
00:50:24,097 --> 00:50:27,064
and was here all throughout, and stayed in the East End.
824
00:50:27,064 --> 00:50:29,805
She was there, right up until her last days.
825
00:50:29,805 --> 00:50:33,989
They did take her to Seattle, because she had no more family left, she outlived everybody.
826
00:50:33,989 --> 00:50:36,868
So they took her down to Seattle to die, but that's it.
827
00:50:36,868 --> 00:50:38,586
Apparently, on here death bed she was saying
828
00:50:38,586 --> 00:50:40,908
OK I gotta get better so I can go back home to Canada.
829
00:50:40,908 --> 00:50:46,435
And um, so she was in Strathcona right up until the end.
830
00:50:46,435 --> 00:50:51,737
So she's sort of this person who just saw everything, just this repository of all this information
831
00:50:51,737 --> 99:59:59,999
about the community.