Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.
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The holiday season is upon us. For VanRamblings that means spending time with friends and family (as I suspect is the case with most of us), and a level of busyness that is unusual for us — given that much of our life is given over to the creative endeavour of writing on VanRamblings, which entails a dozen hours or more each day sitting in front of our computer composing the posts that you read from time to time, on this blog of ours.
From April 20th on of this year — six months out from the 2018 Vancouver municipal election — there was a raison d’être for VanRamblings: to introduce you to the candidates we felt were worthy and deserving of your vote. To that end, we wrote as many as 2500 words each day about the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, the issues we felt were important for candidates to address, and who we felt best were most capable of creating the city we need, a fairer and more just city for all.
While it remains our intention to continue our coverage of Vancouver City Council, School Board and Park Board, we are not quite so obsessed with civic governance and all that occurs each day with the process of decision-making that will lead to creating a city for all of us. In Vancouver, we’ve elected our Mayor, Kennedy Stewart, and a pretty darn fine group of City Councillors, School Board trustees and Park Board Commissioners — we’re prepared to let them get on with the job sans the obsessive coverage that has come to define VanRamblings these past almost eight months.
Damara, our new 3-year-old kitty, soon to be our companion as we write each day.
Here’s our plan for VanRamblings, then, going forward, which, of course, is subject to change — we’re planning on writing about politics once or twice a week this month. We have a column on Janet Fraser, Chairperson of the Vancouver School Board, that we’re intending to write, with likely publication this upcoming week (for the record, we consider Dr. Fraser to be a transformative political figure, and believe we should all be grateful for the gift of her presence on Vancouver’s political scene). We’ve also got a column on Vancouver International Film Festival programmer Tom Charity’s Best of 2018, which it is our current intention to publish next Friday.
In fact, VanRamblings will publish a great many columns on film this month — because we love film, considering it to be the art of our age, and during the April through October period we forfeited our love of film in favour of covering the election — where the majority of candidates we endorsed were elected to office, as well as a few we failed to endorse, but should have.
As far as is possible, in addition to our once or twice a week political coverage, we’ll keep up our Arts Friday coverage — which will be given over to film for the foreseeable future, but within which we plan to expand our coverage into other facets of Vancouver’s arts scene. We’ll continue our Stories of a Life feature — no such posting this week, or last, but next week we promise — and our Music Sunday feature, which tomorrow oughta emerge as a sort of Story of a Life when, and if, it actually comes to fruition. Tuesdays and Thursdays may be fallow days, or given over to tech coverage — we have a column for Apple iPhone SE, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and X users we’ll publish this upcoming Tuesday.
In the new year, VanRamblings will finally write about our cancer journey — which “story” will begin 10 months prior to our official cancer diagnosis. We’ll introduce you to those who made a difference in our life, and who are — we believe — the reason we are here today, enabling you to read those words on the screen in front of you (there’ll be a great many political folks who will find their way into our reporting out, as our “life savers”).
Thank you for hanging in with us.
Going forward, it is our intention to remain relentlessly positive about pretty much darn near everyone and everything, while focusing on change for the better, and a better life for everyone in all aspects of our lives.
Harland Bartholomew (September 14, 1889 – December 2, 1989) was an American urban planner. Although a civil engineer by training & disposition, from 1911 through until the mid-1950s, Mr. Bartholomew emerged as the most influential urban planner of the first half of the 20th century, his considerable influence now thought to have had a profoundly negative impact on city development, administrative evil masked as “moral good”.
During the course of his lifetime, Mr. Bartholomew created comprehensive city plans for urban centres across North America, including …
1911-1915 Newark, New Jersey;
1916-1920 St.Louis, Missouri;
1920 Memphis, Tennessee;
1920-1921 Lansing, Michigan;
1921-1922 Wichita, Kansas;
1926-1930 Vancouver, BC;
1930 San Antonio, Texas;
1930-1934 St.Louis, Missouri;
1932 Louisville, Kentucky The Negro Housing Problem;
1953-1959 Washington, DC.
Before, during and after WWII, Mr. Bartholomew was appointed to the United States’ Federal Planning Committee by three Presidents, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1952, President Eisenhower appointed Mr. Bartholomew chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, a position he held for seven years.
Mr. Bartholomew was an early advocate of slum clearance & city planning, serving on the U.S. Slum Clearance Advisory Committee. His ideas helped shape the Housing Act of 1937 & the Housing Act of 1949, and had a profound effect on the segregation of city neighbourhoods, ensuring that immigrants and the urban poor would be designated to one blighted city neighbourhood — including in Vancouver, skid row (now called the Downtown Eastside), the urban planning handiwork of Mr. Bartholomew.
In his June 17, 2017 essay on Vancouver’s Abundant Housingwebsite, urbanist Reilly Wood records the following …
“When Bartholomew asked what abuses he should consider in the interim zoning by-law of 1927 he was preparing, the chairman replied that ‘the only serious abuse… is the intrusion of undesirable apartment houses into residential districts'” (Zoning and the Single-Family Landscape, p. 60)
Recently, at the November 13th meeting of Vancouver City Council, newly-elected OneCity Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle moved an amendment to a motion calling for an updated City Plan that would have included in its mandate “a city for all, such that all neighbourhoods in Vancouver would include all types of housing, rental, co-and-co-op housing, and social housing.” Councillor Boyle’s amendment was supported only by Mayor Kennedy Stewart and COPE City Councillor Jean Swanson.
Old ideas die hard, it would seem, and the legacy of Harland Bartholomew looms large in the planning process within the City of Vancouver.
Nonetheless, VanRamblings believes that as a new, inclusive and neighbourhood sensitive City Plan is developed, the intent of Councillor Boyle’s heartening and necessary amendment will carry the day, with the near unanimous consent of the Mayor & her fellow City Councillors, persons of conscience, grit & integrity to their core, who mean well for our city, not just over the course of the next four years, but for generations to come. How did Harland Bartholomew’s Ideas Shape Vancouver?
“Few cities possess such a combination of nearby natural resources, a splendid harbour, a terrain ideally suited for urban use, an equable climate and a setting of great natural beauty.
Vancouver is the most important Pacific port of a great country. Here, if anywhere, should develop a great city. Circumstances of such character call for a city plan of substantial scale.”
From the outset, Harland Bartholomew was clear in stating his preference for single-family homes throughout the city, with Vancouver Town Planning Commission chairman Arthur Smith setting the tone by praising Point Grey’s early bylaw, explicitly segregating Vancouver by class, and noting the retention of single-family homes as a major goal …
“The wise foresight which Point Grey has used in planning at an early stage of its growth should provide Vancouver with one of the most desirable residential districts possessed by any city on the Continent, and those who have to gain their livelihood by manual labor should find in Hastings Townsite, and in a replanned South Vancouver, a place where they can build up modest homes which should differ only in size from that of the more opulent employers. The retention of Vancouver as a city of single family homes has always been close to the heart of those engaged in the preparation of this plan.” (A Plan for the City of Vancouver, p. 26)
Bartholomew further clarified his preference for single-family homes …
“As has been mentioned, Vancouver is largely a city of one-family homes and is surrounded by similar development in the adjoining municipalities. Large areas are now available for such development, though a considerable proportion has yet to be served by utilities. That the one-family dwelling is the desirable unit for happy living is the general concensus (sic) of opinion of all authorities. (A Plan for the City of Vancouver, p. 233-234)
Bartholomew was keen to keep stores out of residential neighbourhoods …
“The scattering of stores promiscuously throughout residence districts has done considerable damage to the city’s appearance. The nearly universal custom of building stores out to the street line has hurt the appearance of a good many residence streets and at the same time has injured adjoining lots by making them less desirable for living purposes and reducing their saleable value. The zoning by-law will remedy this condition and tend to prevent residence districts from becoming blighted.” (A Plan for the City of Vancouver, p. 247)
As Reilly Wood writes in his Abundant Housing essay …
“The contrast with modern-day Vancouver is remarkable, given that neighbourhood stores built before Bartholomew’s Plan are now many neighbourhoods’ most cherished jewels. Who would prefer the East Side without the Marché St. George, or the West Side without Arbutus Coffee? Bartholomew sought to completely eradicate small-scale retailers and meeting places from residential neighbourhoods, without questioning whether people might want to live near such amenities.”
Bartholomew advocated for and succeeded in creating exclusionary neighbourhoods, imposing extravagantly large minimum lot sizes and yards, and as Wood writes could “be more accurately described as a suburban plan, designed by a man with a profoundly anti-urban bias. It would be laughable if we weren’t still living in its shadow.”
Franklin Avenue looking East from 9th, 1928. Landmarks Association of St Louis.
“City planner Harland Bartholomew rose in prominence along with the popularity of scientific city-efficient planning during the early to mid-twentieth century. In the pursuit of solutions to urban problems, Bartholomew concluded that the most efficient way to revitalize St. Louis, Missouri, was through the clearing of slums. In an attempt to solve the city’s economic and demographic problems, slum clearance destroyed and displaced Black neighborhoods whose 70,000 residents were seen as detrimental to the city’s success.”
In fact, as Dan Chapman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, writes …
“The region’s psychic scars run deeper. St. Louis once was the nation’s fourth most populated city, a manufacturing and transportation colossus. It was the proud Gateway to the West, idealized by the soaring steel Arch along the banks of the Mississippi River.
A century ago, city fathers realized that blight, traffic, poverty, and fragmented government threatened St. Louis’ success. They hired a city planner in 1916 who, a year later, published the “Problems of St. Louis.” The city was at a critical juncture, an inflection point where long-term success might be guaranteed if the right civic decisions were made.
Harland Bartholomew, the planner, hoped that his report would “ultimately result in some action and action is St. Louis’ greatest need.” Action ensued, but not always the right kind.
St. Louis today ranks 27th in population and 45th in job growth among the top 50 metro areas. In hindsight, few imagined that the year 1916 would figure so prominently. Bartholomew’s embrace of urban renewal and highways-to-the-suburbs fueled the exodus from St. Louis as well as the region’s fragmentation and racism.
A residential segregation law passed that year established an ongoing pattern of racial separateness. The law was overturned, but the scars remain. Ferguson, for example, is two-thirds black, yet at the time of the shooting the mayor and five of six council members were white.
“Ferguson affirms that we in St. Louis are in the geographic and cultural heart of America with all its issues and foibles,” said the Rev. Starsky Wilson, pastor of St. John’s United Church of Christ in St. Louis. “These are American problems.”
Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood was developed with narrow lots before Harland Bartholomew’s ideas were adopted. UBC urban geography professor Patrick Condon wants it known that in the 1960s, consequent of a state-sponsored urban renewal initiative, government sought to declare Strathcona a “slum”. David Gibson wants it known that “Strathcona was saved by the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants’ Association (SPOTA), The Electors’ Action Movement (T.E.A.M.) Council of the early 1970s, supplemented by federal Opportunities for Youth (OFY) & Local Initiatives Projects (LIP) grants, “such that Strathcona continues to thrive to this day.
Blatantly racist development policy, intolerance, exclusive neighbourhoods where the working poor, persons with disabilities, seniors, those on social assistance, immigrants and refugees are all but forbidden from residence, and a blighted downtown neighbourhood riven with crime, hopelessness and an opioid crisis that is killing our city’s residents by the thousands — these are the critical challenges faced by our new Mayor and City Council.
A good place to start?
Undo and reverse the legacy of Harland Bartholomew, and begin anew.
The glorious, thrilling and edifying 30-day orientation for the members of our new Vancouver City Council continues first thing this morning.
Clearly, Vancouver Non-Partisan Association Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung and OneCity Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle have proven to be the best communicators among our new crop of electeds — their social media feeds informative and an absolute delight to follow, with first-rate reportage to the tens of thousands of you who voted them into office. Good on them.
If you’re not already following Councillor Christine Boyle on Twitter, you can do so at @christineboyle, while the incredibly wonderful Sarah Kirby-Yung at @sarahkirby_yung is another must follow — which you ought to do.
As the cinematic year draws to a close, today on VanRamblings — given that it’s American Thanksgiving — we take a fond look back at 2018 and some of the movie-related innovations we have to be thankful for this year.
As we’ve written previously, 2018 marked the year of the return of the romantic comedy — not at the cinema, but on Netflix, where mid-budget smash hits like To All the Boys I’ve Loved and The Kissing Booth, both mid-budget teen romantic comedies, gained massive followings on social media, while re-establishing the rom-com as a genre that should not be underestimated. Good on Netflix for reviving this near forgotten genre.
Far and away the strongest and most affecting independent film of 2018, director Debra Granik’s first outing since 2010’s multiple Oscar award nominee, Winter’s Bone (in which Jennifer Lawrence made her début, gaining a Best Actress Oscar nomination), Leave No Trace tracks a father and daughter living precariously off the grid, introducing us to an incandescent 17-year-old Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, who lives a tranquil life sheltered with her loving, PTSD suffering father, Ben Foster, in an urban Oregon woodland, in perfect harmony with one another, despite all. Uncompromising, authentic, raw, heartbreaking, brilliant, haunting, full of grace, and riveting throughout, Leave No Trace is a multiple Gotham and Independent Spirit Award nominee — including Best Actor, Supporting Actress, Director and Feature — and a must-see film streaming on demand. Netflix Starts to Prioritize Theatrical Releases
For the longest time, Netflix refused to screen their films in theatres, which last year hurt the chances of Dee Rees’ Mudbound winning any Academy Awards, despite its four Oscar nominations.
In 2018, after allowing certain films exclusive theatrical engagements — including the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs a week before it hit its platform, and in 42 select theatres across North America, Alfonso Cuarón’s almost certain Best Picture Academy Award winner Roma, which will screen exclusively in Vancouver at the Vancity Theatre, December 14th through the end of December — while Netflix is still the disrupter it’s always been, 2018 is the year they thankfully realized theatres still matter. The Most Exciting Foreign-Language Academy Award Race in Years
Whether it be Poland’s Cold War, Mexico’s Roma, South Korea’s Burning, Israel’s The Cakemaker, Denmark’s The Guilty, Colombia’s Birds of Passage, Belgium’s Girl, Hungary’s Sunset, Japan’s Shoplifters, Sweden’s Border, or Lebanon’s Capernaum, there is an embarrassment of riches of foreign language films vying for an Academy Award this year. Lucky us.
Damara, our new 3-year-old kitty, soon to be our companion as we write each day.
