Artists' Books

A Sign for the City. by Rebecca Wang

A Sign for the City is a public art project to acoustically commemorate significant cultural, social, and political events and figures in the history of Vancouver. It is done by reassigning the meaning of Vancouver’s Nine O’clock Gun, a 1812 built naval cannon in Stanley Park, and symbolically dedicating the firing of the cannon to one historical event or figure a day for a whole year, from May 1, 2011 to April 30, 2012.

Originally fired to “signal the close of the fishing day and as a navigational aid,” the cannon now is fired nightly to mark the time.

Photo Credit: @dannnyellow      Source: Instagram

Through the whole book of history shaping events, I pick out 10 that resonate with me the most. Some of them are about the social issues that the city still struggles with to this day, such as indigenous (land) rights, housing, drugs. Some of them are somewhat surprising to me as a newcomer to Vancouver. Having just casted a ballot for the first time in my life not long ago, it makes me rethink what it means for an individual to (not) possess certain rights on a certain land, after reading that women were only given the vote in BC since 1917. However this may be the kind of reaction that the artists behind this project, Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, aim for, which is to "[imagine] Vancouver as a socially and spatially just city."

But how about the history of the land before there is Vancouver?

Is it possible to imagine Vancouver as a socially and spatially just city without fully understanding how everything came to be the way as they are today?

Photo Credit: Herry T. Devine      Source: City of Vancouver Archives

April 6, 1886: The city of Vancouver is incorporated. While approximately 1,000 people are living in the city at the time of incorporation, archaeological records suggest the presence of First Nations people living in the region dating back between 8,000 and 10,000 years.

October 15, 1898: The Nine O'clock Gun is fired for the first time - at noon. Placed at Brockton Point, the site of an important squat, the gun serves to displace squatters, while the same time providing a time signal for local populations and assisting in calibrating the chronometers of ships in port.

May 5, 1911: The province's first Women's Suffrage convention is held in Vancouver. From 1902 to 1913, the suffrage movement is defeated, but following the enfranchisement of women in the prairie provinces, women are given the vote in BC in 1917.

April 10, 1922: The Cranmer Potlatch prosecution becomes the first successful enforcement of the 1884 prohibition against First Nations' practice of the potlatch. Three local bands surrender their ceremonial regalia as a penalty, while Jim Hall of Karlukwees and six others from Fort Rupert opt to serve sentences at the Oakalla Prison Farm in Burnaby. The surrendered regalia are put on exhibit at the Alert Bay parish hall and viewed upon paying an admission price of twenty five cents.

Photo Credit: James Crookal      Source: City of Vancouver Archives

March 10, 1958: Tim Cummings, the last of the legal residents of Stanley Park, dies. While other residents were evicted in the 1920s, Cummings lived in a small cabin near Brockton Point until his death at the age of 77. Despite efforts to save his "rickety shack" by Major Matthews, the City Archivist at the time, Cummings' cabin was torn down shortly after his death.

March 26, 1968: Under pressure from Vancouver citizens, City Council votes to reconsider and eventually repeal the "industrial" designation of the False Creek area. Considered a victory for participatory politics, the issue had been pressed by protesting UBC and SFU students who demanded that public opinion be taken into consideration by the city in its planning decisions. This repeal also marks the first time City Council makes a decision in response to public pressure.

Photo Credit: Gorden Sedawie       Source: Ottawa Citizen

January 6, 1971: The Militant Mothers of Raymur, twenty-five women from the Raymur Social Housing Project, block the train tracks between Raymur Avenue and Glen Drive, demanding a safe crossing for Seymour students who cross the dangerously busy tracks every day to get school. Their intermittent blockades prompt the city to build an overpass at Keefer Street.

November 27, 1990: The Frances Street squat is brought to an end. Occupied between February and November, the six squatted houses, including one women-only squat, is curtailed when the Vancouver Police Department claims that the houses are full of weapons. Upon searching the houses and occupants, no weapons are found. Twelve members of the squat are arrested for mischief and obstructing a police officer. The buildings are labelled by City Council as a "public nuisance" and later torn down.

Photo Credit: Elaine Brière       Source: BC Studies

July 11, 2000: "The Killing Fields" are erected: The Vancouver Network of Drug Users (VANDU) plants 2000 crosses in Oppenheimer Park to highlight overdose deaths and the fact that Downtown Eastside drug users have the highest HIV infection rate in the western world.

According to CBC News and BC Studies, "The Killing Fields" took place in the July of 1997. 

January 31, 2008: Homeless citizen Darrell Mickasko accidentally burns himself to death in a Vancouver lane while trying to keep warm with a Coleman stove. Similar to the deaths of Dawn Amanda Bergman (also known as Tracey), Michael Ciro Nestoruk, Paul "Duncan" Giesbrecht, Thomas Sawyer, and Michael Hubbard, Mickasko's death is seen by many as a result of the lack of proper housing, inequality, and the criminalization of poverty in BC.

After reading the book and imagining 365 cannon blasts in my head, I notice that many events made to the list are the first or the last in their nature. It makes me think the innumerable undocumented incidents that contribute to the first success that makes history, and the impact of something long standing eventually becoming absent. What I anticipate to be an interesting read of fun facts of Vancouver turn out to be a complex past of the land and the people who live on it. Like how most of the space on each page is left blank, the few fact stating sentences in plain language leave me with more questions than I begin with, which is what I think makes A Sign for the City a powerful project.