Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Getting home - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER – Twice a week, I have to take the number 8 Fraser bus from the corner of Granville and Drake in Downtown Vancouver to the house near the corner of Fraser and King Edward. It's a ride that takes no more than half an hour, as I take it on weekends early in the morning. To keep awake following a gruelling graveyard shift, I often look out the window following the scene that the bus passes on my long way home. It's an interesting trip as Granville and Drake is at the north end of the Granville Street Bridge. It's sort of the beginning of Downtown Vancouver. The bus goes all the way up Granville, through those seedy parts of town, namely the three or four blocks of porno shops and other distasteful outfits. Because it's the weekend, the streets are pretty bare. Because it's early morning, it's seemingly fresh in a way. It's quiet, but it's alive.
The bus goes up further and past the sprinkling of clubs – Ginger Sixty-Two amongst them – you go smack into theatre row. Starting with those shabby porno houses to movie multiplexes to the legitimate Vogue and of course, the stately Orpheum. If you take this ride at night, say some eight or nine hours earlier – in the smack of a busy, weekend night – the sidewalks would be teeming with lines of people trying to get into the Commodore or any one of the trendy clubs along Granville. Who says Vancouver ain't fun?
Once past Robson Street you see the old Eaton's building on your left. Now it's Sears, but you still think it's Eatons. Across the street, what was dirt and gravel for nearly a decade, is a deep ditch whereupon a colossal project is in the works. The advertising wrapped around the chainlink fence says it'll be a new Sleep Country Canada branch. After a decade it'll have an actual building on it. I look back to my left seeing the white building that houses the department store, Sears. I practically grew up there. I think about my Dad.
Friday afternoons, I'd get off school at noon. Friday's were our day. We'd take a cab downtown, and then have lunch in the Marine Room on the sixth floor. It'd be a treat, because eating out is always a treat as opposed to eating at home. After lunch, he'd give me some money and we'd go, when I was younger to the toy department, and when I got a bit older to the entertainment section. He'd stand off to the side and let me have a go at the store. I'd go through the CD shelves, the book shelves or the video racks looking for something to blow that budget on. Dad was generous that way. He'd never tell me to buy something useful, rather whatever I wanted. This was the best treat. I'd cart something useless to the cashier. He used to pay himself, but as I got older, I'd already have the money ready to hand it over to the clerk in exchange for taking whatever it is I wanted out of the store, home. When it got harder for Dad to go out much, when taking the bus was something he didn't do anymore, we stopped going to Eatons for our regular Friday dates. Eventually I grew up, he grew older, and that was that. I'd go myself, always keeping in mind his instructions firm in my mind. Being a kid and all, he warned me: always keep the receipt of whatever you bought, lest they think you swiped it. I miss him that way.
Past what is now Sears you go down the Granville Mall past the London Drugs on the right, the towering TD Tower on the left. The latter being of course the home of my favourite radio station CKNW. Going up Granville some more you're past the old Vancouver Stock Exchange building. No longer do suits scamper in and out of that building to do the work of capitalism. It seems following the demise of the VSE, it's just a regular office building now. The bus now makes a right on Hastings to go east. At the corner is the old Birks clock that relocated from the corner of Granville and Georgia, when Birks itself moved to Granville and Hastings some years ago. I've got a little replica of the thing somewhere. My Dad had bought a lighter some years ago and it was one of the souvenirs they were giving away. I seem to keep everything. I do.
Going east on Hastings some more you pass the Harbour Centre with it's revolving restaurant. Have never been there to dine, but for the first time ever this past summer a bunch of us went up there to see the city in all its remarkable glory. You pass an old fabric shop on Hastings. I remember it well too. My Grandmother used to go there buying supplies for her crafts and sewing. Her, and a young me would often bus down. I'd anxiously try to hurry her up, whilst she seemingly took forever. We don't do stuff like that anymore. She's old now, and she just doesn't get out much. Everything's orchestrated now. She only goes around with a ride, in a wheelchair and her ever faithful girl. Thinking about Dad and then her, I get the feeling that age has somehow crept up on me too.
You pass the sprinkling of marijuana-friendly establishments. Marc Emery's joint – the headquarters of his upstart political party – is amongst the compassionate cafes where sickly and not-so sickly characters can get a little high. Across the street a bit, you see the old cenotaph, a city's remembrance to its fallen dead. It so happens this bus ride is on the morning of Remembrance Day. The bums and derelicts are surprisingly off the benches around the memorial. There's scaffolding in place, probably for the cameras that will capture the events that will take place there later in the morning for posterity's sake – the evening news. All of us on the bus, almost as one, look to our right, out the window to see what's going on. Inside, I get the feeling it's more than just staring that's going on. It's a sort of a silent tribute to the veterans who gave so much.
Up the block you see the covered up old Woodward's building. A shrine for the homeless these past few months, they are still there. On old mattresses, in makeshift tents, they surround the building. A symbol of the lack of housing for Vancouver's poor. They are the veterans of the present. They've braved the city's unforgiving and unrepentant streets. It's dirty sure, but it's their home. Like the cenotaph we've just passed, here is where we should pay our allegiance the rest of the year. Somehow their neglected conditions are the war the city should be fighting every other day of the year.
You go up Hastings some more and you get to the infamous corner of Main. It's an election year and oddly enough the characters who are less likely to vote, pay taxes or anything else for that matter, have become the main issue in the campaign. The outgoing Mayor's plan is to have safe injection sites for the areas addicts, crack pots and junkies. Sheer folly, I think. Why would you clean up a problem by hiding it away from the rest of society? Why would you condone the stuff of illegalities? Oddly enough, all the aspirants to the city's top job are in favour of the plan. Looking at the appalling conditions of our Downtown Eastside, I think about how I'll be voting. I think about what should be done here.
You go through Chinatown, you see shops closed. No longer are mere bars enough to guard the shops through the night. They now need aluminum sliding doors to shield their wares from the vandals of the night. In a way it's a sad commentary of the way it is. Up and down the bus ride I've just taken, it's like that.
Skipping along we're around Broadway and Kingsway now, stopped to pick up some more passengers at that shabby excuse for a mall, Kingsgate Mall. I understand capitalism and all, but out front is a sign: "Remembrance Day. Lest We Forget. Mall hours: 11:00 to 5:00." I shudder a bit. As you go along, you see more houses. We're near my stop. My home. It's a tad interesting processing and going through one's mind's eye, all that you've seen. At its core, that was Vancouver. My Vancouver. Remarkable as it seems that's what I've lived in a way. If you think about it hard, and honestly remember from where you came, you see your life flash in front of you. Sometimes as fast as it does to get home.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .