Thursday 19 April 2018


19.04.18

Protruding from rain worn mitochondrial nerve centres the fungal mats announce themselves with the deep fug of monumental decay.

Wednesday 18 April 2018

18.04.18

On a palindrome field trip seeking elfin saddle elfin.

Tuesday 17 April 2018

17.04.18

Overheard on Bleecker Street

One of those faces
out partying while
her mom was having
a heart attack in the
hospital at least Apple
got something right,

so much about that
too much,
it preyed
on your fears, she's like
know what I mean,

honk, honk, honkety
so it's true shittt,
oh no oh
my wife and I have
separated for
the last time,

so my rent has 
gone up, can't move
on account of
the turtle, who
has outgrown 
his tank

Monday 16 April 2018

16.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: The above image is captioned "View of Cordova Street looking west from Carrall Street, 1890." (CVA)


For a fine overview of streetcar rail scars in the city and what to look for see Scout Magazine's article here.

Sunday 15 April 2018

15.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line:  "This is one of the last trips we could have taken along the No. 20 line. It has existed, little changed, for exactly forty years. But next month, in July of 1949, it will be closed down and the tracks torn up. Not only the line, but the life along those streets will change, is already changing. So is mine, because next summer I'll be working on a coastal vessel. Within a decade, much of what is described here will be gone." (Rolf Knight, p.31) (Image: Vancouver Sun)


BC Electric streetcar map of Vancouver from a Vancouver Sun article ca. 1940's. An extensive film tracing an electric tram route from Vancouver to the Fraser Valley can be viewed here.

14.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "Cambie and Hastings is the informal boundary of Vancouver East's downtown. The No. 20 loops four blocks west along Hastings to the "old" post office, and back down to the C.P.R. docks and rail terminal at the waterside. She then makes her way east on Cordova back along the same route we have just taken." (p.31) (above: CVA- 1937)(below: CVA- 1944)

Friday 13 April 2018

13.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "Let's cut across Victory square to Pender and nose through Ainsworth's or the Co-op Bookstore. And after that maybe down to the Rex Theatre for a double feature." (p.31) (CVA- 1925)

Thursday 12 April 2018

12.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "At Abbott most of the remaining passengers pour off the No. 20 and cross the street to do some shopping at Woodward's or head over to Hastings where the main shopping district of Vancouver East merges with the loggers' district. The Fell Farmer's Market is a block up. There are bakeries and meat markets, shoe and clothing stores abound, and places selling just about everything you'd want." (p. 31) (CVA- Woodwards)


"The No. 20 pulls away, heading for the end of its run, turns and makes a rush up the hill on Cambie. The motor idles and shuts down and she rests in the shadow of the Dominion Bank Building. The streetcar is almost empty now. The old man with the packsack is carrying his cane and striding up the hill. The three seamen from Alberta Pool are standing on the sidewalk discussing where to go next." (CVA- Dominion Building, 1936)

Wednesday 11 April 2018

11.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "There were other men around, in 1949, who remembered an earlier Cordova Street- when it had been a hotbed of political activity. Hard to believe? The storm centre was right here, across from the Stanley Hotel at 60 West Cordova- once, the I.W.W.'s headquarters, later those of the Lumberworkers Industrial Union, and finally the offices of the Workers Unity League." (p.71)

Tuesday 10 April 2018

10.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "Many of the passengers on the No. 20 get off at Carrall and Cordova, heading up to the shopping district along Hastings. We wait for a minute to make up the schedule and then turn west onto Cordova. The block is loaded with men down fro the camps, in the Stanley, the Manitoba and the Travellers. Not too long from now the name "Cordova Street" will become synonymous with a skid row hangout for canned heat artists. But as yet it's still a loggers' locale." (p.30) (VPL- "Hobos next to a camp fire," 1957)


Monday 9 April 2018

09.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "On Hastings and Carrall, across from the Rogers, stands the B.C. Electric Building. The corner is a favorite meeting place, it's the downtown's "Birks clock." The interurban tram station is here and three or four trams wait in the arched-over depot." (p.30) (CVA- B.C. Electric Railway Company Building, 1912)


"Farmers and families from Fraser Valley hamlets eddy in and out of a waiting room. It's almost a museum piece... Three times a day the "milk run" out to Chilliwack leaves on a four-hour trip which crisscrosses the south side of the Fraser Valley making endless stops." (p.30) (CVA- 1903)

Sunday 8 April 2018

08.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line:  "Slowing to a snail's pace, we edge around the ninety-degree turn onto Carrall St, the car bell sounding a steady warning clang. There's a shower of sparks from the overhead trolley arm." (p.29) (CVA- Europa Hotel: 43 Powell St. 1973)


"This is it. This is the crossroads of Vancouver's loggers' district. Within a radius of two blocks, three at the most, lie almost every hotel, cafe, store and joint catering to loggers. Also within this circle are most of the "man catchers"- the camp employment agencies like Black's and Hick's and Dumaresq. Although things are beginning to change, you wouldn't have much trouble recognizing the scene of forty years earlier as described by Bob Chestnut." (p.29) (CVA- 00 West Cordova- south side. 1981)

Saturday 7 April 2018

07.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "Here's the New World Hotel. The heart of Little Tokyo was between Dunlevy and Gore, the scene that people meant when they referred to "Powell Street." (p. 27) (Fred Herzog, "New World Confectionery, 1965.")

06.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: Across from the Grounds stands a block of narrow, false-fronted stores built int he 1880s and 1890s. They are almost deserted no. Once brilliant red and yellow, their shiplapped facades are peeling and fading into washed-out pastels. It's like a semi-abandoned Rocky Mountain mining town fromt he turn of the century set down in the heart of our city."(p.27)


Thursday 5 April 2018

05.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "The No. 20 rolls down Powell past the Drake Hotel on Princess and the crossing to Ballantyne and the other docks of this sector. Did you ever hear of "Bloody Ballantyne?" (p. 26)


"Jackson and Powell, and there are the Powell Street Grounds, a flat dusty square lined with a few trees. Maybe there'll be a ball game later in the afternoon, but now it's mainly populated by groups of pensioners talking. There have been other moments too. For two generations the Powell Street Grounds have been a gathering point for rallies and demonstrations and the assembly area for labour marches. The history of working-class struggles is almost a part of its dust." (p.27)

 

"Citizens Protest Police Terror"; Bloody Sunday; the public protests police brutality in Vancouver's Oppenhiemer Park after the RCMP beat several demonstrators at the Vancouver post office." 1938  (CVA)

Wednesday 4 April 2018

04.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "A couple of fishermen just off their boat after having made a delivery get aboard at Campbell Avenue. Maybe they're going downtown to pick up some supplies or for a few drinks. Then we're away, swaying through a broad looping curve." (p.25)


"The houses around here were built in the 1890's, when this was the city's eastern margin. A block south on Cordova they are now mostly inhabited by Chinese families. Unlike the neighboring cabins and apartments housing single men and pensioners these homes have a domestic air about them." p.26)

Tuesday 3 April 2018

03.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: "This is the stop for Rogers' Sugar Refinery, the biggest factory in the East End (apart form the now closed shipyards). Its smokestack soars high above the waterfront. The plant stretches unbroken for the better part of two blocks, six storeys of dirty yellow brick, latticed with rows of grimed over windows, Originally built in 1898, it remains relatively unchanged fifty years later., a forbidding archetype of the turn-of-of-the-century factory." (p.24)


"The exterior suggests the conditions within. Men and some women work in dusty twilight or under arc lamps. Not much is mechanized and the hundreds of tons of sugar processed each shift are bagged, moved and manhandled with had carts and gravity chutes. Each worker performs a few simple tasks, endlessly repeate, day in and day out. You punch in, you punch out, your movement is geared to the flow of some line or the ringing of bells signalling a ten-minute break...'Glad to have a job,' some of them say." (p.24) (image: CVA)

Monday 2 April 2018

02.04.18

Along the No. 20 Line: " When it's dark and wisps of mist drift in from the harbour, giant shifting shadows are cast against the side of the warehouse. You'll be quite happy to be in a lighted streetcar then and not walking home alone." (p.21)



Sunday 1 April 2018

01.04.18

Along the No.20 Line: "Woodland Avenue is the stop for Burns slaughterhouse, the biggest packing plant on the west coast. Across the tracks, behind a maze of cattle sheds, the main building rises four storeys in dirty rust-brown brick. Rail cars bring in cattle and pigs, and some sheep. They wait in corrals. Every now and again a few animals escape and roam the tracks and side streets..." (p.21)


"Throughout the industrial zone are islands of sagging private houses, old apartments, and here and there a corner store and lunch counter... A block south on Franklin are a couple of once luxurious but now faded apartment buildings. Flats, single rooms and small garment shops are all mixed together there." (p.22)