Mount Pleasant, East Vancouver, 1991

As I write the introduction for what I hope will be the long-awaited Eighties Vancouver book, I’ve consulted neighbourhood maps to check how many areas of the city I lived in.

I’m surprised to discover that, over the decade documented in my project, I’d spent time in two different neighbourhoods in East Vancouver —  Mount Pleasant and Kensington-Cedar Cottage, both at 2 locations. Regular readers will know I have a habit of rolling stones in one home garden after another, apparently I am a rolling stone.

The photo above, made in 1991, falls just outside the categorization imposed by the 80s title. Perhaps there’ll be a Volume II. Returning from Toronto — where I lived in two neighbourhoods, over 2 years — I revisited Kensington-Cedar Cottage, then moved east over Fraser Street to Mount Pleasant.

The East Vancouver I knew had not yet attained the counterculture cachè it enjoys today. The EastVan cross created by artist Ken Lum and raised at the intersection of Great Northern Way and Clark Drive in 2010, remained a defiant freak flag from the other side of the tracks.

About the book: I’m hoping to have a completed draft ready before summer is out. It will be comprised of photographs drawn from the medium format work featured in the 80s gallery hosted on this site, along with a couple of previously-unpublished images. I’ll likely include short blurbs facing each photo. Want to stay up on progress? Sign up for the newsletter below.