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Abstract
In the 1960s and early 1970s, residents of the neighbourhood of Strathcona in the city of Vancouver, Canada, successfully fought the grand designs of planners, engineers, politicians and developers to displace residents, demolish homes, clear lands, and rebuild the area. Against all odds, a relatively politically powerless group of residents and their supporters from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds formed a neighbourhood organization, the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association (SPOTA) to mount a last-ditch struggle to defend their homes, ways of life, and right to place. This article re-examines existing explanations of these historic events. It identifies the unique activism of ethnic minority women, and introduces the concept of culturally hybrid forms of oppositional practice—the interaction of cultural practices of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural residents of Strathcona with mainstream Canadian political discourse and structures. The article stresses the critical importance of broadening and complicating existing analyses of multi-ethnic women's community-based urban activism as a way of rethinking feminist conceptualizations of movement activism around place and identity.
En los años sesentas y principios de los setentas, habitantes del barrio Strathcona en la ciudad de Vancouver, Canadá, lograron luchar contra los planos de las urbanistas, los ingenieros, los políticos y los promotores inmobiliarios para desplazar a los/las habitantes, demoler las casas, y reconstruir el área. A pesar de tenerlo todo en contra, un grupo de habitantes relativamente sin poder político y sus partidarios de diversos clases y etnicidades formaron una organización comunitaria, La Asociación de Propietarios y Inquilinos de Strathcona (en sus siglos ingles, SPOTA), con el fin de organizar una lucha para defender a sus casas, nivel de vida y derecha del lugar. Este artículo re-examina las explicaciones existentes de estos eventos históricos. Se identifica un activismo único de mujeres de minoridades étnicas, y se introduce el concepto de formas culturales híbridas de prácticas oposicionales – la interacción de prácticas culturales de habitantes multi-culturales y multi-étnicos del barrio de Strathcona con las estructuras y discursos políticos corrientes de Canadá. Este artículo enfatiza la importancia de ampliar y complicar los análisis existentes del activismo urbano comunitario de mujeres multi-étnicas hacia un re-pensamiento de las conceptualizaciones feministas del los movimientos activismos sobre lugar e identidad.
Acknowledgements
This essay is a substantially revised version of a paper by Jo-Anne Lee and Mike Bruce, ‘Women and Culturally Hybrid Grassroots Resistance to Slum Clearance in Vancouver, 1957-1978’, presented at the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Meetings. University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 3 June 2004. In addition to the wonderful women and men of SPOTA, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Nora Angeles, Mike Bruce, Shirley Lew, Lisa Okada, Li Xiao Ping, Mayna Vancaille, Hayne Wai and three anonymous reviewers in preparing this manuscript. I would especially like to thank Fatima Jaffer for helping me clarify and craft some of my arguments. I would also like to thank colleagues in the Centre for Research in Women and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia for providing me the intellectual and physical space to undertake this research. The research study was supported by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant # 410-2001-182.
Notes
1. See Kim & Lai (Citation1982) for a discussion of community resistance to urban renewal perceived through a ‘Chinese’ lens.
2. Pendakur states, ‘He [Sutton-Brown, the City Commissioner] used the Georgia Viaduct, many CD-1 (comprehensive development [zoning]) proposals and urban renewal as tools for getting freeways started and his 1959 plan implemented’ (Pendakur, Citation1972, p. 3).
3. Ley et al. (Citation1994, p. 116) refer to ‘the articulate external allies with a more determined style of protest,’ that ultimately secured SPOTA's success in stopping urban renewal. In fact, the residents were bitterly opposed to urban renewal and organized mass rallies to protest. Prior to the formation of SPOTA so-called community organizations were not representative of Strathcona residents but organized and dominated by non-resident participants who represented the specific interests of the business community or social service organizations (see Shirley Chan, An Overview of the Strathcona Experience with Urban Renewal by a Participant, available in CVA SPOTA Files, 1971).
4. Lai (Citation1988, p. 130) largely attributes SPOTA's success in stopping urban renewal to a recently arrived elite class of Chinese residents, what he refers to as ‘a new type of educated Chinese immigrant’.
5. Section 23 of the National Housing Act of 1954 and 1957 required that planning studies be undertaken to justify urban renewal.
6. Darlene Marzari is a former member of Vancouver City Council and the BC Legislative Assembly, and one of the original allies of SPOTA.
7. SPOTA was not a woman-only or a Chinese-only organization; many men were also involved so it would be a mistake to represent it as women-led or women-only and as a neighbourhood property owner and tenant organization, it was multi-ethnic. SPOTA's leadership and membership reflected the ethnic, gender, class and racial mix of residents of Strathcona; hence it would also be a mistake to characterize it as a ‘Chinese’ organization. Many accounts make the mistake of projecting a monolithic ethnic ‘Otherness’ onto this mixed neighbourhood organization (CitationCVA, SPOTA files, Citation1970).
8. As an insider and participant, I sometimes found it difficult to choose between the relative significance of one key event, person, statement, and set of relationship over another since all seemed equally important to the overall outcomes. This was because I experienced the events as linked processes, and not single, critical events, hence it was difficult to isolate a particular person or event as having more importance than any other. The line between too much detail and providing enough to prove or illustrate the point was often difficult to distinguish. As an insider, it is also difficult to tell the story as a totality and not as one remembers and experiences it, since one's involvement is always necessarily partial. The attention paid to community leaders omits the stories of city administrators, planners and politicians, stories that mainstream accounts and the historical record more fully.
9. Marsh (1970, p. 100) found, ‘“Chinatown” proper does not extend much beyond Gore Street, and nine out of the forty blocks surveyed account for practically all of the Chinese population in the survey area’.
10. The 1957 Vancouver Redevelopment Study notes that roughly 60% of the families in the area were of ‘British, European, or North American origin’, and that the Chinese population made up ‘nearly one half’ of the population, in a survey district, which included Chinatown (City of Vancouver Planning Department, Citation1957). The proportion of Chinese in Strathcona at this time is disputed. Strathcona itself did not have a majority of Chinese residents until the late 1960s; over 10 years after the Vancouver Redevelopment Study recommended urban renewal. The most significant increases in the area's Chinese population came only after Canadian Immigration laws were amended in 1947 to eliminate racial preference, and then again in 1967 with the introduction of the points system. While the level of increase and the large amount of Chinese participation in SPOTA are significant, it needs to be stressed that Strathcona was not historically a ‘Chinese neighbourhood’, and as a community it was much more diverse and complex. The increase in residents of Chinese background may be attributable to a number of different factors: an influx of immigrants due to the 1968 changes to the Immigration Act, city interventions such as rezoning for comprehensive redevelopment; freezing permits for home improvement; allowing streets, sewers and services to deteriorate in anticipation of redevelopment; and fear of forced expropriation—all of which encouraged established residents to sell and move. There were also lifestyle incentives, such as Strathcona's proximity to Chinatown for shopping, and to the port and the garment factories in Gastown for employment (Nann, Citation1970).
11. Hayne Wai (Citation1998) documents the persistence of the traffic and engineering department to push through their transportation plans despite local community resistance. The Vancouver Transportation Study that laid out the City's transportation plan was developed concurrently with the preparation of the Vancouver Redevelopment Study written by the City of Vancouver Planning Department (1957). Indeed, the Vancouver Redevelopment Study plans were intended to prepare the way for the implementation of the Vancouver Transportation Plan as outlined in this report. While SPOTA was negotiating for urban rehabilitation of the neighbourhood, it found itself battling against transportation engineers' intention to implement a transportation plan developed in the 1950s that prescribed the development of freeway corridors through its streets with the very same politicians and planning officials.
12. The members of Vancouver's Housing Research Committee that was set up to oversee the study included a representative from the federal government's Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs for the Province of British Columbia, the Director of Planning and the Senior Medical Health Officer for the City of Vancouver. The concept of blight had medical and health overtones of disease and degeneracy hence the presence of the chief health officer.
13. There are many examples of struggles for place in Canada against the legal power of the state to act in the ‘national’ interest against minority communities: the destruction of Africville, a long standing settlement of black Canadians in Atlantic Canada, the forced internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War from the west coast to the interior of British Columbia and other provinces, and genocide and denial of First Nations peoples' claims and rights to ancestral lands.
14. Mary Chan and Bessie Lee, my mother, were two founding members of SPOTA. I highlight their contributions in this article for several reasons; they outlasted most of the other female board members of SPOTA and they played a central leadership role within SPOTA and the Strathcona neighbourhood stretching over almost 30 years.
15. In attendance were Deputy Mayor Bird and wife, Aldermen Marianne Linnel, Harry Rankin and Art Phillips, Director of Social Planning, Maurice Egan and his wife, and SPOTA allies social planner, Darlene Marzari, and lawyer, Mike Harcourt (CVA SPOTA files, Citation1968).
16. Shirley Chan documents the formation of SPOTA and its early history of resistance to urban renewal in a report titled, ‘An Overview of the Strathcona Experience with Urban Renewal by a Participant’, 31 March 1971 (CVA SPOTA Files, Citation1971). The first walking tour of Strathcona with federal politicians took place on the morning of 8 November 1968 after Shirley Chan and Fred Soon attended a meeting the previous day with Hon. Paul Hellyer, Federal Minister of Transport and his Housing Task Force at Skeena Terrace Public Housing. The results of informal meetings with Hon. Hellyer and the walking tour of the neighbourhood, was an announcement by Hellyer that all urban renewal funds were to be frozen pending the report of the Task Force. The federal Task Force had uncovered many problems with the NHA urban renewal program and the announcement of a freeze on funds in Vancouver allowed residents of Strathcona time to organize and chart a course of action. Over the next few weeks, concerned residents moved into high gear under the leadership of Mrs. Sue Lum and Mrs. Mary Chan who began a door-to-door campaign to inform residents of a public meeting to organize resistance. On 9 November 1968, at a meeting at the Chan residence, a public meeting was planned for 23 November 1968. This was followed by a large meeting organized by word of mouth on 4 December 1968 where residents voiced their bitter opposition to City Hall's plans. At this meeting, the steering committee and their advisors decided to organize a larger public meeting attended by 500 people on 14 December 1968 at the Gibbs Boys Club. SPOTA was formed at this meeting, elected an executive, and named block representatives. From the beginning, the organization adopted a creative, bilingual structure of Chinese and English speaking executive positions and three co-chairs, Harry Con, Walter Chan and Sue Lum, as spokespersons. SPOTA's first brief was based on points drafted by Mrs. Lillian Luke, my aunt, and the owner of an apartment/hotel business on Campbell Avenue. SPOTA was not the first organization formed to represent community interests. Other organizations included the Chinese Benevolent Association appealed in 1960; the Chinatown Property Owners Association (CPOA) in 1961 and the Strathcona Area Council, consisting mainly of social service agency representatives had prepared briefs and letters to council in 1966 (Kim & Lai, 1982). These briefs failed largely because they did not actually oppose urban renewal, they argued for a fairer price and assistance in relocation. The President of CPOA wrote letters to Council objecting to SPOTA's position because its position was against the position of some of the Chinatown businessmen who eyed the expropriated land for cheap redevelopment and Chinatown expansion. (Strathcona Area Council, Brief to City Council Re: Urban Renewal Plans for Strathcona Area, 22 October 1968). On 7 August 1969, SPOTA organized a meeting with the new Minister of Housing, Hon. Robert Andras and provincial representatives to discuss plans for urban renewal that was followed by a banquet that was attended by 500 people. SPOTA's strategy was to ‘stress the human part’ to the politicians (CVA, FA 124, ADD Ms 734, Vol. 6, File 7).
17. A SPOTA memorandum, written to Joe Wai, SPOTA's volunteer architectural advisor and unsigned, but likely by Hayne Wai, is dated 26 June 1974. The first part of the memo details the answers that SPOTA wants from the various officials attending, including Mayor Art Phillips, Alderman Michael Harcourt, Minister Basford, Michael Audain and BC Minister of Housing Lorne Nicholson, as well as suggesting that questions be formulated for the other special guests. The second half of the memo is a tongue-in-cheek reminder that such VIPs as Bruce Lee, Andy Capp, Sun Yet San, and Charles Lindberg ‘cannot attend because they are out of town, others because they are dead, and two because they are cartoon characters’. Others, the memo finishes, are distinctly not invited, notably Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Vice Marshall Ky. Oppositional reading practices such as this memo were frequent and hilarious behind the scenes talk at SPOTA strategy meetings (Personal recollections and CVA SPOTA Files, Banquet Files FA 124, Loc. 583-B-1 f.4, 1974).
18. City officials such as Mayor Art Phillips were to be cornered on zoning concerns, while Ron Basford, Federal Minister of Urban Affairs, was targeted for funding commitments and for more active support of SPOTA's bid to develop non-market housing.
19. In later years, tours of Strathcona were expanded to the community at large. From 1974 to 1976 dozens of walking tours were given to east side high school students, local and visiting groups of university students, and to conference participants visiting Vancouver. Tours were of varying length and usually included tea at SPOTA's offices or at the Strathcona Community Centre. In 1976 Strathcona began running joint tours with the Britannia Community Centre. Tours escorted up to 50 people at a time and were 5 hours long with 2 hours spent in each neighbourhood, including tea served in Strathcona (SPOTA Report to the CMHC on Community Development Activities, CVA SPOTA Files, 1972 FA 124, Loc. 583-B-1 f.2.).
20. During SPOTA's most active decade, between 1969 to 1979, there was rarely a politician running in a municipal, provincial, or federal elections who did not receive an invitation to attend a banquet, a ribbon cutting ceremony, an open house to mark Chinese New Year, or give a speech to a general meeting of the neighbourhood. The awarding of honorary memberships in SPOTA was a strategy that SPOTA frequently used in later years to solidify the relationships they had built among various levels of government. SPOTA essentially declared politicians and officials with whom they had developed close links, as symbolic residents.