City on Edge: book and exhibition document Vancouver’s unrest
Posted October 8, 2017 8:26 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Anyone who knows anything about the history of Vancouver knows the city has a colourful past, especially when it comes to street demonstrations and urban unrest.
Now a new book is looking at that history. It’s called City on Edge, A Rebellious Century of Vancouver Protests, Riots, and Strikes.
The author, former Vancouver Sun photo librarian Kate Bird, says she was inspired to take it on while working on her previous title, Vancouver In The Seventies.
“There were so many protests in the `70s that I though, ‘Oh, gee, you could do a whole book on protests.’ This time though, I decided to look back for a whole century. Basically, it starts at 1900 and goes `til the 2017 Women’s March against [US President Donald] Trump.”
She points out Vancouver has had quite the history of sports-related violence, long before the Stanley Cup riots of 1994 amd 2011.
“1955, the very first Grey Cup was played here and there was a riot and there was another one, a Grey Cup riot in `58 and then 1966 as well.”
But it’s not just sports that make us a City on Edge.
“You know, we’re a port city, traditionally a resource-based of loggers, longshoreman, fishermen, so there was always a lot of union activism.”
City of Edge is also the name of a photo exhibition on at the Museum of Vancouver on through February, combining images from the book with even more photographs from the Sun and Province archives.
