The Chan Family, 658 Keefer Street, circa 1968

A couple of months ago I wrote about how the Chinese saved Chinatown. In honour of Asian Heritage Month, I wanted to repeat a story from At Home with History that told how the actions and determination of Mary Chan—helped keep the bulldozers at bay and rallied the community to preserve not only Chinatown, but a big chunk of our city’s culture and heritage.

In 1968, Shirley Chan used to accompany her mother when she knocked on doors, talked, cajoled and canvassed donations to hire a lawyer to take on City Hall. The Chans held early organizing meetings in their three-storey Edwardian house at 658 Keefer Street. “Mom had a natural organizing ability,” said Shirley, who at the time, was an SFU student studying for a BA in English.

Mary’s grandfather, Lee Ying Yat, came to Canada in 1879 hoping to strike it rich in the gold rush. It didn’t work out and he started work on the railroad. He managed to save enough money to buy some boggy land along the waterfront, eventually expropriated for the Port of Vancouver for $200. He used this money to bring his son Joe Lee to Canada, who married and had 10 children. Mary was daughter number three.

The family struggled along until 1923, when the government announced the Chinese Immigration Act (known in the community as the Chinese Exclusion Act), and they returned to China. By the 1940s, China was an unstable place. Mary now married to Walter Chan, a teacher and pregnant with Shirley, returned in 1947 after the Act was lifted. She worked three jobs, mostly in Gastown clothing factories, until she had enough money to bring her husband to Canada. They wanted to bring their children up close to Chinatown where they could learn to speak Chinese and retain their culture. By 1955, they’d saved enough money to buy the house on Keefer Street from the Minichiello family.

Soon after moving into their house, the Chans learned about the urban renewal program. Thinking that if they fixed up their house, they’d be able to keep it, they hired people to do repairs. Then they discovered that the entire neighbourhood was slated for demolition.

“Mom would drag me around after work or on weekends, and my job was to translate for her, except I never had to translate because she always did all the talking herself anyway. She was just afraid she might not understand something.”

Shirley said a lot of lobbying and fundraisers happened around food. “Whenever a cabinet minister came to town we’d organize a tea party or a banquet.”

In 1969, the planners at City Hall organized a tour for federal minister of housing Paul Hellyer. Shirley went with him. “I had an opportunity to show him these houses that were still true. Okay the porch might need to be replaced, but the fact is it was still decent, safe, affordable housing for families.”

Hellyer returned to Ottawa and announced a freeze on urban renewal.

“It was a tremendous victory and we used opportunities like this to bring the community together and know that we had achieved something special—to have stopped urban renewal and changed national housing policy.”

When Mike Harcourt was elected mayor in 1980, Shirley became his executive assistant and chief of staff.

658 Keefer Street, Strathcona

Mary Chan died in 2002. “My mother was the one who really believed in an active democratic government where, as a citizen, you had the right and the power to go and make a difference.”

Shirley’s brother Larry Chan, a naturopathic doctor, believes that his family home is an important part of the urban planning and development in Vancouver. “Personally, I would like my own children to realize the important role that my parents had in preserving Strathcona,” he said.

Cafe Andrews on 8th

Don’t let the unfinished paint job fool you; it’s a major work in progress by Brad Hodson, owner of Valley Estates, a make-your-own-wine store that shares the commercial block with the cafe.

Brad’s been slaving over the 1912 building since June last year. He’s stripped off the aluminum cladding at the front and uncovered the original pediment. He’s put in large windows along St. Andrews, refinished the original fir floor, and put in an open concept production area with bottling stations in his wine business.

Eventually, all the blue marine paint will be stripped away and replaced with a coat of Strathcona red paint trimmed with Victorian peridot and Edwardian buff accents.

The cafe officially opened April 25 and its run by Joanne Laubauch and her partner Brenda Snowden, who was born and raised down the street and remembers coming to the building as a kid to pick up the groceries.

Joanne and Brenda have run the Banqueting Table out of the Hillside Baptist Church in Lynn Valley for the past 13 years. The non profit company employs single mothers wanting to get back into the workforce and gives them a job and the chance to gain some skills in catering. As far as culinary experience, their motto is: “if you can cut a carrot, you can work with us.”

The non profit has grown too big for the Church digs and now they are running the catering business from the kitchen. The menu is in flux, says Joanne—last week it was an assortment of sandwiches, grilled cheese on thick slabs of bread, strawberry and cherry scones and cookies.

The cafe, says Joanne, is also a work in progress. The plan is to build slowly by word of mouth. That shouldn’t be a problem–the cafe was packed last Wednesday lunch time. The coffee’s great, the food reasonably priced, all it needs is some tables and chairs out the front for sunny days, a bike rack and something to hook the dog up to, and business should stay brisk.

The cafe is open Tuesday through Sunday from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm.

Brad has posted archival photos and before and after pictures on his blog.

277 East 8th Avenue, North Vancouver

Saturday May 5

1:00 – 5:00 pm.    Heritage Vancouver’s annual Top Ten Endangered Sites Bus Tour aboard a Transit Museum Society historic bus is led by uber-heritage author and expert Don Luxton. Admission $25 members, $30 non members.

Friday May 11

Sea to Sky Regional Heritage Fair

6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Sea to Sky Regional Heritage Fair at the Lynn Valley Main Library. Come down and see some of the fantastic history projects produced by grade four to nine kids in North Van. Presented by the North Vancouver Museum and Archives.

Saturday May 12

10:00-2:00 pm. Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Salvage Sale. Everything from balusters to decorative moldings. Proceeds go to fund the Foundations’ excellent programming. Unit 115-7011 Elmbridge Way, at Gilbert in Richmond.

Saturday May 12 & Sunday May 13

10:00 – 4:00 p.m. The 30^th annual Garden Tour by the Victoria Conservatory of Music. $30 gets you inside some of the city’s most beautiful private gardens, a huge plant sale and music.

Tuesday May 15

The North Vancouver Museum and Archives “My Favourite Things” contest closes today. In this game of social media show and tell, you post your favourite – keepsake, memento, heirloom – use your imagination – on the museum’s Facebook page, via Twitter or email to nvma.thenandnow@gmail.com to win a bunch of prizes including clothes and  gift certificates.

Sunday June 3

10:00-5:00  pm.  Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s 10^th annual Heritage House Tour. Self-guided tour of 10 houses including a church converted to strata units, Shaughnessy mansions, Cedar Cottage homes, a restored corner store, and an old wood frame bank building with strata units to the rear. Tickets are $40+hst. Purchase tickets at www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org or call 604 264 9642

Saturday June 9

9:45 am  Find out about heritage buildings in the Commercial Drive area in a two-hour guided tour with Jak King, author and historian.  $10 goes to the Grandview Heritage Group. register at grandviewheritage@gmail.com

Book launch

Saturday June 16

7:30        Book launch for Ina D.D. Uhthoff: The Unheralded Artist of BC, by Christina Johnson-Dean with an introduction by Pat Martin Bates. Held at the Martin Batchelor Gallery, 712 Cormorant, Victoria. Stunningly beautiful signed books for sale $32.95. For more information contact Mother Tongue Publishing: 250-537-4155  www.mothertonguepublishing.com

Thursday June 21

3:30-8:00 pm. Hudson Elementary School in Kitsilano is holding its 100th anniversary celebration. Takes the family down for a barbecue, activities, performances and themed class rooms. Registration and archival photos at www.hudsoncentennial.com

Saturday July 14

9:00 – 3:00 pm.  The Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Get out of town trip to Stave Lake Powerhouse with John Atkin. Tickets $100.

Saturday August 11

1:00 – 6:00 pm. The Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Mid-Century Modern residential bus tour. Tickets are $100 and the tour of five homes is already sold out, but you can be waitlisted if you call 604-264.9642.

The house was one of 11 built in 1954 for Ted and Cora Backer, designed by Porter & Davidson Architects, and sponsored by BC forest industries to boost retail lumber, plywood and shingle sales in the province.

The house needs love. What was once wood (and may still be underneath) has been carpeted over, wallpapered and dry walled. It’s looking tired and in need of an update. But at 2,472 sq.ft. it’s still a good sized family home with a dramatic split level open concept plan, sweeping vaulted ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling glass.

4342 Skyline Drive, North Vancouver

Originally the exterior cedar shiplap was painted gunmetal black with terra cotta trim. At the time, the house was a showroom for modern conveniences—the latest thermostatic temperature control, remote control touch-plate lighting, copper plumbing and fibreglass insulation.

Aaron Rossetti from Re/Max Rossetti Realty, says the new owners seem interested in the house and its history and he thinks their intention is to keep it. The house is on the District of North Vancouver’s modern heritage inventory and it is one of the 152 houses recommended for the heritage register.

The District held a meeting last month, invited the homeowners of the houses slated for the register and brought in heritage guru Don Luxton to try and explain the benefits.

It was a mistake. All it did was make a heritage register seem like a big deal, and from the angry responses generated from the packed house, needlessly confuse and scare many of the homeowners.

Aaron says there is a general uneasiness among buyers about the registry, and that’s a shame, because it means we’ve done a lousy job of explaining it. Being on a heritage register does NOT mean designation. It does NOT mean that a home owner is restricted in what they can do with their home. It’s simply a listing of houses and buildings deemed to have heritage value. What it does do is give both parties some breathing room. The District can offer incentives and financial alternatives to demolition or a crappy renovation, but it does NOT mean that the home owner need accept.

The City of Vancouver has had a heritage register since 1986, Surrey got one in 1997, Delta in 1999, New Westminster in 2005, Burnaby and Coquitlam in 2007. It’s an important step in recognizing our heritage, attempting to preserve it, and the Trend House is a good example of why we need to.

The house has architectural merit, social and cultural value and a great story.

I wrote about Stephen Winn and Sandi Miller’s Victoria Trend House  last year. It was originally owned by Gwen Cash, one of Canada’s first female general reporters who joined the Daily Province in 1917. In her memoirs she wrote: “Mine was the smallest of the Trend Houses but the most talked and written about. Conventional Victorian viewers, addicted to pseudo-Tudor or modern box construction, were puzzled and vaguely angered by its unique design. Like modern painting it was something that they couldn’t understand.”

All the Trend Houses were architect designed, furnished with  Canadian designed products and initially opened to the public.

John Di Castri designed Gwen’s 835 sq.ft. house. Di Castri, she wrote, “designed a house that frankly took my breath away, so imaginative was it.” Like its North Vancouver counterpart, the design tends to blend the indoors with the outdoors.

The other trend houses are in Victoria, Calgary, Halifax, Toronto, London, Winnipeg, Regina and Edmonton. Unfortunately, the Montreal trend house came down last year.

For more information see:

Michael Goodfellow on the demolition of the Montreal Trend House

Michael Kurtz, owner of the CalgaryTrend House

For  information on a heritage register, inventory and designation

I’m writing a book about some of Vancouver Island’s oldest, most eccentric and quirkiest houses, and Susan’s North Saanich tree house more than qualifies. “I don’t understand people who move into key ready homes that are devoid of personality,” she tells me.

Susan Musgrave's Tree House

The internationally renowned poet’s home will nestle in between those of Bruce Hutchison and Alice Munro. This chapter, Bright Lights, also includes the childhood home so important to David Foster and his six sisters, the home that Spoony Sundher built before East Indians were allowed to own property, and the James Bay house where silent movie star Nell Shipman was born in 1892.

Susan has allowed me to pillage from her bio and it’s definitely one of the most colourful ones that I’ve ever read. She describes how she first met Robin Skelton—writer, poet, professor, artist, male witch—when she’s committed to the local psych ward at age 16. “You’re not mad,” he tells her after reading her poetry, “you’re a poet.” She publishes her first book of poetry three years later, and in 1975, she marries Jeffrey Green, a criminal defence lawyer.

Green is one of five lawyers hired to defend a bunch of American and Columbian accused drug smugglers, and “from across the courtroom,” Susan falls in love with Paul Nelson, one of the defendants. They run away to Mexico after his acquittal and Charlotte is born in 1982.

After Nelson is sent to jail for a previous smuggling charge and finds the Lord, Susan divorces him, and soon after, receives a manuscript from convicted bank robber Stephen Reid who is serving a 20-year sentence at the Millhaven Penitentiary in Ontario. She marries Reid at the jail, and when he is released in 1987, they move into Susan’s 900 square foot seaside cottage near Sidney. Sophie is born in 1989.

“I fell in love with the house, it has a 190-foot Douglas fir tree growing in the middle,” she says. “When I went in that day an eagle had landed in the tree and a piece of eagle down came floating down. I knew it was the house, it just felt so right.”

Robin Skelton arrives to bless Susan’s new home, built by Ernest Fern, a poet, in 1929. A neighbour tells her that pieces of Emily Carr’s Klee Wyck pottery were found in the attic when the artist had visited long ago. Other residents include an old lady who made herbal remedies for the locals, and a boat builder, who instead of fixing the leaking roof, filled it with roofing tar from the inside.

“The whole house creaks in the wind. It’s like being on a boat and the roots are the foundation of the house,” she says. “I absolutely love the house because it’s kind of like me lopsided and wearing down.”

Over the years, they have added rooms, but the feeling of privacy remains. Recently Susan’s daughter moved in with her two small grandchildren.

“I imagine it’s a house that will always be in my dreams,” says Susan. “It’s a really magical place.”

Looking out from Susan Musgrave's office

The dominion Building

A few weeks ago I was standing on the 11th floor of the Dominion Building looking down its spiral staircase and thinking about architect John Shaw Helyer.

Helyer designed the 1910 building and then supposedly committed suicide by throwing himself down those same stairs at the building’s grand opening.

It’s quite a story, it’s just not true. Helyer died from a stroke in 1919.

But just because that’s an urban myth, it doesn’t mean the building hasn’t its own great story. For starters this overdressed red brick and yellow terra cotta structure with its oddly shaped beaux-arts roof comes from a time when architectural sculpture helped shape Vancouver. One writer called it a 19th century Parisian townhouse that should be one storey high, stretched up into an eccentric skyscraper.

It’s this eccentricity that I love about the building, that and the way it dominates the corner of Hastings and Cambie. It’s a reminder that this part of the city was once the heart of Vancouver with the Woodward’s building to the east, a couple of newspapers and department stores within walking distance, and the original law courts across the road where Victory Square now sits. We know Victory Square for the Remembrance Day ceremony, but when Mayor Gerry McGeer read the riot act to 4,000 unemployed workers in 1935; it was here where they gathered to protest.

The Dominion Building in 1936

Alvo von Alvensleben, 1913

The Dominion Building was financed by Alvo von Alvensleben, the flamboyant son of a German count. In the 10 years he lived here, he brought millions of dollars of German investment into Vancouver and bought up large tracts of land and houses. He lived at what is now the Crofton Girl’s School and he turned the Wigwam Inn at Indian Arm into a luxury resort.

Before going fabulously broke in 1913, he’d amassed a personal fortune of $25 million and his business interests included mining, forestry and fishing. By the time the Dominion Trust collapsed in 1914, Alvo, reviled as a spy, had already grabbed his Canadian born wife and children and fled to Seattle.

On October 12, 1914 William Arnold, the vice-president and general manager of the Dominion Trust, killed himself with a shotgun in his Shaughnessy Heights garage.

The Dominion Building interior staircase

The Dominion Building is now dwarfed by high-rises, but for a short time it was the tallest building in the British Empire.

Prior to its completion, in June 1909 the Vancouver Daily Province reported on the terra cotta in buff and red from Leeds, the polished red granite columns from Aberdeen, a two-storey high main entrance fitted with bronze-plated metal and polished wood, and a 13th floor with a large hall, a dome ceiling, 14 marble toilets and a barber shop.

Jacqui Cohen, president of Army & Navy owns the building and rents it to the same eclectic bunch that have always been attracted to its look and feel or perhaps drawn by its lower rents. Writers, barristers, accountants, artists, unionists and film directors rub shoulders in the elevators—one that has a collage of archival photos dating back to the building’s birth, and the other a Tiko Kerr rendition of a wobbly looking Dominion Building which is quite unnerving after a couple of glasses of wine.

Well, thanks Jim, I did take offence, but rejection is part of the job. It goes along with isolation, low paying gigs and a desperate craving for attention. It’s one of the reasons why awards are so important to writers. That and the cash.

BC Book Prizes

The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton

Awards give us recognition, access to better paying jobs, and for authors, they sell books. And, that’s just a few of the reasons that I’m thrilled to see Sheryl Salloum’s, The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton by Mother Tongue Publishing, nominated for a BC Book Prize.

Mother Tongue Publishing is a small trade publisher run by the amazing Mona Fertig from her heritage house on Salt Spring Island. While other publishers turn their backs on books that lack mass market appeal, movie options or foreign rights potential, Mona actively seeks out poets,  first-time writers and unrecognized artists.

A couple of years ago Mona began a search for “the great BC novel.” The book that won—unknown writer Gurjinder Basran’s Everything was Good-Bye—went on to win the Ethel Wilson Fiction prize and a publishing contract with Penguin Canada. Ironically, Jack Hodgins, a judge of the contest, was a runner up for the same award.

The Unheralded Artists of BC

Mona Fertig

Mona, grew up in the Kitsilano of the 1950s with her father, George Fertig. George was an incredible painter, but like dozens of others who shied away from the artistic trends of that era, he was largely ignored. Years later when Mona tried to shop her book around about her dad to trade publishers, she was also ignored.

At this point, most of us give up, shove the manuscript away in a drawer and try something else. Instead, Mona set up a publishing company and created a series called “The Unheralded Artists of BC.”  The first book on sculptor David Marshall came out in 2008.

And just because it’s such a crazy thing for a publisher to attempt, I jumped at the opportunity to co-write the second book: The Life and Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman and LeRoy Jensen. Mona’s book on George Fertig came out in 2010. These are exquisitely beautiful collector’s books that add to the richness of our history, and that thanks to Mona, feature artists who are no longer invisible.

So, congratulations to Sheryl and Mona for their nomination for “the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of BC.” The other nominees are The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver; Fred Herzog for Fred Herzog Photographs; Andrew Nikiforuk for Empire of the Beetle; and Scott Watson for Thrown.

The $14,000 worth of prizes will be awarded May 12.

Tuesday March 6, 2012

7:00-8:30 pm.  Find out all about Vancouver’s historic stained glass by author and historian Jim Wolf and get a peak inside Hycroft mansion in Shaughnessy. Through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s lecture series. $12–they throw in free parking.

Thursday March 15, 2012

The Grandview Heritage Group meets on the third Thursday of every month at the Britannia Centre, Commercial & Napier, and welcomes new members. For more information contact: grandviewheritage@gmail.com.

Tuesday March 20, 2012

5:30-8:00 pm.  Evening at the Marine Building Penthouse (1930) 2000-355 Burrard Street. It’s a fundraiser for Heritage Vancouver Society and $100 tickets include wine, appies, a tour of the private penthouse and a tax receipt.

Thursday March 22, 2012

7:30 pm.  Vancouver Historical Society’s monthly free meeting at the Museum of Vancouver on Chestnut Street. This month’s talk by Howard White on publishing Chuck Davis’s History of Metropolitan Vancouver.

Wednesday March 28, 2012

12:00-1:30 pm.  Hastings Park and the Pacific National Exhibition – History and Evolution, with Marta Farevaag, Phillip Farevaag Smallenberg. Part of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Brown Bag Lunch and Learn series at BCIT downtown campus, 555 Seymour St. $12.

Saturday March 31, 2012

11:00–3:00 pm.  The North Vancouver Archives wants you to bring your heritage valuables to a clinic for assessment. Cost is $10 for one item then $5 for additional ones (to a maximum of three). Art, jewellery, antiques, archival documents, vintage photos, stamps and coins, silver, rare books and Canadiana is all on the table. Community History Centre, 3203 Institute Road in Lynn Valley. 604-990-3700 (8016) nvmaprograms@dnv.org

Wednesday April 11, 2012

6:30-8:30 pm.  City of Vancouver Archives: how to research the history of a building. Through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. $15

Tuesday April 17, 2012

6:30-8:30 pm. Vancouver Public Library: How to Research the history of a building (2) through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. (included in price above).

Thursday April 19, 2012

The Grandview Heritage Group meets on the third Thursday of every month at the Britannia Centre, Commercial & Napier, and welcomes new members. For more information contact: grandviewheritage@gmail.com.

Saturday April 21, 2012

9:00-5:00 pm.  How to photograph heritage structures. $125 at the Vancouver Heritage Foundation office. With architect and photographer Richard Hulbert.

Wednesday April 25, 2012

12:00-1:30 pm.  The Role of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Development of Downtown Vancouver with Michael Gordon, senior central area planner, COV. Part of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Brown Bag Lunch and Learn series at BCIT downtown campus, 555 Seymour St. $12.

Thursday April 26, 2012

7:30 pm.  Vancouver Historical Society’s monthly free meeting at the Museum of Vancouver on Chestnut Street. This month’s talk by Rev. Bruce A. Woods about A Vancouver Romance: John and Ruth Morton.

Saturday May 5, 2012

1:00 – 5:00 pm.    Heritage Vancouver’s annual Top Ten Endangered Sites Bus Tour aboard a Transit Museum Society historic bus is led by uber-heritage author and expert Don Luxton. Admission $25 members, $30 non members.

Saturday May 12, 2012

10:00-2:00 pm. Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Salvage Sale. Everything from balusters to decorative moldings. Proceeds go to fund the Foundations’ excellent programming. Unit 115-7011 Elmbridge Way, at Gilbert in Richmond.

Sunday June 3, 2012

10:00-5:00  pm.  The Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s 10^th annual House Tour. Tickets are $40

Harry and Valerie Jerome

Most people have heard of Harry Jerome. His name adorns a volleyball centre in Burnaby and a North Vancouver Rec centre. His statue is in Stanley Park and at one time he was the fastest man alive, setting a total of seven world records.

Fewer people remember Valerie, yet she was also a superb athlete. At the 1959 Canadian Track and Field National Championships Valerie set Canadian records in her running events, tied the record for long jump and her team won the relay. She came third at the Pan American games in Chicago, and went on to represent Canada at the Olympics the following year.

The media of the day called them the “dusky brother and sister athletes.”

Harry died from a brain aneurysm in 1982. He was 42.

Every February, Valerie Jerome visits Ridgeway Elementary to talk about her early years in North Vancouver.

It’s not pleasant.

She starts by pointing to the house on Lyons Place where they lived and telling the kids about her first day at school. It was August 28, 1951 and the family had just moved from Winnipeg.

“We didn’t even get onto the road. Every kid in the school was lined up with rocks,” she says. “I can still remember the feeling of the first rock that hit my back as we ran.”

Valerie was eight, Harry eleven, Caroline, ten and Barton, seven.

416 Lyon Place, North Vancouver

“It was a failure in imagination on the part of the children to understand that we were just like them,” she tells the stunned kids. “My neighbour Annabelle was the only one who had the courage to stand with us.”

Dare to be an Annabelle, she tells them.

In 1953 a fire broke out during the middle of the night when the sawdust burner caught fire.

A neighbour called the fire department and the family were left out on the street while the neighbours watched from behind their curtains.

“Nobody came out to help us. My mother was pregnant with my youngest sister and we finally got a cab to the Salvation Army Hall on Lonsdale,” says Valerie. The family spent the night on chairs on the sidewalk.

In 1954 the Jerome’s bought the small rancher at 704 East 17^th, near their next school, Sutherland Junior Secondary.

704 East 17th Street, North Vancouver

Valerie, now 67, opted to work in the school cafeteria at lunch time, rather than sit alone at the lunch table.

It’s at about this point in her talk, that Valerie writes the words “White Wash” on the school’s black board.

After Harry and Valerie qualified for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, the City of North Vancouver held a dance in their honour and gave them $500 each to spend.

“All these people who had been spitting on us and calling us niggers every day of our lives were there,” she says. “Then I went to North Vancouver High after I had been to the Olympics and I was invited to eat with everybody. That’s what is called a white wash—you have a little bit of celebrity and somehow our brown skins turned white.”

Things at home weren’t much better. Caroline and Harry had moved out; her father, a railway porter, was away much of the time, and Valerie had a virulent relationship with her mother.

Once when she came home to pick up some clothes she found that her mother had emptied hundreds of family photos and news clippings about her and Harry on top of a refuse heap in the back yard and set them on fire. On the top was a photograph of her grandfather Army Howard who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics. He was wearing Olympic shorts and T-shirt in the picture.

“When I went to pick it up it just crumbed in my fingers,” she says.

Despite the odds, Valerie went to university, became a teacher and taught in Vancouver for 35 years.

Sport made everything bearable, she says.

“When the stopwatch gave you a great time, it didn’t matter what colour you were.”

For more information on Harry Jerome see Harry Jerome History

I took a walk around Chinatown last week. On the surface, not a lot has changed in the last 20 years or so. There are the dim sum restaurants, herbal shops, tacky ornament shops and the in-your-face production of food—duck and pig carcasses, live bullfrogs in buckets on the sidewalk, tanks full of exotic fish and an array of fruit and vegetables still a long way from mainstream.

The Wing Sang Company Building, 51 East Pender Street

Yet for all the traditional elements, Chinatown is an area in transition. Condos are going up, bars, coffee shops and trendy clothes stores are nudging up against traditional grocery stores, and new business is moving in.

The Wing Sang Building in 2011

Bob Rennie was one of the first to see the potential when he bought the Wing Sang Building for a million bucks in 2004. He spent another $10 million turning the back of the building, where Yip Sang’s three wives once raised their 23 children, into a private art space to house his massive collection. Past exhibits by Mona Hatoum and Richard Jackson are edgy and interesting, but my favourite was Martin Creed’s where you walked through an office filled with pink balloons, dodged runners on the main floor and sipped champagne while looking at broccoli. Creed is also behind the controversial “everything is going to be alright” neon sign on the building’s rooftop garden which is clearly visible from the Sun yat-sen Gardens, and a good chunk of Vancouver. Rennie regularly holds free public tours of the building and art gallery, but next year he turns into a satellite gallery for the Royal BC Museum with an exhibit of the young Emily Carr.

The roof top of the Wing Sang Building

Boutique agencies like St. Bernadine Mission Communications are finding costs are cheaper in Chinatown. David Walker and Andrew Samuel bought a newish space at East Georgia and Main, a block away from the oddly garish Jimi Hendrix shrine. In keeping with the heritage—it was once a Chinese Laundry—the partners installed the Kee’s Laundry Gallery with photography and art displays from other agency creatives in the city.

It’s transforming yes, but there’s a strong sense of community. Residents of Strathcona and Chinatown were asked to vote on the kind of business they wanted to see open at 243 Union Street—what was once Hogan’s Alley—the black part of town before city planners replaced it with the Georgia Viaduct in the 1960s. Locals decided they wanted a local grocery store on Union and named it Harvest. They even got to choose the graphic designer who’d brand it—Naomi Macdougall from a list of six.