‘Vancouver as a liveable space’

Surviving Vancouver
by Michael Kluckner

Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2024
$24.95  /  9781988242545

Reviewed by Peter Hay

*

If you have never been to Paris, you can still get a feel for the city from the many artists who painted it. Fashions and vehicles have changed since the Impressionists captured them but the buildings and the bustling energy are still recognizable today. The same is true for Dutch cities of the Golden Age or for Canaletto’s Venice of the 18th century.

Not so with Vancouver, which has been largely the preoccupation of Michael Kluckner for more than four decades. As an artist, writer, historian, conservationist, and activist, he has depicted the city where he lives through deceptively soft and charming water-colours of shady streetscapes, verdant parks, and historic mansions. The titles of his many classic books – Vancouver the Way It Was, Vanishing Vancouver, Vancouver Remembered, etc. – sound nostalgic and even sentimental.

But the text in each book reflects a gradual sense of disquiet and provides critical commentary on what the city has allowed to be done to heritage buildings, obscuring her natural scenery and what Kluckner calls cultural geography. His first book, Vancouver the Way it Was, published in 1984, a couple of years short of the city’s centennial, was a kaleidoscope of historic photographs, maps, descriptions and paintings in colour, resembling old postcards. As the title suggests, it was an illustrated history of the city which seems to have forgotten that it has a history. 

Surviving Vancouver, published forty years later, is a reckoning with that lost history. The word in the title divides the book into two parts. Surviving as an adjective refers to the buildings and cityscapes that somehow managed to survive the past century of booms and depressions, immigrations, and globalization; whereas surviving as a verb deals with the social divides in a city – and province – where sheer survival is a daily challenge for far too many people.

Two small paintings sum up the fight for survival in what Kluckner calls Vancouver’s ‘contested space’. One shows a homeless person in a shapeless heap on the pavement of Georgia Street, right below a Hudson’s Bay window displaying fashionable attires by elegant mannequins. For total realism, Kluckner notes the date and time: 11 am. April 13, 2022. Since then, of course, the Bay itself has closed its doors, the mannequins were first stripped naked and now are gone, but we know that the homeless are still on the pavements in greater numbers than ever.

The other painting is from a year later, showing the classical Birks building on the same street with the landmark clock tower, and a homeless tent next to it. “From the tent comes moaning and shouting,” Kluckner writes. “ – a man crying out in a mental health crisis. He can be heard a block away, but there is no one to help. People walk by, it’s normal…”

Heading down Georgia towards Stanley Park, barely a mile away, Kluckner depicts how the rich live in high-rise condos like the Alberni Tower looming over the 1910 gable building barely surviving in its shadow. Ever the social chronicler – he is president of the Vancouver Historical Society – Kluckner explains how these monstrous buildings have been reshaping the West End since the 1950s. In a section subtitled “Making Room for the Rich”, he tells of the transformation of Coal Harbour that once provided affordable housing on the water for about 700 workers, until these houseboat colonies gave way to today’s idle yachts owned by the wealthy condo-dwellers in the nearby towers:

The Coal Harbour shoreline right to the Stanley Park entrance was once as heavily industrial as any land in Vancouver… Houseboats crowded next to every available piece of shoreline, providing housing for people working nearby…

…In the early years of the 20th century the Park Board and Town Planning Commission sought to create a Champs Elysees of grand boulevard for Georgia Street and frame Lost Lagoon with formal pavilion-style buildings. Until the mid-1930s and the successful pitch to create the Lions Gate Bridge across First Narrows, there was no conception of Georgia Street and Stanley Park as a commuter route to the North Shore.

In a situation reminiscent of today’s shortages, the wartime shipyard workers of Coal Harbour fought for their housing…

Kluckner then quotes a news article from 1944 defending the houseboat colonies, and goes on to describe the 1971 sit-in by the Youth International Party (the ‘Yippies’) to protest the proposed development of apartment and hotel towers at the entrance to Stanley Park. Along with the text, Kluckner shows the tent city occupied by the protest, an illustration from another recent book, The Rooming House (2022), which captures his own hippie days in a monochrome graphic style.

Surviving Vancouver is a worthy and valuable addition to Michael Kluckner’s considerable oeuvre. It is full of visual delights even when he paints the ugly contrast between Vancouver’s spectacular setting against the dense highrises, or the rusty remains of a departed industrial era. The images are powerful and speak for themselves, but the words add many historical details about bygone characters, how they lived and what they built.

There are typical paintings in the familiar Kluckner style, some reproduced from his earlier books, which show old and colourful neighbourhoods like Shaughnessy and Chinatown, and where preservation rules, or at least survives. Kluckner – who founded the Vancouver Heritage Society and served on both the British Columbia and the Canada Heritage boards – conveys a unique feel for the past. Not just buildings and streetscapes that are worth preserving, but also a way of life that is fast vanishing, such as people casually reading newspapers on a city bench instead of bending over their cell phones.

This slim volume combines many of Michael Kluckner’s passions for preservation, and also sums up his lifelong preoccupation with Vancouver as a liveable space. Although the blurb on the back cover says that it concludes his study of the city, Vancouver needs his pen, his brush, and voice perhaps more than ever. Fortunately, the reader can also turn to his website, michaelkluckner.com, which provides a comprehensive picture of his evolution as an artist and activist, how he came to create his books, where his current thinking and projects stand. May he long survive in the city he so clearly loves.

*

Peter Hay landed in Vancouver in the summer of 1967. He was founding drama editor of Talonbooks and authored ten non-fiction books. He now lives in Summerland, where he and his wife, Dorthea, co-founded the Ryga Arts Festival which just celebrated its 10th season. [Editor’s note: Peter Hay has also reviewed books by Helga Hatvany, Judy Piercey, Timothy Christian, Joe Gold and Robert Krell for The British Columbia Review.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster