Growing Communities with Community Gardens

28 October, 2010

It’s not magic. At street level it may look like magic, but community gardens are not the work of some cosmic Aquarian happening or even merely the work of avid gardeners. They are a carefully orchestrated balance between government, property owners, community advocates and, of course the citizenry you see toiling the soil. And therein, lies the beauty.

Take for example, the highly visible Davie Village Community Garden on the northwest corner of Davie and Burrard. A few short years ago when condo developments were sprouting on every corner of the city, Prima Properties (its property developers), wanted to cash in and redevelop the existing Shell gas station and mini mall into a new high rise condo tower, they were met with opposition from the West-End Residents’ Association and other area interest groups fearing that the character of the Village would be threatened.

This property, 1157 Burrard, falls in the cross hairs of many conflicting priorities. For example, nearby St. Paul’s Hospital has an influence on the property and how it’s developed, but doesn’t own it. So when Prima properties applied for a permit to develop the site as a mixed-use high-rise development, the city declined it.

Burrard and Davie – Then

Burrard and Davie – Then

Burrard and Davie – Now

Community Garden Forensics

Seymour Community Garden

Before there was Prima properties (community garden), there was Omni Group (community garden). Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Omni Group owns property at Pacific and Seymour and rather than it lying fallow for the years it took for development to commence, Omni Group offered the land up for a temporary community garden. Thus was born, Seymour Community Garden.

Today, Seymour Community Garden is no more and it is remembered with some bitterness by its former gardeners who were given a scant two weeks to vacate the property before the backhoes arrived. According to Jon Lau, a member of Davie Village Community Garden Committee, “Rumours undermined the truth” and in fact, gardeners where told that they’d need to vacate any time between January and April, but as it happened, January was the month and this took many gardeners by surprise.

Jon sees the Seymour Garden, with which he was also involved, as a learning process on the path to the Davie Village Garden. “If not for Seymour Garden, Davie Village Garden couldn’t have taken place”, he explains even while admitting that “each garden has its own personality”. Jon is philosophical about the impermanent nature of these gardens, “I don’t look at it from the standpoint of longevity…I ask what can we do with the time we’ve got?”

Community Integration

Jon reflects that the single most common question from those visiting the Davie Village Community Gardens during the Olympics was, “How did you guys do this?” How its done is through community integration.

City Legislators

In midsummer 2003, Vancouver City Council approved a motion supporting the development of a “just and sustainable” food system for the City of Vancouver. The intention was to develop a system in which food production, processing, distribution and consumption would be integrated to enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of a particular place. City Council formed the Food Policy Task Force and in 2007, unanimously adopted the Vancouver Food Charter, an ambitious vision based on five principles:

  • Community Economic Development
  • Ecological Health
  • Social Justice
  • Collaboration and participation
  • Celebration

Encouraging community gardens also dovetails nicely with the city’s own Greener City Initiative, a mandate for Vancouver to become the greenest city in the world by 2020.

Property Developers

Most of the city’s community gardens are not on private land; they are on public lands such as parks and transportation corridors (most notably Arbutus Victory Garden, as its name suggests owes its longevity to its origins as a Victory Garden during the war). Community gardens developed on private land are naturally beholden to the property owners, but the property owners are incentivized by various regulatory bodies that provide tax exemptions for hosting the gardens.

Under the Prescribed Classes of Property Regulation, property owners can temporarily have their properties reclassified from Class 6 (business and other) to Class 8 (recreational property/non-profit organization), which can provide them with up to 70% on taxes. It’s easy to see their generosity in putting up the land, including the garden infrastructure, in exchange for a 70% cut from their yearly (in the case of 1152 Burrard – $345,000) tax bill as merely a way of skirting property taxes.

Still, the property could remain fenced off and ugly as was the case with the property at Davie and Howe, which remained a hole in the ground for the better part of a decade. Opting to host a community garden on private property is not without its headaches. Take for example the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, which pitted developers against urban gardeners (including actor, Daryl Hannah), and went on to be the subject of documentary, The Garden.

“The developer has to really get involved”, says Jon. Prima properties needed to form a relationship between the community, foster a gardening committee and remain involved with the project; otherwise, it wouldn’t work. To that end, they remain participants in other West-End activities, such as Davie Days. According to Jon, the success of this collaboration “shows in the garden”.

Community Advocates

There are numerous community groups with an active interest in community gardens. Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) has a mandate “to preserve and celebrate public space as an essential part of a vibrant, inclusive city”. It has been instrumental in setting up several community gardens including both the Seymour and Davie Village ones. Also, West End Residents’ Association (WERA) with Gordon House and the YMCA are proposing a new community garden on land governed by the Vancouver Park Board.

Volunteers

As any avid gardener knows, a garden is a perfect reflection of the gardener’s well being—weeds, wonders and all. The same is true of a community garden: it is an accurate reflection of the health of a community.

One Davie Village gardener, Bob Cassidy, has three plots, which keeps him buzzing around on a daily basis. “I’ve met people of all ages and from all walks of life”. He described the monthly work parties, which bring all the gardeners together and, of course, the curious who are drawn to this inviting urban oasis.

With the large homeless population in the downtown core, it is natural to assume that light fingers might prevail and tomatoes go missing. Jon takes theft by local hungry and homeless folks in stride, “if you want to have a tomato, grow ten”. Other gardeners are more vigilant about protecting their labours.

There’s also the confusion arising from the perimeter plots (plots next to the sidewalk), originally designed to be open to everybody to garden, but this arrangement caused friction between gardeners, so all plots are now assigned. Perimeter plots continue to supply food to the nearby Burrard Youth Shelter.

Other Notable Vancouver Community Gardens

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=103848779344513845343.000464a88960fe3692ee6&iwloc=000464bd7b86c96b99e65&ved=0CDYQnAVIAA&sa=X&ei=dWyjTObzLJX6tgPznYiDBA&sig2=sG5ncB28LApPrHosZ-8EwQ

Strathcona http://strathconagardens.ca/

Intercultural Community Gardens Project with the YMCA, inspects the garden plots on the roof of St. Paul’s Hospital.

http://www.cityfarmer.org/vanccomgard83.html

Xwayxway (Not Stanley Park)

9 July, 2010

Solstice-sunset-on-Sunset-Beach,-Stanley-ParkSolstice-sunset-on-Sunset-Beach,-Stanley-ParkI wrote this article for the Vancouver Observer in response to the proposal to use the First Nations’ name, Xwayxway, in place of Stanley Park. My article is mostly a romp through history and the many cultural shifts and name changes these shifts have caused.

Anyway, here she goes…

Xwayxway (Not Stanley Park)

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the old British Empire in Canada. Even the Queen’s visit seemed to be generating undue negative reaction, culminating with accusations that Michaelle Jean’s husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, had suggested the Queen find accommodation in a local hotel (rather than Rideau Hall) whilst visiting Ottawa. Would Motel 6 do? And famously here, there was the suggestion of doing away with Lord Stanley’s eponymously named park in favour of the traditional Xwayxway. What’s next? No more tea at the Empress?

A most interesting case for name changing is Istanbul. That ancient city founded as Byzantium by the Greeks during their heyday in the 600’s BC, it took the name Constantinople when Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire there in 330 AD. It remained the centre of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) until the Ottoman Turks sacked it in 1453, and among other renovations (such as adding minarets to the Hagia Sophia), the name Constantinople got the works and the city was renamed Istanbul. Its stunning Hagia Sophia was first a Christian Church, then an Islamic Mosque, now it’s a secular UNESCO world heritage site.

Journey of Man

Geneticist Spencer Wells has been analyzing human DNA from people in all regions of the world and has traced a journey of man that starts in Africa and in one unbroken lineage leads us around the world in less than 2,000 generations. All the human diversity we see today descends from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.

A very recent discovery, by Western Washington University linguistics professor Edward Vajdof, reveals a linguistic link between the Old World and the New. Vajdof has discovered an ancient language connection between the Ket people of Western Siberia and the language family of Na-Dene, (which includes Tlingit, Gwich’in, Dena’ina, Koyukon, Navajo, Carrier, Hupa, Apache and about 45 other languages). This discovery gives Wells’ DNA studies new meaning. We are not just connected genetically, but also culturally.

As I write this, a First Nations’ delegation is headed to Moscow to meet their 10,000 year old linguistic cousins. The journey continues.

Bradford

On 30 June, I was fortunate enough to be at the official opening ceremonies for Klahowya Village in Stanley Park. The village, located near Malkin Bowl, features an interpretation centre, a re-skinned Stanley Park choo-choo called the Spirit Catcher train, and a chance for local First Nations peoples to put their face forward in the city. We were treated to native singing, dancing, feasting, and long, long speeches of thanks and gratitude.

Strolling around the “village”, I chatted with some First Nations’ folks selling handmade crafts. We chatted affably for a while until a reference was made to the Union Jack as a “Butcher Apron” and some disparaging comments were made about the Queen. My thoughts, “that was uncalled for”. So, while it’s intellectual suicide to trash other cultures, the old predominant culture of Canada, the English, seems to be fair game.

I have only to go back two generations to find myself in the moors of Lancashire and Yorkshire, specifically in Bradford, England. I’ve never visited Bradford, but from what I’ve gathered, my forebears were wise to get out. It’s a dirty bleak industrial town, so I have great thanks that I live in Vancouver and not Bradford. Incidentally, since my grandfather’s childhood there, it now sports a surprisingly large number of mosques—evidence of other journeys. In any case, whatever can be done with Bradford, it will never have anything as wondrous as my Stanley Park. Whatever we call it, Stanley Park is our jewel to the world. It is a unique crossroad for many, many human journeys.

Après-Louvre

3 September, 2006

It was only after I got up extra early, ate a good breakfast, packed some water and trail mix that I realized I was using my Whistler skills to negotiate my way around the Louvre. You see, the Louvre is huge—it’s really huge—it’s bigger than Whistler and Blackcomb combined (even including Creekside!). And the similarities don’t end there.

When you enter through the glass pyramid, there are four ‘lifts’ that, once you show your pass, carry you up to the galleries. Colour coded maps are provided to make it easier to find your way around, and a smart art connoisseur knows to take lunch early in one of the museum restaurants or face huge lunchtime crowds. To take the metaphor just a little further, I would re-organize the Louvre in the following fashion:

All paintings that are not French or Renaissance would be classified as Green run (Colline de Lapin). These would include Flemish masters, any prints and drawings, and all art from the Middle Ages. Add to this, works from Mesopotamia, Persia, the Levant, and anything ‘oriental’ that is not Egyptian.

Blue runs would include Greek, Etruscan, Egyptian, Roman sculpture, French paintings of the 18th and 19th Centuries with the possible exceptions of works by Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David which would be classified as Blue-black.

Black Diamond runs would include the Venus de Milo, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, anything relating to Napoléon I as well as the Napoléon III apartments. The reigning Queen of Mogles would be, of course, the Mona Lisa. Only experienced art lovers could be expected to make their way through these galleries and anyone able to view all in one day would probably be Olympic material.

Mona-Lisa-At-The-Ski-LodgeAfter all the jostling, photo taking, gawking, and the like, the fun part would begin Après-Louvrewhen everyone would descend from the galleries down to the surrounding cafés, put their sore feet up, order rounds of beer, slap themselves on the backs in a congratulatory manner, and swap stories of their art-bum adventures.

Lord love a Canadian

11 August, 2006

What is it with Canadians and their maple leaf fetish? Everywhere I went in Europe, I could spot Canadians by the little maple leaf tags sewn on their back packs. I know the reason for the identifiers, but who really cares if I’m mistaken for an American? It’s not like Americans are everywhere (well they are, but more in a military/industrial sense than as tourists in Europe). Most the tourists I encountered were European and were not necessarily a more pretty lot than the Americans. Perhaps, the scourge of the ugly American tourist has passed or everyone else has come up to speed making all tourists equally vulgar. What gets me about the Canadians is, who are they trying to impress their Canadian-ness on anyway? The doorman at their hotel? Their waiter? Who cares what a doorman or a waiter think?

Behind the Opéra Garnier, I went to a multi-media show on the history of Paris and found myself sitting next to a couple resplendent in T-shirts, wristbands (wristbands??!!), and baseball caps all with maple leaf motives. I’m sure they were a very nice couple, but there was enough foliage on these tourists to qualify as camoflage gear! Also, they are sadly misinformed about how pre-occupied Parisians might be about the nationality of these two (I’d say, not a bit). I was really tempted to lean over to them and say, “So, what part of Michigan are you from anyway?” Naturally, the first thing I did when I returned to my hotel room was rip all the maple leaf tags off my luggage.

Now I’m back in Canada and having a reverse laugh at Canadians and their quaintly self-conscious ways. In the bank today, I overheard an American tourist trying to get some money from an overly helpful teller. The American tourist told the teller that he was from Los Angeles and she chirped, “Welcome to Canada. I hope you have a wonderful stay”. That impressed me because I couldn’t imagine a European bank teller being that friendly. Polite yes, but not so singsongy about it. I was also struck by the farm-folksy way she asked the American if he would like his cash in “loonies and twoonies“. I couldn’t believe that she, a bank teller, would not know that “loonies and twoonies” don’t really constitute Canadian currency and that our little pet names for our money are not known universally. Not surprisingly, the American just sputtered, “I have no idea what you’re saying”. Vive le culture shock, eh?