Vancouver: Not So Down

These are full of stories on the Downtown Eastside,” she is soon telling me, standing before two filing cabinets. “You might need this to sort through them.” The list of headings she hands me runs eight pages, headings divided into subheadings. I could conceivably spend my entire stay in the dtes in a corner of the Carnegie Centre’s reading room, whose high ceilings and stained glass windows lend it the fedora-and-greatcoat feel of bygone times. Indeed, the media’s fascination with the area goes back many decades, to when the city’s three dailies were all located here.

I take the thick “2000+” file to a table by the window. At first, it’s hard to concentrate. Below, in the Lane of Shame, two guys are arguing about dope. Then someone yells, “Six-up!” and a siren squawks.

The headlines from the past few years were a curious blend of misery and hope: “How Much Longer Do We Have to Live in Fear? ” “Fed-up Merchants Tell City to Arrest Junkies,” “New Hopes for Pigeon Park Take Flight,” “Vancouver’s Future Rising in the East.” Much of the hope resided in getting away from what some termed the “poverty industrial complex” by developing the area. With the downtown core all but built out, gentrification was underway. Cocktail lounges and art galleries were cropping up around such seedy locales as Pigeon Park, and condos were going into the once-boarded-up Woodward’s building. Corporate and government money was pouring into the area. Everyone, it seemed, was taking a saintly stab at the Eastside’s troubles, whether in the form of grand plans from above (“Can the Olympics Help Turn Around This Neighbourhood?”) or innovations from below (“Spa Gives Poor Women New Look, New Attitude” ).

I hear horseshoes echoing in the alley. Gendarmes on horseback; vaulted ceilings and stained glass; articles about rat infestations, epidemics, illiteracy, and human and animal feces piling up in the alleys. For an instant, my surroundings take on a rather medieval air.

Medieval the surroundings may be, but that didn’t mean Eastsiders were thrilled about the approaching enlightenment (“Kerfoot’s Plan Spells Ethnic Cleansing,” read the headline above one story, about a local developer’s desire to build a soccer stadium). This is the rub of the Downtown Eastside: some find life better here than elsewhere. Add them to those who have known little but the life they’ve made here and those who simply don’t fit in anywhere else, and you have a place with a certain magnetism.

the astoria
The boxing club in the basement of the Astoria Hotel is often left unlocked during the day. You simply go to the back of the building’s street-level beer and wine store on East Hastings and disappear down the stairs. As long as the cashier recognizes you as a boxer, you can enter anytime and train. In the forest green gym, guys skip rope next to crates of empties, and water drips from the ceiling. Some of the province’s best fighters have come from the Astoria — Eastside immigrant boys such as Olympian Manny Sobral and Commonwealth Games medallist Geronimo Bie.

Antonio Dos Santos is not of their calibre. He is, however, the best the club has to offer these days, and on a lazy afternoon I walk the ten blocks from my sro to the Astoria to watch him spar.

When I arrive, he’s suiting up. Unlike his opponent, he straps on the most cumbersome headgear, which makes his head appear too big for his body. I give him a thumbs-up, and the bell rings. The boxer closes in on his opponent.

Antonio, who is in his thirties, told me he left Angola a decade ago. His first walk on Canadian soil was through the dtes after arriving at the Port of Vancouver. The area has long been a clearinghouse for Canada. In the mid-nineteenth century came the first major wave of Anglos, then the Chinese, the Japanese, the Greeks, the Scandinavians, the Jews, the Eastern Europeans, the East Indians, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Chileans, the Vietnamese, and the Central Americans. They came mostly in waves, but sometimes, like Antonio, alone. Initially the draw was the neighbourhood’s proximity to jobs. Sawmills and canneries dotted the shore — suitable employers for those unfamiliar with the local language and customs. Though these industries have all but vacated, immigrants continue to arrive, lured by cheap rent and the concentration of social services.

Antonio’s Eastside story began when, after fighting rebels in Angola’s jungles for four years, he deserted the army and sneaked onto a freighter. Somewhere across the Atlantic, he said, he was discovered hiding in the engine room. “The Filipino sailors hate me, they beat me as a punching bag,” he tells me. “Then the Greek captain, he threaten to drop me in water and even had the Filipino guys prepare a raft with food. I was never so scared in life. All I see was ocean!” Antonio’s life was spared when the ship’s engineer intervened. The stowaway spent the rest of the voyage on half rations in a dark cabin.