By Sean Condon and Kevin Hollett
Photo by David Denofreo
The Downtown Eastside has had many nicknames over the years: Skid Road, Low Track, Canada’s Poorest Postal Code. None of them have been flattering.
The first visit to the neighbourhood can be difficult: there’s open drug use, prostitution and homelessness. There’s crime and violence, desperation and disease. But that only tells you part of the story. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that the Downtown Eastside is, in every sense of the word, a community—bonded as much by the people's pain and poverty as their hope, humour and compassion.
Home to more than 16,000 mostly low-income people, the neighbourhood boasts Vancouver’s most diverse and eclectic mix of residents: aboriginals and immigrants, Chinese and Caucasians, seniors and youths, entrepreneurs and activists.
United in the goal of creating an inclusive and healthy environment, there is a camaraderie here that comes from a shared sense of struggle and longing. Over the past century, the Downtown Eastside has fallen victim to many abuses and injustices: the 1907 Chinatown Riot, the internment of Japanese-Canadians during WWII, the Missing Women and the general neglect that allowed a once-proud neighbourhood to descend into urban decay.
But it also has a rich and inspiring history of uprising and resistance. Whether it was the labour strikes of the Great Depression, the formation of residents’ groups during the 1960s or the homeless squats of the past decade, grassroots movements continue to sprout out from the neighbourhood’s gritty cracks.
There have been many attempts by governments and developers to erase this diverse neighbourhood and the people that inhabit it. But when things seem their bleakest, the community rises up to reclaim its space and voice.
The following moments offer a few examples of what is possible when this community stands up and fights back.
Workers’ Rights
During the Depression of the 1930s, Vancouver was billed as the “mecca of the unemployed”. The federal government set up nearly 200 relief camps—squalid affairs that paid migrant workers a mere 20 cents a day.
In response, desperate strikers abandoned the camps and congregated in the Downtown Eastside in an effort to secure union wages. Workers barricaded themselves inside of the Carnegie (then the city’s library). Unsuccessful, they decided to take their case directly to Ottawa. In June 1935, they boarded boxcars down at the neighbourhood’s railyard and made their way east, picking up supporters along the way.
They wouldn’t make it to Ottawa, though. On orders from Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, RCMP officers violently stopped them in Regina, Sask.
While the strike was suppressed, the battle wasn't lost. In the federal election a few months later, Bennett lost resoundingly, and the new Liberal government abolished the camps and improved the nation’s social safety net.
The “Great Freeway Debate”
The Downtown Eastside’s Strathcona and Chinatown neighbourhoods have always been known as diverse communities and welcoming homes to new immigrants.
But in the 1960s, perhaps because of this immigrant population, the neighbourhood was deemed a “blight” that city council, with input from American consultants, concluded should be demolished and earmarked for urban renewal. In its place? A freeway.
The proposed freeway would cut a swath through the historic neighbourhoods, essentially turning the Downtown Eastside into a series of roadways.
In the absence of public consultation, activists and residents from across different ethnic backgrounds worked together to make their displeasure clear, including a mass mobilization down Pender Street in October 1967.
The public outcry was a success—the Georgia and Dunsmuir Street Viaducts remain the only pieces of the freeway system constructed, and Strathcona and Chinatown remain vibrant and culturally diverse neighbourhoods.
Residents Get Their Rights
When Vancouver's financial centre moved out of the Downtown Eastside, it left behind a community of mainly single, middle-aged men of fixed income, who made the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels their homes. It was soon the poorest community in Canada, and one without a represented voice.
In 1973, at the urging of city planner Peter Davies, Bruce Eriksen helped set up the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA), giving democratic voice to the residents. The organization renamed the area “The Downtown Eastside”, finally recognizing the neighbourhood as a community and creating an identity beyond the derisive “Skid Road” moniker.
Libby Davies, Jean Swanson and Anna Wong soon joined DERA, and the organization began fighting for residents’ rights in the neighbourhood—making slumlords keep their buildings liveable and creating housing co-operatives.
DERA, along with a number of other neighbourhood organizations, continue to work for secure, livable and affordable housing today.
Reclaiming the Carnegie
Located on the corner of Main and Hastings streets, the Carnegie Community Centre is known as the neighbourhood's living room. But it wasn’t always this way.
The Carnegie opened in 1903 as Vancouver’s first public library. In 1957, it was converted to the City Museum, but soon fell into disrepair. It then sat empty for 10 years.
Without a community space, there was no place for residents to convene and socialize. It wasn’t until a protracted, seven-year campaign spearheaded by the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association that city council agreed to save the building and convert it to a community centre. The Carnegie finally reopened its doors to the public again on January 20, 1980.
The building is now one of the most used community spaces in the city, a symbol of the strength and commitment of Downtown Eastside residents and provides many services to the neighbourhood’s low-income residents.
A Park for All
Tucked away in the most northern point of the Downtown Eastside, Crab Park is a product of the determined vision of a small group of community activists.
Originally called Luckylucky—or Grove of Beautiful Trees—by the aboriginal inhabitants of Burrard Inlet, the area was eventually converted to a landfill. It remained that way until the early 1980s, when a handful of Downtown Eastside residents, led by Don Larson, decided that it would better serve as a neighbourhood park.
After years of fruitless lobbying, the activists started a tent-city occupation of the area in 1984 that lasted 75 days.
It was this prolonged show of defiance that helped garner the political support needed to build the park. In 1987, the Create a Real Livable Beach (Crab) Park finally opened.
Known now for its spectacular views of the North Shore and downtown Vancouver, Crab Park’s real beauty lies in its inclusiveness.
Woodsquat
When the century-old Woodward’s department store shut its doors in 1993, it was the final act in the Downtown Eastside’s downfall.
Once the city’s centre, abandoned buildings, open drug use and homelessness consumed the neighbourhood.
When it appeared the BC Liberals were going to abandon a promise to turn the empty building into social housing, a group of community activists broke inside Woodward’s in 2002, started a squat and demanded the government build homes.
After the police evicted the squatters, up to 300 homeless people formed a tent-city around the boarded-up building. The three- month squat gained widespread support, as people across the city demanded their governments save the beleaguered neighbourhood.
The show of defiance was a success. The province relented and sold the building to the city, which then turned it into the recently completed mixed-use development—a development that includes 200 units of social housing.
SOS for SROs
Not long after Vancouver was awarded the Olympics, the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels that house many of the Downtown Eastside’s low-income residents started fall- ing like dominos.
In order to try and turn a quick profit, unscrupulous landlords evicted tenants or allowed their buildings to fall into disrepair, forcing the city to close them.
At the same time, the number of homeless exploded—doubling in three short years. Frustrated by the growing crisis, activists took over empty buildings and demanded that their governments respond.
Chanting “Buy it or guard it”, the Anti-Poverty Committee occupied the North Star Hotel in October 2006, the first in a series of squats that embarrassed the city and province into action.
In 2007, the provincial government began buying SROs and turning them into social housing—24 were purchased in Vancouver, 48 across the province. The squats saved dozens of low-income buildings from being lost to gentrification.
