The Rebirth of Vancouver’s Historically Black Neighbourhood
By Urooba Jamal Feb 28 2019
A low-income housing project named after Jimi Hendrix’s grandmother opening soon marks the slow but steady renewal of Hogan’s Alley.
Yasin Kiraga Misano from the African Descent Society B.C. leads a walking tour of Vancouver's Black history. Photos by the author
At the intersection of Union and Main, in Vancouver, once stood the legendary Vie’s Chicken and Steak House. Inside, Nora Hendrix cooked up T-bones, porterhouse, filet mignons and fresh-baked biscuits into the late hours of the night, as Black artists such as Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong swarmed in and out of the establishment.
It was in these quarters that the late Jimi Hendrix, described as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music,” practiced guitar. In between strumming, he’d help his grandmother Nora serve the famous musicians, whenever the future rock legend visited from Seattle.
Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, which ran from 1950 to 1976, stood amidst Vancouver’s first and only Black neighbourhood. The thriving hub once known as Hogan’s Alley was the epicenter of Black food, music and cultural organizing—until it was bulldozed away for the construction of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, uprooting one of Canada’s only Black neighbourhoods, displacing its residents out farther into the suburbs.
Now almost five decades years later, as the viaducts are slated to be torn down, and a new temporary modular housing project—pegged as the first of its kind in North America—announced in early February, is being named after Nora Hendrix. Many see it as part of an opportunity to finally honour and rectify the history of Hogan’s Alley, and the city’s Black population.
A first in North America
On an unusually bright and sunny February afternoon in Vancouver, Yasin Kiraga Misano led a group of about 50 people through these same streets and alleyways, as part of the African Descent Society BC’s annual walking tour during Black History Month.
“Imagine,” Misano instructed the crowd, “Imagine what it would have been like if this place had been given the opportunity to thrive. Imagine what the community could have looked like today.”
The site of the new temporary modular housing named after Nora Hendrix. Photo by the author
...
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_ca/artic...UMNPzjFW47ryEE
Linear Mode
