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Talking With Michael Christie On Life In “The Beggar’s Garden”

by Scott Daniel | Michael Christie is the author of The Beggar’s Garden, a collection of linked stories set in Vancouver and published by HarperCollins Canada. He’ll be launching the book at Ardea (2025 West 4th) on Friday, February 4th 2011 at 7pm (with beverages and snacks too!).

What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘gentrification?’ [negative connotation <—neutral/can cut both ways—> potential for progressive change]

To be quite honest, the word ‘gentrification’ sounds a tad meaningless these days, and usually glazes my eyes over pretty quick. As I understand it, gentrification describes the displacement of a working class neighborhood by wealthier people, the Lower Eastside of NYC being a textbook example. I suppose the most negative aspect of gentrification is that poor people are powerless against it. That is what poverty is: not just a lack of money, it’s a precariousness, an insecurity. If they get sick, get evicted, lose their job, get hurt, go a bit crazy, drink more than they should, then there is no time off, no leave of absence, no ‘finding yourself’. When they stumble, they fall. They are in a shelter, they are sleeping outside, they are selling their sexual services. So yes, gentrification will raise rents and renovate low-income housing and force people out, scattering their communities to the wind, and this is not fair. What’s worse is the idea that this displacement is natural and unavoidable, that poor people will always get screwed and they just have to go find somewhere else to get screwed, which is simplistic and cruel.

That said, there is also another equally wonky idea that the DTES is some kind of undisturbed cultural ecosystem, almost like a tribe yet to come into contact with civilization, somehow realer and more authentic than ours, which must be preserved, almost as a nature reserve would be. The idea that there is a cosmic rightness to the squalor of the crack hotels, or the pitiful existences of many who live down there is equally as misguided as thinking that they deserve to be there because they are bad people. Poverty is not a ‘culture,’ it is inhuman and dehumanizing, both for the people who experience it, and for those who permit it to continue.

So yeah, wealthy people get all the good hockey seats (or at least the ones close to the ice anyway…) and they get to live wherever the hell they want, like on cliffs and behind waterfalls and stuff. This is what it means to live in a free society and there is really not much hope of changing this. But the real tragedy, the greater and more enduring one, is that we even allow so many people to live in poverty, not only in the DTES, but all over this country, and that these people ultimately have little to no control over their own lives. If the people of the DTES weren’t so vulnerable, the push of gentrification wouldn’t be a big deal, because they would have the ability to go elsewhere and make it good. But they don’t.

In the microcosm, it is government’s job to mitigate these kinds of shifts so that they don’t have vastly negative effects on individuals, in this case by building low-income housing, or creating rent controls, etc. But more importantly, on a greater scale, it is also government’s job to make sure we can never ever fall that far down. Raising welfare rates and the minimum wage are perfect examples of ways to immediately alleviate the ill effects of poverty, thus making people a little less vulnerable.

But I struggle with this question because I don’t know the answer. Actually, it’s literature’s job to mostly ignore this stuff, to focus on the personal, the texture of individual experience. And when I hear discussions like this, including when I participate in them, I can’t help but thinking to myself: sure, sure, but what about all those poor poor people…and this includes not only the people who are forced out, but also those who are moving in.

I suppose this is at least one reason I both write and read fiction, because it can contain a sensibility or a complexity that can’t be described directly. Or, at the very least, fiction is the only thing I’ve found so far that feels utterly human.

The National Post review of the Beggar’s Garden compares your depiction of the downtown east side favourably with Mordecai Richler’s St. Urbain Street.  Do you think the DTES is part of a universal phenomenon of modern, urban disparity or more a uniquely west coast community of rags and riches characters?

Actually, the stories in The Beggar’s Garden take place in Greater Vancouver, not just in the Downtown Eastside, something that reviewers have so far failed to note. But that’s okay…it’s nice that they’re paying attention at all.

In 2007, Dan Rather came to Vancouver and in a news report called the DTES ‘Dickensian’. The word had been used before, but it struck me as profound that a man who had personally covered the atrocities of the Vietnam War could be shocked by a place right under our noses. This was around the time I’d begun to work on The Beggar’s Garden, and a kind of shift took place in my mind. I realized that this city was as real and worthy of literature as Dickens’ London, with all of its juxtapositions of class and culture taking place alongside one another. It also brought to mind the fictional goldmine of the Victorian estate, with its built in service quarters, its stable hands, its whispering maids, its houseguests and visiting royalty. If there were a more complex and fertile place to set a story, I’ve never heard of it. So, I knew that I knew this city, now all I had to do was write it. Which wasn’t easy and took me about four years. But now that the book is done, it seems that it really couldn’t have been set in any other city. I mean, where else can you go on a crack binge and end up in some of the most expensive real estate in the world?

So to answer your question, for me the DTES is kind of an extreme example of the modern urban disparity that is so increasingly common. Every city has homelessness, or ‘bad’ neighborhoods, but other places simply wouldn’t allow this to happen, by using more harsh and punitive tactics to cordon off the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’. In Vancouver, the contrast between the adjoining neighborhoods is so stark, and the physical beauty of the place is so jaw dropping, the effect is almost surreal. I suppose all this might have something to do with why I chose The Beggar’s Garden as the title of my book.

60 West Cordova is being marketed as a “new development model based on principles of inclusivity” and seems to represent architect Gregory Henriquez’s ambition to move toward an “ethical architecture.”

Do you think it’s possible for development in the DTES to be sensitive to people that are there now, or is a certain level of displacement inevitable? (NB: 60 W. Cordova is a co-op condo and a partnership between Habitat for Humanity, Portland Hotel Society, Vancity, and Westbank)

I got my undergraduate degree at Simon Fraser University, a campus famously designed by the celebrated architect Arthur Erickson. While I was there, I remember reading a book about how the school was envisioned and designed as a place for the cross-fertilization of knowledge, a new kind of place that would foster human connection and openness.

But my actual experience at SFU was profoundly lonely. I rarely talked to anyone and made very few friends. (To be fair, I’m not the most outgoing guy in the first place.) Most students commuted from far away, Surrey, Langley, and were taking too many courses, and were also working at the same time to pay tuition, which made it impossible for them to really participate in everything Erickson had envisioned. It wasn’t really their fault. But unfortunately, the way benches were carefully clustered to facilitate discussion, the zig-zagged bridge over the koi pond supposed to enforce contemplation, and the shafts of illuminating light filtering into the main mall area, were not going to make the lives of students any different. This stuff just sounds good to architects, I think. The reality was, the minute their classes were over, all these students had to return to the struggle of their lives, and there was nothing Arthur Erickson could do to stop them.

This is what we all do, focus on the theoretical, the rational elements of a problem, hoping that if we can set up the perfect circumstances for change, then change will happen, all while ignoring the deeper, more human questions and problems. We do this in our own lives, too. It’s like thinking the perfectly planned holiday will save your crumbling relationship, or thinking if you had a writing studio built onto your house, gorgeous prose would just pour out of you day after day (ahem…).

So no, although I think 60 West Cordova will probably provide some much needed support and low-income housing to some people, which is admirable and important, but these things don’t really affect larger issues. Architecture is great, but it can never make us ethical. That’s mostly the job of educators and parents.

What do you think of all the stylish new restaurants, clothing and design shops moving into the DTES?

On a personal, aesthetic level, I think some are awesome, some aren’t my thing, and some are basically ridiculous. And I suppose some work harder on integrating themselves into the area, which is good, and others don’t. But from a larger perspective, I really don’t care about them that much. They are stores. Restaurants. They are not our culture. And they are also not evil. It’s pretty hard to accuse somebody like Rob at the wonderful Solder and Sons as being some kind of heartless foot soldier of gentrification. How different is he really from the people who he is helping to displace? The guy was sleeping in his bookstore on upper Main when I first met him! That is until he had to move downtown because he couldn’t afford the rent.

Anyway, stores are just stores. I say let’s remember the people. All those people in that neighborhood, twitching and begging and wasting and dying and living bereft lives that just aren’t as good as yours and mine. That’s the problem. That’s the tragedy. What are we doing about it?

What’s your impression of the look and feel of Woodward’s redevelopment?  What kind of impact do you think it will have on the neighbourhood?

You know what, I haven’t been inside it yet, just haven’t had a reason to go. And I don’t know, people need to live somewhere. Plus there was social housing and daycare centers and stuff built into it, so that’s great. But I must say, all those community integration and art initiatives they do are kind of silly. Really, do people living in poverty need to make art and hear philosophy lectures in order to fully actualize themselves as human beings and become ‘empowered’? Where did this idea come from? I really think it’s something that the baby boomers believe, that art is some kind of way to personal enlightenment, perhaps because they never really had to worry about lack of employment. These kinds of initiatives are more feel-good projects than anything. People don’t need to make art. They need to work, they need to eat, they need to rest, they need to be safe, they need to be connected with their friends and families. It’s like thinking that dancing well is going to help lift ghetto kids in Los Angeles out of poverty? Really? All of them? That’s a lot of dancers! Where are they going to dance? For who?

So yeah, I don’t know. In the end, like the restaurants and stores, Woodwards is just a condo development. It’s not evil. But it’s certainly not going to save us. That, unfortunately, is up to us.

Now that you’re a fancy author, and assuming money is no object, what Vancouver neighbourhood would you choose to live in?

Actually I just bought that penthouse condo with the tree on its balcony that overlooks English Bay. You know the one everybody said Leonard Nimoy owned? I’m going to build a tiny tree house in that tree and live in it. So I guess I’ll be living there.

But seriously, I don’t know. I’ve never really had the luxury (and still don’t!) to actually choose where I live. Whenever I look for apartments, I just have a few neighborhoods in mind and then take the first one that I like that isn’t too expensive. Because I spend so much time at home, I care more about the interior than where it is. But yeah, I liked living in Strathcona, and Main Street, and Commercial Drive, and the West End. Those were all pretty good neighborhoods. I’d live there again quite happily. But I bet I’d like other neighborhoods, too, as long as the apartment felt good. And there was a good place to eat nearby. And there was a nearby park to lie in the grass and read.

There are 3 comments

  1. Thank you Scott. Really. Lots to think about.

    I’m headed to the book store to pick up a copy of The Beggar’s Garden now.