In March, we celebrate International Women’s Day, so we’re shining a light on the issues and opportunities girls and women face in the public realm, and celebrating women-led, women-centred advocacy, artistry, and placemaking.

The evening will include a series of short presentations from women shaping Vancouver’s public realm, an opportunity for dialogue, and small group discussion amongst participants. As part of this, attendees will have a chance to roll up their sleeves and identify priorities for public space advocacy in Vancouver.

More info, including details on the speakers will be posted shortly.

TICKETS

To help us with planning, registration via Eventbrite is required. Tickets are by donation. A suggested donation of $10/ticket helps us to cover the costs of the event.

There were many highlights, but as a public space geek (if you’re reading this, consider yourself in my company!) I was particularly pumped about the stories Shirley Chan shared about the role food played in the activism that the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association carried out -with legendary success!- many decades ago when their rich neighbourhood was threatened by misguided and destructive urban renewal plans. I was also pumped when Devorah Kahn noted that it was only very recently that Farmers Markets were designated as legal uses of public space. Up until that point, we were all being a little badass for buying our radishes from these markets, and that is a pretty awesome feeling.

Herstory Cafe offers events like this on an ongoing basis, so I highly encourage going to one of their future events. Another event I wholeheartedly suggest you check out if you are interested in food and the connections it facilitates in the community is The Vancouver Fruit Tree Project Harvest Party. This local group harvests the unwanted or underutilized fruit from private and public fruit trees and redistributes it to community groups that use it to feed and educate people in our community without reliable access to good, healthy produce. It’s a pretty cool project, and it should be a cool event. Matthew Kempshaw from Environmental Youth Alliance – another wonderful local group – will be speaking on local food security and local musician Corey Hawthorne will provide tunes for the night. It all goes down on Thursday, November 4th, from 6:30-9pm at Rhizome Cafe (317 E. Broadway). It should be another great night for food and fun in the city!

Mary Hale canning herring for BC Packers
City of Vancouver Archives – CVA 1184-59

Among the many interesting events coming up in the next few days is this one — looking at the historical connections between women and food in Vancouver. Organized by the City Women’s Advisory Committee, the event takes place next Tuesday evening (Oct 26). 

Here’s the press release:

Women and Food: A Vancouver Historical Perspective
Celebrating Women’s History Month at City Hall

Join Herstory Café for an evening of historical insight into the role of women in the food industry of Vancouver. Hosted by City Council’s liaison to the Women’s Advisory Committee, the event is scheduled for October 26 from 7 pm to 9 pm in Council Chambers at Vancouver City Hall.

In recognition of Women’s History Month, the evening will involve a series of guest speakers, each with their own perspective on how women of diverse backgrounds have played a defining role in the history of food in Vancouver.

Through the production, cultivation, distribution, preservation and sharing of food, women have influenced the development of local businesses and industrial growth in Vancouver. Despite war times, tough economic times and other defining moments of Vancouver’s history, food-related activities of women supported the well-being of families.

Women have played an especially important role in BC’s canneries, particularly when men were dispatched to war. Some women were even taken from school to ensure fresh, frozen and canned foods were readily available.

In 1948, a celebrated local icon, Vie Moore, opened what became a well-known restaurant in Hogan’s Alley at the heart of Vancouver’s black community in the East End. Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, famous for southern fried cooking and blues music, became a gathering place for people with diverse backgrounds from all over the city. Her eatery provided many jobs for women before it closed in 1975.

The panel of local speakers on Oct. 26 will share historical accounts, memories, traditional knowledge and experiences from the perspective of First Nations, Indo-Canadian, Black, and Chinese communities. Speakers will also present on topics such as sustainability, labour, the service industry, farmer’s markets and community gardens. Guest speakers include:

• Andrea Reimer, Vancouver City Councillor
• Cease Wyss, Squamish Nation Artist and Filmmaker
• Meeru Dhalwala, cookbook author, chef and co-owner of Vij’s Restaurant
• Tracey McDougall, granddaughter of Vie Moore, owner of Vie’s Chicken and Steak House
• Edith Turner, Gulf of Georgia Cannery
• Shirley Chan, CEO Building Opportunities for Business
• Devorah Kahn, previously Food Policy Coordinator for the City of Vancouver and former Executive Director of Vancouver’s Farmers Markets

Info on speakers and their presentations is available at www.herstorycafe.ca

More about the Women’s Advisory Committee can be found on the City’s website.

Helena Gutteridge, first woman elected to Vancouver City Council
(Photo: BC Archives, Call#C-07954)

Today is the 99th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Over the past few decades, attention to the role that gender plays in city-building and the public realm has continued to grow.

While it is often still the case that “distinction between masculine and feminine space overlaps with distinctions between work and home and between public and private life” (Nancy Kleniewski, Cities, Change and Conflict) – it is also true that, from a city planning perspective, many of these distinctions between masculine and feminine space have been critically assessed and tackled. This makes the city more inclusive for everyone.

If, as elsewhere around the world, a doctrine of separate spheres characterized life in Vancouver up through the first three-quarters of the 20th century, it is to our collective benefit that, since the 1970s, the role of gender in planning and city-building began to fall under the lens of feminist writing and activism.

It was at this pivotal point, as Leonie Sandercock notes in her book Towards Cosmopolis, that “the spatial order of the modern industrial city came to be seen as a profoundly patriarchal spatial order…” To this end, we can credit pioneers such as Jane Jacobs with kick-starting the critical assessment of cities and the planners that designed them.

The result, says Sandercock, was that

“urban social movements advocating for women’s needs in the city – needs for more and better public transport, for child care, for community facilities, for safety for a right to occupy public space, and night, and so on – have flourished…”

Not only is this better from the perspective of equality and human rights, it’s better for city-building, period. Take the case of urban design and how it affects parks and plazas. After an exhaustive study of open spaces in New York, sociologist William H. Whyte identified a simple principle:

“The best used places also tend to have a higher than average proportion of women… Women are more discriminating than men as to where they will sit, they are more sensitive to annoyances, and they spend more time casing a place…. If a plaza has a markedly low proportion of women, something is wrong. Conversely, if it has a high proportion, the plaza is probably a good and well-managed one and has been chosen as such.” (Whyte, The Design of Spaces)

Of course there is more work to be done. Much more. Another example. Switching from park plazas to the democratic space of City Hall, we note that the local government continues to be comprised of an elected body that under-represents the city’s gender demographic. Where women have comprised between 50 and 51% of the population of Vancouver (and have done so for decades) the composition of women elected to City Council is, and always has been much lower.

As the figure above illustrates, of the 12 municipal elections since 1980, seven have produced results in which the ratio of men to women was about 3:1, two had results in which the ratio was about 4:1, and only one instance, the 1993 contest, saw the number of women elected anywhere near the 50% mark (5 out of 11, or 46%). While the last two elections have each seen four women Councillors elected, the fact is that parity still hasn’t been achieved.

This has to change.

Today, let’s take a moment to honour the many fantastic achievements that have been made – in planning, design, and in city-building in all its forms. Let’s also take a moment to renew our collective commitment to make this city open, inclusive and accessible to people of all genders, ages, ethnicities and abilities.

Postscript – While on the subject – readers may want to check out the poster display created by the Parks Board to acknowledge the achievements of local women athletes. There are some fantastic stories here.

A crowd of several thousand people gathered in front of the Carnegie Centre for the 19th annual Women’s Memorial March. The event honours the lives of missing and murdered women – not only in the Downtown Eastside but across the country.

According to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, 3000 women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since the 1970s, more than 60 of them from the Downtown Eastside. A disproportionate number are Aboriginal.

The 2010 march started under clear blue skies, beginning with the sound of drumming and song. Walking north from Main and Hastings, elders and family members led a stream of participants to the foot of Alexander Street and then east into Gastown. Some carried photos. Others walked silently, holding hands.

At several points along the route the march halted temporarily, stopping to allow flowers to be placed on various memorials. The smell of sage cleansed the air while other participants – in a crowd stretching back several blocks – slowly brought up the rear.

Heading south on Abbott, the parade turned onto Hastings, paused at Pigeon Park, and then carried on – returning to its starting point.

:: Photos from the Women’s Memorial March