Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

by Brad Cran, Gillian Jerome

Vancouver, host of the 2010 Olympics, is a city of startling contrasts. A prosperous urban center, it is also home to the Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest neighborhood and one of North America’s most notorious districts, a bleak landscape transformed by addiction and poverty. But many of its residents defy these surroundings, driven by a sense of community, kinship, and, above all, hope. This book is a project of the Pivot Legal Society, which supplied cameras to the Downtown Eastside’s residents to document their own lives; the result, accompanied by moving first-person narratives, is an intimate social documentary of an at-risk urban community that will change one’s view of society as we know it, and of those who are forced to live in its shadows.

Genres: Canada, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

Brad Cran is a writer, accountant and social entrepreneur. Cran served as Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver from April of 2009 until October of 2011.

He published his first book, The Good Life, in 2001 and his most recent book, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (with Gillian Jerome,) won the City of Vancouver Book Award, was shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, was long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, and has raised over $50,000 for marginalized people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Cran’s essay, Notes on a World Class City, defended Vancouver’s progressive history and went viral in the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympic games.

His second book of poetry, Ink on Paper, was released in 2013 and he is currently finishing his second book of non-fiction The Truth About Ronald Reagan: How Movies Changed the World.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

learning a lot about development issues close to home. this is a great book about community and life in Canada's poorest area code. It contains several stories of residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and is part of a social enterprise project run by Pivot Legal Society. Low income and homeless vendors sell the book on the street, with $10 for themselves and $10 going back into Pivot's programs. I bought my copy from Hendrik Beune, whose story is the first in the book.

[Alyssa Quattrociocchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be required reading for every Vancouver resident!!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very meaningful book, I really enjoyed this - I come from Vancouver so leaves a deep impression on me. I really liked the story about Jo and the guy she was seeing. It was a story of unconditional love.

[Arsenal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vancouver City Book Award Winner 2008!!
Nominated for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Award (BC Book Prizes). The winners will be announced at a gala on April 25 in Vancouver.