It was a good day for two distinct Main Street crowds last Thursday.
At an event in the morning at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown and at another in the evening at the Satellite Gallery on Seymour Street, retired cops, veterans and artists were honoured for two very different reasons: policing and art.
First, the cop connection…
As part of the Vancouver Police Department’s annual awards ceremony, Police Chief Jim Chu bestowed the coveted Chief Constable’s Citation — the chief’s highest award for civic duty — upon the Army Navy and Airforce Veterans Taurus Unit 298 in recognition of the members’ outstanding commitment to the community.
The club contributes to housing in the Downtown Eastside for veterans and other residents. It also supports the George Derby Centre and Brock Fahrni Centre, which are residential facilities for veterans.
Located at 23rd and Main, the social club opened in 1948 after then-VPD officer Roy Slattery, a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, had an idea to set up a gathering spot for officers discharged from the military after the Second World War.
The required funding to purchase the land and build the club was raised through dues paid by VPD officers. Today, the building still serves as a meeting spot for veterans and police, with the most popular day of the year being Remembrance Day.
Now, to the art…
For anyone who has dropped in to the club, it’s quite evident the place attracts more visitors than cops and veterans. Heck, even actor Seth Rogen has been there. For decades, it’s also been a hangout for some of the city’s artists, many of whom grew up in the neighbourhood and put their mark on it.
Those artists include Paul Wong and Charles Rea, who belonged to a collective of like-minded locals — the late Kenneth Fletcher, Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Marlene MacGregor, Jeannette Reinhardt and Annastacia McDonald — known as the “Mainstreeters.”
(Full disclosure: McDonald is my aunt and Wong filmed me in 1983 as I got ready for my high school grad; light grey tux, white tube socks, feathered hair and an AC/DC necklace is all the detail you need to sear that unfortunate image in your brain.)
Through the early 1970s and into the 1980s, my aunt and her friends lived and worked together in what was a working-class neighbourhood, where they created art on paper, in video, in photographs and through performance.
Older and allegedly wiser, some of that crew showed up last Thursday to the Satellite Gallery and couldn’t help but recall those formative/wild/experimental years. That’s because they were featured in the exhibit, Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982, curated by Michael Turner and Allison Collins.
The one piece that stood out for me was a series of photographs Wong took Feb. 26, 1976. That morning, he and Reinhardt looked out their bedroom window on Watson Street to see a shirtless, 22-year-old man lying dead in the snow. He had been stabbed to death. His name was Eugene Lloyd Pelly.
Captivated by the city’s fourth homicide, Wong, along with collaborator Fletcher, embarked on a project that became “Murder Research,” which includes 36 photographs and text panels, video and a voice performance by the duo.
Some of the photographs show homicide investigators in trenchcoats and the old black-and-white police cars of the day. Classic stuff. The piece and more of the Mainstreeters work can be viewed at the Satellite Gallery until March 14.
The club, meanwhile, is celebrating its 67th year.
Sounds like a good reason to stop in for a beverage and talk art and policing. Or maybe the art of policing? Or the policing of art? Or…never mind.
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