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Opening Doors: In Vancouver's East End: Strathcona
"There was nothing but parties in Hogan's Alley," a black musician named Austin Phillips reminisced in 1977, "Night time, anytime, and Sundays all day. You could go by at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning and you could hear the juke boxes going, you hear somebody hammering on the piano, playing the guitar, or hear somebody fighting."
The black ghetto of Hogan's Alley was just one of the ethnic neighbourhoods that made the historic Strathcona district the most cosmopolitan and colourful quarter in Vancouver for over a hundred years. Home to Chinatown, Japantown, the Loggers' Skid Row and Little Italy among others, it had been the city's first residential neighbourhood but became the refuge of the city's working and immigrant classes when better-off Vancouverites migrated westward around 1900. By the 1950s planners had declared it a slum slated for demolition, but in the 1960s residents united in a spirited defense that guaranteed Strathcona's survival and revolutionized city planning across Canada.
It had long been known that some of Vancouver's best stories lurked behind the closed doors of the Strathcona district (rock legend Jimi Hendrix spent part of his childhood living there with his grandmother, who is interviewed in this book.) Between 1977 and 1978, Strathcona writers Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter undertook to open those doors and collect 50 oral histories representing the best of the stories. First published in 1979 as a double issue of the journal Sound Heritage , Opening Doors has been celebrated as one of the best books about Vancouver you couldn't obtain for love nor money. To help mark Vancouver's 125th Anniversary, Harbour is republishing this underground classic as a Raincoast Monograph richly illustrated with vintage photographs.
The black ghetto of Hogan's Alley was just one of the ethnic neighbourhoods that made the historic Strathcona district the most cosmopolitan and colourful quarter in Vancouver for over a hundred years. Home to Chinatown, Japantown, the Loggers' Skid Row and Little Italy among others, it had been the city's first residential neighbourhood but became the refuge of the city's working and immigrant classes when better-off Vancouverites migrated westward around 1900. By the 1950s planners had declared it a slum slated for demolition, but in the 1960s residents united in a spirited defense that guaranteed Strathcona's survival and revolutionized city planning across Canada.
It had long been known that some of Vancouver's best stories lurked behind the closed doors of the Strathcona district (rock legend Jimi Hendrix spent part of his childhood living there with his grandmother, who is interviewed in this book.) Between 1977 and 1978, Strathcona writers Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter undertook to open those doors and collect 50 oral histories representing the best of the stories. First published in 1979 as a double issue of the journal Sound Heritage , Opening Doors has been celebrated as one of the best books about Vancouver you couldn't obtain for love nor money. To help mark Vancouver's 125th Anniversary, Harbour is republishing this underground classic as a Raincoast Monograph richly illustrated with vintage photographs.
- GenresNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published April 11, 2011
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33 people want to read
About the author
Daphne Marlatt
53 books12 followers"Nationality: Canadian (originally Maylasian, immigrated to Canada in 1951). Born: Daphne Shirley Buckle, Melbourne, Australia, 1942.
Education: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1960-64, B.A.; University of Indiana, Bloomington, 1964-67, M.A. 1968. Career: Has taught at University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of Saskatchewan, University of Western Ontario, Simon Fraser University, University of Calgary, Mount Royal College, University of Alberta, McMaster University, University of Manitoba; second vice chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, 1987-88.
Awards: MacMillan and Brissenden award for creative writing; Canada Council award. Member: Founding member of West Coast Women and Words Society.
Other Work:
Plays
Radio Plays:
Steveston, 1976.
Other
Zócalo. Toronto, Coach House, 1977.
Readings from the Labyrinth. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1998.
Editor, Lost Language: Selected Poems of Maxine Gadd. Toronto, Coach House Press, 1982.
Editor, Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures. Vancouver, Press Gang, 1990.
Editor, Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1997.
Translator, Mauve, by Nicole Brossard. Montreal, Nouvelle Barre du Jour/Writing, 1985.
*
The National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
Critical Studies:
Translation A to Z: Notes on Daphne Marlatt's "Ana Historic" by Pamela Banting, Edmonton, NeWest Press, 1991; "I Quote Myself"; or, A Map of Mrs. Reading: Re-siting "Women's Place" in "Anna Historic" by Manina Jones, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993; The Country of Her Own Body: Ana Historic, by Frank Davey, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993.
"Although I think of myself as a poet first, I began writing both fiction and lyric poems in the early 1960s. My collections of poetry have usually had a loose narrative shape as I tend to write in sequences, or "books." As an immigrant, I'd long held the ambition to write an historical novel about Vancouver, but Ana Historic actually critiqued and broke open the genre, as it also increased my fascination with the potential for openness in the novel form. Influenced by the development of "fiction/theory" in Quebec by feminist writers there, I see open structures combined with a folding or echoing of women's experiences in different time periods as a way to convey more of the unwritten or culturally overwritten aspects of what it means to be alive as a woman today.'"
* * *
Read more: "Daphne Marlatt Biography - Daphne Marlatt comments:" - http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4556...
Education: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1960-64, B.A.; University of Indiana, Bloomington, 1964-67, M.A. 1968. Career: Has taught at University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of Saskatchewan, University of Western Ontario, Simon Fraser University, University of Calgary, Mount Royal College, University of Alberta, McMaster University, University of Manitoba; second vice chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, 1987-88.
Awards: MacMillan and Brissenden award for creative writing; Canada Council award. Member: Founding member of West Coast Women and Words Society.
Other Work:
Plays
Radio Plays:
Steveston, 1976.
Other
Zócalo. Toronto, Coach House, 1977.
Readings from the Labyrinth. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1998.
Editor, Lost Language: Selected Poems of Maxine Gadd. Toronto, Coach House Press, 1982.
Editor, Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures. Vancouver, Press Gang, 1990.
Editor, Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1997.
Translator, Mauve, by Nicole Brossard. Montreal, Nouvelle Barre du Jour/Writing, 1985.
*
The National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
Critical Studies:
Translation A to Z: Notes on Daphne Marlatt's "Ana Historic" by Pamela Banting, Edmonton, NeWest Press, 1991; "I Quote Myself"; or, A Map of Mrs. Reading: Re-siting "Women's Place" in "Anna Historic" by Manina Jones, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993; The Country of Her Own Body: Ana Historic, by Frank Davey, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993.
"Although I think of myself as a poet first, I began writing both fiction and lyric poems in the early 1960s. My collections of poetry have usually had a loose narrative shape as I tend to write in sequences, or "books." As an immigrant, I'd long held the ambition to write an historical novel about Vancouver, but Ana Historic actually critiqued and broke open the genre, as it also increased my fascination with the potential for openness in the novel form. Influenced by the development of "fiction/theory" in Quebec by feminist writers there, I see open structures combined with a folding or echoing of women's experiences in different time periods as a way to convey more of the unwritten or culturally overwritten aspects of what it means to be alive as a woman today.'"
* * *
Read more: "Daphne Marlatt Biography - Daphne Marlatt comments:" - http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4556...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 3, 2011
A collection of personal reminiscences plus the history of the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver. Long thought of as a down-and-out area this brings to life the shared pride and camradrie of it's residents. Not to be confused with Skid Road as such.
Displaying 1 of 1 review