Evelyn Lau composes poems as she strolls along the False Creek seawall. A line from a 2011 digital exhibit near the Kitsilano end of the Burrard Bridge crept into Daphne Marlatt’s poem “after noon’s” and poet Bud Osborn was instrumental in establishing North America’s first supervised injection site on East Hastings.
These are literary layers to the city that the Vancouver Public Library, B.C. BookWorld newspaper, the VPL Foundation and supporter Yosef Wosk hope to expose to passersby as they roam Vancouver streets.
Colourful plaques that feature a photo of a writer, the significance of that place in relation to them and an excerpt of their work have been attached to more than two dozen lampposts around the city as part of the Literary Landmarks project that was unveiled March 11.
A plaque at East 49th Avenue and Fraser Street marks the postal route of Sadhu Binning whose 2014 fiction collection, Fauji Banta Singh and Other Stories, examines the private lives of Sikhs in B.C. in the late 20th century during racially and economically unstable times. Another adorns a post in front of the former headquarters of the Jin Wah Sing Musical Association at 1 East Pender Street and features Wayson Choy, author of the 1995 novel The Jade Peony, an intergenerational saga about an immigrant family during the Depression.
Most of the plaques are posted near the city’s downtown core, but one near a house on the 3800-block of West 11th Avenue marks a former residence of Margaret Atwood. The world-renowned writer finished The Circle Game collection of poems and wrote her novel The Edible Woman when she lived there in the mid-1960s and lectured at UBC.
Highlighted writers include poets, novelists, playwrights and a humourist both dead and alive.
B.C. BookWorld publisher and former VPL board member Alan Twigg curated the landmarks project and the VPL’s chief librarian Sandra Singh says they debated whether to include 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature winner and author of the poem “Gunga Din” Rudyard Kipling, who owned investment property in Vancouver.
“He never actually lived here and wrote here so we decided not [to include him],” Singh said.
But they did include the site of poet Osborn’s activist work.
“Writers contribute to the community in a variety of different ways, and so folks that might know someone for one contribution, to suddenly realize, ‘Oh they also did this,’ is a really nice way to layer on a deeper understanding of that person and what they were interested in and what they were contributing to the community,” Singh said.
She hopes passersby will encounter writers they haven’t previously considered and be inspired to read their works.
A companion interactive online map at vpl.ca/literarylandmarks highlights the locations around the city, provides additional details about the authors and links to their works in the VPL catalogue.
“Reading literature is a critical experience for people. It’s one of the most important activities that you can engage in to build empathy, for example, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and to experience the world from a different view,” Singh said. “It’s really important to living in a diverse and empathic society.”
Five to 10 writers are to be added to the project each year.
“We’re really proud of the literary community here in Vancouver,” Singh said. “We are really fortunate to have such a rich literary heritage in Vancouver. It’s just extraordinary.”
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