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Tag: The Province

Commercial Real Estate: Lobbying to save Chinatown’s heritage

EVAN DUGGAN, The Province, December 19, 2017

Melody Ma retraces the steps she initially took about two years ago through Vancouver’s Chinatown.

The twenty-something freelance web developer and Chinatown activist remembers seeing a construction pit at Gore and East Hastings on that walk.

“There used to be all of these interesting mom-and-pop Chinese retailers occupying that building,” she told Postmedia on a similar stroll through Chinatown in mid-December. “I was thinking to myself that my childhood has literally become a construction pit,” she said, noting the new building lies just outside the Chinatown plan area boundaries, but nonetheless represents changes elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Read more…

Meloday Ma has been a major opponent of the 105 Keefer project in Chinatown. / VANCOUVER SUN

FROM OPIUM TO FENTANYL: HOW DID WE GET HERE?

RANDY SHORE, March 18, 2017

Vancouver has always had a drug problem. Only the opioids of choice — and the increasingly staggering death toll — have changed over the years.

When the members of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration came to Vancouver in 1901, they got an eyeful.
“There are whole rooms of Chinese lying stretched out on beds with the opium apparatus laid out before them — all unmindful that their attitudes and surrounding conditions are being taken note of to assist in keeping the remainder of their countrymen entirely out of Canada,” reported the Vancouver World newspaper.
The so-called “Oriental commission” had hired a photographer and engaged a detective to guide them to the heart of the opiate trade, “the dope dives in the rear of No. 6 Dupont Street.”
The fringes of Chinatown have always been the centre of Canada’s opiate trade. Ever more potent and easily smuggled versions emerged through the decades, culminating in the scourge of synthetic opiates — fentanyl and carfentanil — thousands of times more powerful and many times more deadly than opium. Read more…

Opium smoking was widely popular with early Chinese immigrants to Metro Vancouver, as with these workers taking a puff during a break at Imperial Canning in Richmond in 1913. (City of Richmond Archives)

Joe Yip Wai, Obituary

The Province

Joe Yip Wai 1940 – 2017 Joe was a beloved husband, father, brother, and family man, a man who saw the larger picture and an architect who cared enormously for his people and his community. He died suddenly but peacefully on Jan 11 of this year.

A public Memorial Reception will be held on Feb 5 in the main hall of the Chinese Cultural Centre, at 50 East Pender, from 2 – 5 pm. Welcoming speeches at 3pm.

No flowers by request, instead donations in Joe’s name to the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Garden at the following link: httd://vancouverchinesegarden.com/, or the Chinese Cultural Centre at 50 E Pender will be gratefully accepted.

Jonathan and Lynn Wai

Published in Vancouver Sun and/or The Province from Jan. 19 to Jan. 21, 2017

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