`SURVIVING VANCOUVER,' IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE
Author Kluckner provides a unique perspective on city's past and present
What survives of early Vancouver?
And how can residents survive contemporary Vancouver?
Those are the questions historian and artist Michael Kluckner delves into in his edgy new illustrated book, Surviving Vancouver.
We can be grateful that Kluckner has himself somehow survived this city, for which the term “fast-changing” does not do justice. While many have written powerfully about their love and, to put it politely, frustration, with this place, three people stand out.
Sadly, Chuck Davis, effervescent historian-about-town, died in 2010. Yet we still have Daniel Francis, who recently completed Becoming Vancouver, a chronological history. And Kluckner, who at age 73 has put together at least half a dozen books on Metro Vancouver, and has now written what he calls the “conclusion” to his series.
Kluckner's history books, with their unique addition of watercolours and drawings, started in 1984, with Vancouver The Way It Was.
That was followed by Vanishing Vancouver in 1990, which won many awards and resulted in him being characterized as a heritage champion.
While Kluckner has always put tenderness into his images, some now more frequently point to trouble.
They more often quietly capture residents' discomfort with this metropolis of 2.5 million people.
And Kluckner's penetrating words expand on his illustrations, probing the big cultural and political themes that have long been threatening the region, which have turned more urgent since the turn of the century.
When he focuses on the word “surviving” as a verb, many of the issues he pinpoints revolve around housing unaffordability. It reminds me of writing in 2018 that housing had become the city's worst emergency since the Second World War. Since then, no one I'm aware of has offered a counter argument. To say the least, Kluckner wouldn't disagree.
Things have sped up fast in this gateway city. In his 2024 book, Kluckner reflects on how his 1996 book, titled Michael Kluckner's Vancouver, “was a gentle thing, done at a time when the city seemed quite stable and affordable, in a pause between the post-Expo boom and the development frenzy that began soon after the Millennium.” Today, in contrast, he says one of his friends describes his latest book as “acid-tinged.”
In it, Kluckner notes the National Bank of Canada calculates it would take a Vancouver person on a median income 28.5 years “to be able to afford a down payment to buy a house.” Whereas, in Winnipeg or Edmonton, it takes that same individual just 29 months.
Kluckner pays close attention to journalists, economists and housing scholars. Citing the latest research, he reminds us how money brought into Canada by “satellite families” — which B.C.'s speculation tax form defines as those who earn most of their income offshore — often goes into housing investment, especially at the high end. And one UBC study found “owners of Greater Vancouver homes with a median value of $3.7 million pay income taxes of just $15,800 — exceedingly low for North American cities.”
In a chapter titled “Making Room for the Rich,” he juxtaposes a colourful older Vancouver building with the angularity of The Alberni, one of Vancouver's new luxury towers for what are now called “ultra-high-net-worth-individuals (UHNWI).” Despite being a watercolour, its cool, discordant sensibility echoes what is happening to this city, which few believe is growing warmer in character.
Along with the influx of money into Metro Vancouver, Kluckner wonders about the ennui settling in. He quotes several people on the subject, including Kaitlin Fung, who says, “As a lifelong Vancouverite, I often wonder: Why is it so easy to feel alone here?” One national study ranked lonely Vancouver as the “unhappiest city” in the country. It gets Kluckner musing: “Is urban design the cause of social isolation, or is it the internet and the tenuous camaraderie of social media? Or just the scale of cities, whether it is Vancouver or Surrey?”
His book reverberates with beautiful watercolours, historical maps and fetching illustrations, old and new.
There are lovely sections on fascinating neighbourhoods, past and present.
They include a long essay on Shaughnessy, plus explorations of Chinatown, Hogan's Alley, Burnaby's Brentwood and Richmond's farmland, including its recently banned mega-mansions.
Cleverly, to capture the city's rapid evolution, he inserts some 1990s drawings of Vancouverites doing things they no longer do — like standing in telephone booths and even reading newspapers in public parks (shocking!). He also includes pastoral images of old corner stores, trees and even hotels, like the Sheraton Landmark, that have since been demolished for glistening condo towers.
Kluckner has witnessed a lot over the years, and it shows. It raises the question: How has he personally survived the evolution of Vancouver? In part by moving away for 18 years, to a farm in Langley and then Australia. His family returned in 2010 and was able to buy a fixer-upper near Commercial Drive because prices were somewhat deflated after the 2008 financial crisis.
Still, he finds all the new money, and the strange politics, discouraging. “I'm very frustrated by our inability to convince the City of Vancouver, and now the province, that adapting existing buildings is a green strategy. So is retaining the character and levels of history that more mature cities than Vancouver have,” he said in an interview.
Recent schemes by the City of Vancouver and the B.C. government to upzone almost all the province's neighbourhoods, without consultation, “are the greatest gift to land speculators and assemblers that's ever happened,” he said.
“It's like the old definition of stupid. `We've been upzoning property for years and housing is getting less and less affordable, so what we have to do is upzone even more property to higher levels!' I thought provincially that I voted for social democrats, not social autocrats.”
In regard to his own tolerance for what goes on in this endless construction zone, it reminds him of a conversation he had recently with a young Mexican woman in Mexico City.
“She was talking about her city's problems — obviously huge compared with Vancouver's — and said: `It's a mess, but I love it.' That's the way I feel about Vancouver.”
Hundreds of thousands of people know what he's talking about.
I thought provincially that I voted for social democrats, not social autocrats.
MICHAEL KLUCKNER, author and artist