Get behind the scenes of Vancouver Special with author Charles Demers

Writing about an entire city isn’t exactly a small subject. How did you start working on the book?

I started by making the mistake of trying to read as much about the city as I could, which – given the time constraints for getting my ideas together and writing the book – was sort of like trying to get to the end of a hallway by opening every door and exploring every room along the way, each room, in turn, containing a few more doors and passages to explore. For all the talk about history-free Vancouver, there is a ton of it here, as well as a ton of writing, thinking, and agitating about it, and it’s easy to get lost in it – the more you learn, the less you feel like you know. Knowing this whole city is too immense a job for anyone, and I only really started to be able to relax when I accepted that this would be a small, idiosyncratic contribution to the city, rather than a summary of it. Also, when I discovered that diet Pepsi with the extra caffeine and ginseng. That helped a lot, too.

Any interesting experiences while doing research?

I spent an afternoon at the Vancouver Police Museum in the Downtown Eastside, and went on their Sins of the City walking tour, which I highly recommend. That was probably the most memorable afternoon of research that I did – and the Vancouverismo of the experience was amplified when, by coincidence, my small tour group also consisted of the Executive Director of one of Vancouver’s municipal political parties: Rachel Marcuse, the ED for COPE. For the most part, the best part about the research was really getting to disappear into nothing but Vancouver for several months – it’s given me a sense of place that I really appreciate.

What was the most unexpected thing you learned about Vancouver while writing the book?

I was surprised, and thrilled, to learn that I had been misinformed about the Chinese community’s response to the 1907 anti-Asian Riot. Conventional wisdom has always been that the Chinese fled, or hid in the backs of their shops and homes while the racists went wild, and that the armed resistance that eventually repelled and broke up the riot at Japantown was exclusively made up of Japenese-Canadians. As it turns out, the Chinese circled around the riot and joined up with the Japanese on Powell Street and fought alongside them against the white rioters. The Chinese community’s motivations for mounting the fight in Japantown, though, were less than altruistic – apparently, or so I was told, they figured (probably correctly) that the whites couldn’t tell the Chinese and Japanese apart, so the safest bet was to pretend they were Japanese when they fought back, so that any retaliation would be taken out on the Japanese instead of the Chinese. Sometimes solidarity is a tricky thing, I guess.

Describe for me your ideal Vancouver day.

On a brilliantly sunny August day a few years ago, my wife and I marched with the StopWar float in the Pride Parade – a statue of George Bush holding a Stephen Harper marionette, each dressed up like cowboys – handing out stickers all along the parade route down to Sunset Beach. After the parade, we took the aquabus across False Creek to Granville Island, where we bought some blueberries and salmon; my wife, who is from Toronto, had never tried Indian Candy. We took the fruit and the fish to a bench where we could sit and look at the Burrard Bridge while we ate. I find it hard to imagine a better Vancouver day.

It’s 4 pm, you’re starving, and dinner’s a long way off. Where are you headed for a snack?

It definitely depends where I’m at – if I’m anywhere near Main street and 7th Avenue, The Foundation has the best nachos in the city, bar none. More than I’d like to admit, I crave the Bliss Balls at Sweet Cherubim on the Drive, which are full of hippy goodness. And the ultimate Vancouver snack, of course, is the dollar-slice (though these days they usually cost a buck-fifty). For taste, there’s no beating Uncle Fatih’s at Commercial and Broadway, but if I’m trying to cover up with a fig leaf of healthfulness, I’ll opt for the whole grain crust at Urban Grain, further up the Drive.

What do you think is the most bizarre myth about life in Vancouver?

There are so many! Earlier this year BC Hydro said that the rates of energy consumption in the condos around down basically give the lie to the idea, once taken as fact, that nobody really lives in the condos downtown, like that there are these huge vacancy rates due to foreigners owning unused condos that sit empty throughout the downtown core. That that turned out to be untrue was incredibly surprising for a lot of people. What else? The myth that there are no black people here is surprisingly pervasive. Given the evidence at hand, it seems impressive that the myth about the Olympics being good for the economy has survived. I guess the biggest myth, and one that I hope my book can help dispel, is the one that says that Vancouver is boring, and/or has no history. It’s complete bullshit – we’ve got a ton.

If you could meet any prominent Vancouver figure, living or dead, who would it be?

That’s really, really hard to say. George Woodcock or Pauline Johnson would be pretty high up on the list, but so too would an underworld figure like Joe Celona. I’d like to get swimming lessons from Joe Fortes, and I imagine, too, that the Fillliponi brothers, who owned and operated The Penthouse nightclub and who were for decades at the centre of both the Vancouver jazz and entertainment scene as well as the sex trade would have the craziest stories. Ultimately, though, maybe I’d just have a nice, quiet sit-down with the Beachcombers.

You describe in your essay about Commercial Drive, the infamous graffiti on Joe’s Cafe. Seen any other great pieces of graffiti around town?

I didn’t see it, but my friend Graham described to me one of those “Do Not Stand in Stairwell” signs on the bus that had been modified to read “Do Hand Stand in Stairwell.” So far that’s my favourite. The Vancouver graffiti meme that gives me the most hope for the human spirit is the one that says ‘Riot 2010’ – though I must admit that I appreciated the cynicism in one that I saw recently on the 10th avenue bike route that read “Relax 2010.”

So this year, you’ve written a book on Vancouver, finished up your first novel (The Prescription Errors, coming this fall from Insomniac Press), and, oh yeah, hosted a TV show five nights a week. Do I dare ask what the experience of writing the book was like?

There was a point, right in the thick of the writing as my deadlines were fast approaching, where I had to go to Montreal as Vancouver’s representative in a comedy competition at Just For Laughs. Doing JFL is every comic’s dream, but I really had no time at all, and on the days when I wasn’t performing, my schedule was to wake up around one in the afternoon, write until eleven-thirty or midnight, then walk over to where the networking parties were happening, schmooze until three or four, then go back to the hotel and sleep. I was so crazily immersed in all things Vancouver, but I was in Montreal, and that coupled with the crazy, solitary confinement and schedule, resulted in the craziest dislocation I’ve ever felt.

Who are your favourite writers?

I don’t think I have too many surprising answers to that question – the greats are the greats, and there’s nothing too interesting about a young white male who likes Philip Roth, which I happen to. My favourite Vancouver-set novels are George Bowering’s Burning Water and Lee Henderson’s The Man Game; and Anne Stone’s Delible, though set in Ontario, deals with the issues surrounding missing women in a way that’s clearly informed by her being a Vancouverite. Anne’s partner, Wayde Compton, is also one of my favourite writers of and on Vancouver. It was a pleasure for me to get to write Vancouver Special as a collection of essays, because it’s one of my favourite prose forms to read, and Vancouver has some pretty stupendous essayists: Dorothy Woodend, George Fetherling, Vanessa Richmond, Deborah Campbell and Stephen Osborne, for starters, as well as the late Bruce Serafin.