Fifty Years Young
Raising a glass to five decades of documenting our ever-changing city.
, the May long weekend has just wrapped up, and the cruelty of this past spring’s incessant rain has been instantly forgiven after the greatest day at the beach. Possibly even better, on yet another sunny day, I took aleisurely and schedule-free stroll with friends through a few of the newer craft breweries that make up “Yeast Van.” It was agreat weekend and the perfect set-up for me to put the nishing touches on this 50th anniversary issue.
Compared to many of our eastern counterparts, Vancouver is a young city. This means that heritage structures are thinner on the ground here (though Matt O’Grady’s “Vancouver’s Future Hinges on Chinatown” [page 32] oers plenty to think about in terms of how to move forward while protecting the heritage we have). But it also means we’re often far more open to change than older cities, and, as our editorial team has discovered in diving through 50 years of back issues, our neighbourhoods have changed quickly.
It’s well illustrated in our feature, “When We Were Young” (page 42), from the artist Oraf—whose photos appeared in the magazine in the late ’80s and early ’90s. His shots from the city’s gay bar scene of that era shine a light on a dierent Yaletown, when, in 1981, it was a dangerous spot to be after-hours—the empty warehouses felt foreboding after the sun set (though abold many made their way to the Gandy Dancer, a Saturday Night Fever- esque club in its midst).
I was struck by the start of a similar transformation as we wandered through the still-industrial neighbourhoods that host Andina, Callister and Bomber breweries. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, we were part of a scene that didn’t exist ve years ago: at one stop, a toddler perched on a stool with a stick of pepperoni while his dad grabbed a beer; in another, a group of 40-somethings triumphantly listed the six breweries they’d already visited that day; and my group decided to loll a little longer in the bright white tasting room of Callister Brewing—one of our crew had her eye on a guy she’d met in meditation class that day, and he’d just wandered in.
Our young and «exible city creates these new spaces seemingly overnight, a magic trick this 50th anniversary issue explores. Fifty years is several lifetimes in Vancouver, with dramatic physical shifts—our aerial maps of early ’70s versus present-day Vancouver show a bird’s-eye view to these changes (page 20)—and cultural ones, too, some of which are documented by Michael Hingston as he attempts to navigate the city with a 1997 Lonely Planet guide (page 64).
And through all these shifts, Vancouver magazine has been aconstant of sorts: here to witness, to document, to debate, and to reflect our city back to you. There are without a doubt many more changes to come in our near-and long-term future—some welcome, some controversial, some short-lived themselves. It’s hard to imagine what this city will look like in ve, 10, even another 50 years, but whatever Vancouver’s cultural and physical landscapes become, the VanMag team looks forward to many more years of documenting and debating them, and to evolving alongside our city and its citizens.