Community Celebration
ILLUMINATING THE FOUR CORNERS
Saturday November 7, 8pm-9:30pm
Corner of Main and Hastings. Rain or shine

"We are here. We are here. We are here." Sandy Cameron

Come on down and look around!  See our Four Corners illuminated like never before! This open-air multi-level evening opens with a welcome song from Squamish elder Sam George. You'll see images of the faces of Downtown Eastside community members projected onto buildings and through windows; buildings lit up with lights; musicians and poets performing from windows, balconies and soap boxes;  music of the Downtown Eastside Samba Band; a theatrical re-enactment (with members of the Carnegie Community Action Project) of the 1935 occupation by unemployed workers at the Carnegie Museum; neighbourhood banners by artist Diane Wood; Chinese lion dancers; songs from the Carnegie Village Choir Project led by Beverly Dobrinsky; ending with a street celebration on the four corners. Ohh...and did we say 'popcorn'?

We are here: to illuminate this corner - this neighbourhood - this community. We are here: standing proud and saying "This is who we are. This is our community, the heart of Vancouver."
Illuminating the Four Corners has been made possible with the support of the City of Vancouver Great Beginnings Program.

Free

ILLUMINATING THE FOUR CORNERS

Located on unceded Coast Salish land, the four corners at Hastings and Main have been home to Coast Salish people for thousands of years. For over a hundred years, it's been a gathering place for immigrants arriving from the four corners of the globe. Today it's the crossroads for residents of Gastown, the Main and Hastings corridors, Chinatown, Strathcona, Japantown (Powell Street) and the city of Vancouver.

People gather at the four corners to find lost friends, catch up on the news and connect with their community. In 1903, the Carnegie Public Library/Museum and City Hall stood at the corner and Hastings was packed with people, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels, rooming houses, bars, and coffee shops. It was Vancouver's most important social and commercial district. Tattoo artists worked in sidewalk kiosks, lady barbers set up on the street, hawkers sold miracle cures side by side with evangelists warning sinners to return to the fold before the end of the world.

During the economic depression of 1907 homeless people camped out on the False Creek flats and half the city's population turned up for an Asiatic Exclusion League parade to City Hall at the "four corners." Inflammatory speeches sent the crowd storming down Pender into Chinatown--breaking windows, looting, starting fires--then raced to Powell Street's "Little Tokyo" where they were stopped by armed resistance from the residents.

During the hard times of the 1930s, Hastings Street was the main thoroughfare for public demonstrations for "work and wages" and in 1935 unemployed men occupied Carnegie for a day. The streets were a neon-lit circus of activity lined with theatres, cafes, bars, gambling clubs and union offices.

Changes followed World War II that reverberate in our community to this day: from the tearing up of the BC Electric Railway and street car tracks to the closing of the Carnegie library and museum (it stood vacant for over a decade); from the loss of housing and jobs to the closure of the community's largest business, Woodward's. These kinds of losses tore holes in the community's heart.

But this is a neighbourhood that refuses to lie down. After a six-year fight, the City agreed to re-open the Carnegie Library as a Community Centre and as each new physical and social change arrives to strain our social fabric, new grassroots initiatives rise to meet the challenges with local solutions. With the Carnegie building's Centennial celebration in 2003, initiatives arose to celebrate the community as the original heart of Vancouver; showcase our community's talents and cultures with affordable safe events; and commemorate its achievements and losses, its heroes and stories.

Here - at the crossroads of Main and Hastings--in the words of poet and historian Sandy Cameron, "the citizens of Vancouver can take pride in the long history of the Downtown Eastside."

by Savannah Walling