227 Union - An Encore

Shortly after I first posted my reflections on the history I knew of the little house that once stood at 227 Union, I received a number of e-mails regarding the house. It seems that the little blue house touched the hearts of a number of people. People seemed to really appreciate the fact that I had taken the time to study the house and post my findings.

One of the e-mails was from Vancouver poet, black community historian, and founding member of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project (HAMP), Wayde Compton. He actually ended up interviewing me about 227 Union for an article in the online Seven Oaks Magazine. Here is the link to that interview: http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/compton.html.
Another of the messages I received was from a man who regularly visited the little house on his infrequent trips to Vancouver from Seattle. Here is what he wrote.

“Mr. Johnstone,

I was in Vancouver on Wednesday and Thursday for the Canucks/Flyers game on Weds. night. Thursday I had planned to visit my usual spots around Vancouver before driving back to Seattle. Among my usual activities is a walk from my hotel around downtown, down the eastside and ultimately includes stopping at 227 Union St. For some years, maybe seven, I have been drawn to that house. I always make it a point to drive by it or walk past it.

About 4 years ago, fearing it would be demolished I photographed the front and back of the house. I even on several occasions went up and knocked on the door so I could meet the occupants or owners. Nobody ever answered. I did a little research and came up empty. Today, I sat at my computer after returning from my trip and typed in the address and was blown away when your website came up. I have spent hours reading it and enjoying your work. I guess my questions have been answered by you and your hard work. Needless to say, I left Vancouver bothered that the house had been torn down. In the back of my mind, where my dreams and fantasies exist I envisioned buying the house and restoring it. I have also been drawn to other properties in Vancouver, the Bank of Montreal around the corner from 227 Union has always fascinated me because prior to the condo/apartment project a few years ago I always compared the BOM as a "Fort Apache", solid building in a decaying area. It is hard to explain my feeling for that building as well, other than, in the back of my mind I would have loved to have purchased it and renovated it as my home. Other homes that interest me are some of the homes that still exist downtown. I have spent a fair amount of time photographing homes and hotels on the eastside and downtown area. I am a novice compared to you. I just wanted my own little history of the way things were in Vancouver.

About me, I am a 37 year man who lives in Seattle. My interest in Vancouver began in 1977 when my grandparents took my sister and I to the zoo and Stanley Park. In the 1980's as a teenager my buddy and I would visit Exhibition Park and the bars. I attended Western Washington University and would frequent the city as much as possible. Beginning in the early 1990's I started to develop an interest in architecture and as I have gotten older I have become interested in the people who lived in these homes. I love Vancouver and Canada and want to become a citizen, a dual citizen, because I love Seattle also.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I will continue to enjoy your work. Hopefully one day I will hire you to research my Vancouver house. Though, my dream is to buy a loft in an historic building in Gastown or around Beatty/Pender. -John P.”

During the course of Wayde Compton’s interview, I found out that there was a picture of the back of 227 Union on the cover of Event Magazine. I tracked down the photographer, Byron Barrett, and he very kindly gave me a copy of his photo.

Later on though, I hit an even bigger jackpot. One of the biggest frustrations researching the histories of houses in the East End is the way the city directories gloss over, well, actually they virtually obliterate, the Asian presence in the neighbourhood. In the early 1900s there was a forced segregation of Chinese and Japanese listings in the directory. They were relegated to the back. It was only in the 1940s and 50s that the listings were integrated, but even then, there were entire decades where the majority of listings for Japanese and Chinese residents were listed by their “assumed” nationality, either just as Japanese or Chinese, and even worse, later they were all lumped together as “Orientals”. One can assume that this oversight is the result of the disinterest, if not outright racism or the directory canvassers in the neighbourhood, but after I read Wayson Choy’s stunningly beautiful novel The Jade Peony I realized part of the problem was no doubt due to language difficulties, and often an innate distrust of any official looking white man knocking at the door. I remember one scene where the family in the novel actually hid behind the couch and pretended they were not home when an unknown white man came knocking.

Either way, it is lost history that I intend to try to recover piece by piece by whatever means possible for my East End Neighbourhood History Mapping Project. But back to the Jackpot…

As a result of the article I posted on Chuck Davis’s website and the interview with Wayde Compton, several descendents on one of the Chinese residents of 227 Union contacted me with their family’s story. The Shuen family lived at 227 Union from 1945 to 1968. The original directory listings for 227 Union for the period of 1945 to 1950 just listed “Orientals” Thanks to information and images provided by Wah Shuen’s descendents Nora Wong, Deborah Fong, and Bettina Shuen, this discrepancy and many other gaps in the history of 227 Union has been filled. Wah Fong Shuen was born in Heung Shan, Kwangtung, China on November 15, 1875. He was a Canadian citizen by local naturalization as of Jan 13, 1905 and got his Canadian citizenship certificate on July 23, 1947. His wife's name on the certificate was Ng Chew Lin (also called Mrs. Chew Shee on another document and Sook Yee by her children). Wah Fong and Chew Shee Shuen had three children: George Shuen, born in Vancouver on September 27, 1919, Rose Shuen, born in China, and Johnny Shuen born in Vancouver.

Wah Fong Shuen was a martial arts master and owned a lumber sawmill company, apparently one of the first Chinese in Vancouver to do so. Even more interesting is that Wah Fong Shuen was a cousin of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the founder of the Republic of China, and played with him when he was a child back in China. Wah Fong "Johnny" Shuen and his brother George were among the first Chinese Canadian war veterans, and although these details have yet to be confirmed, they were most likely members of the elite corps of Chinese Canadians that trained to fight undercover behind Japanese lines.

The contact with Wah Fong Shuen’s granddaughters provided me with so many more interesting facts and stories, more than I can fit in this little article. Suffice it to say, they helped me to fill in so many blanks and restored the Shuen family’s history and the contributions its various members to their rightful place.

The internet is a wonderful thing. Online research may not provide all the answers immediately, but it puts us in contact with the people who have important pieces of the puzzle we are trying to solve. My experience with my research of this one little house, how it touched, and how its memory continues to touch so many lives, reminds me that every house has important stories to tell. It also reaffirms for me the fact that our built heritage is really important. That the often derelict old houses and buildings we see throughout this city are more than just tear downers and opportunities to make a buck building condos; that they are worth saving, restoring and preserving. They are important reminders of who we are and where we came from, and the struggles we went through to get to where we are today. It is these memories, locked inside our neighbourhoods’ old houses that give us a sense of neighbourhood pride and identity. When those things are in place, people tend to care more about their neighbourhood and their city. They tend to be engaged, excited and want to contribute. And that’s a good thing…

Thanks to Nora Wong, Deborah Fong, and Bettina Shuen for the information and photos regarding the Shuen family at 227 Union. Thanks also to Byron Barrett for the beautiful shot ofthe back of 227 Union.

When An Old House Falls

In Memory of 227 Union (Barnard) Street

Everyone’s talking about the trees the wind knocked down in Stanley Park. People are wringing their hands—horrified that nature can wreak such havoc with nature. Yes, we lost some great old trees. It’s sad, but with time the forest will rise again.

It’s not the same with this city’s old houses, though. No one’s talking about how in the same month developers knocked down the last old house on the 200-block of Union Street, just north of old Hogan’s Alley.

227 Union wasn’t a mansion by any stretch of the imagination. No rich people ever lived there. None of its occupants ever made it into the news clippings. I know. I checked. So what’s the big deal?

That house was over a hundred years old. It was built in 1900 by a New Brunswick-born carpenter, John Bruce Smith, on a lot on which a smaller cabin had stood from 1894. Smith’s mother Isabella, his sister Ada and his brother Peter and Peter’s wife Martha lived there for just over a decade. Their neighbours were mostly working class immigrants from Britain and Eastern Canada: teamsters and laborers, laundry men and blacksmiths.

By 1913 the house was rented out to Joseph Lacterman, a Russian-born Jewish tailor, and his English-born wife Bessie. The rest of the block was undergoing changes as well. Union and Main Street had become the nucleus of a growing Italian colony in Vancouver. The Bingarra Block, which once stood on the southeast corner of Union and Main housed Vancouver’s earlier Italian consular offices. [Bingarra was named for a place in New South Wales, Australia.]

Back on the north side of the street, the house at 209 Union, built in 1891 and first occupied by New Brunswick-born dressmaker Mary Marion Myles and her trader husband Robert Johnson Myles, had been turned first into a boarding house, then into a restaurant by a man named Thomas A. Kelly. This same house would, by 1948, become the home of Robert and Viva Moore and as Vie’s Chicken and Steakhouse become a Vancouver icon.

During World War I many of the houses on the 200-block of Union stood vacant, as did hundreds of houses throughout Vancouver. Prior to the war there had been a building boom, but with the outbreak of war Vancouver’s population dropped by 30,000. During the war Bruce Smith moved back to 227 Union with his new bride Emma. By then Bruce had become a pile driver working for Evans Coleman and Evans, a large timber-exporting firm which built Vancouver’s first deep-sea dock. Bruce and Emma continued to live at 227 Union until 1923. In 1924 a Chinese family rented, then from 1924 to 1933 Kansas-born Elijah "Lige" Holman became the first black person to live in the house. Elijah Holman and a Mamie Holman owned and lived next door at 221 Union from 1922 to 1924. Elijah Holman was born in Kansas on March 8, 1875 and came to Vancouver in 1911 where he worked as a laborer for the city of Vancouver from 1932 to 1942. According to his death certificate he never married.

By 1934, Elijah Holman had moved back to 221 Union and from 1935 to 1942 227 Union was home to Italian-born laborer Alberto Barichello and his wife Angelina. During the 1930s and 1940s the block was a mix of Black, Italian and Chinese families.

From 1945 until recently 227 Union has been home to a number of Chinese families, first the Shuen and then the Jang families. Elijah Holman continued to live next door at 221 Union until his death on October 25, 1951 at the age of 75. He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

A few years back at the time when I was trying to get my house-history research business off the ground I thought it was important to have a diverse selection of samples to show potential clients. In between paying jobs I chose a number of houses that I knew I never would be hired to research. I called these projects my orphans. They were mostly small, neglected-looking houses in my neighborhood, the East End, houses that I felt would soon face the wrecking ball, be knocked down and be forgotten. Obliterated from the landscape and our memory. 227 Union was one of those orphans. I thought that if I could research its history and show it had a story that the house would be saved.

The 227 Union project involved thirteen addresses—five on the north side of the street, and eight on the south. As I gathered and wove together the various strands and layers of data I collected I was fascinated with the various changes this little slice of the old East End had gone through. People came in waves, it seemed, from all over the world to find a new life on this section of East End Vancouver street. Digging deeper, I scrolled through hundreds of birth, death and marriage records for the people who lived in these houses. As I named their names in my head the feeling that I might be the only person who was remembering these men and women and their stories overwhelmed me.

To supplement the data I had collected I set out to find images of the houses I was researching at the archives and the library. In the end the only photos I could find were from the 1970s taken from atop the Cobalt Hotel just after Hogan’s Alley was demolished and the ramps for the new Georgia Viaduct were being built. One photo was taken while the Bingarra Block was still standing. The other, taken after its demolition, contains a clear shot of 227 Union and its neighbors, including 209 Union—Vie’s Chicken and Steakhouse. As far as I know it is the only archival photo of that Hogan’s Alley icon in existence.

On a cold January morning as work crews struggled to clear the jumble of fallen trees in Stanley Park and other workers raced to repair the torn panels in BC Place Stadium an ugly two-ton backhoe knocked down the last remaining house on the 200-block of Union. A perfectly solid house which could have been saved and moved just half a block to replace houses lost on Gore and Union to recent arson fires.

I know it was solid because I snuck inside the week before it was demolished. The stain glass windows had been taken out and some trim salvaged but what remained was sound. It didn’t need to be taken down.

A neighbour friend of mine, who is an architect and a carpenter and who, with his partner, had recently saved another old neighborhood house that was in much worse condition than 227 Union, went inside as well. He measured the dimensions of the entry hall, the living and dining room, the kitchen, pantry, the four upstairs bedrooms, and the bathroom and made an architectural drawing of the house and gave a copy to me. I will add this treasured document to the project I started years ago. 227 Union is gone, but the effort was not in vain. Something was saved if only on disc and paper. I remember, and others will too. When this project is completed I will give a copy to the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project people, and some day—when I work out the funding—the information and archival images I have found and the architectural drawings we have been given will be used to resurrect, if only in virtual reality, the lost streetscapes of Hogan’s Alley and the old East End.

James Johnstone is an East End-based House Genealogist who has researched over 700 houses in Vancouver and New Westminster of which over 250 are in what is now called Strathcona. James is now actively looking for sponsors and other funding sources and support to allow him to research the entirety of Vancouver’s old East End (district lots 196, 181, and 182) and to put all the data and images collected on an interactive neighborhood history mapping website. Contact him at househistorian@yahoo.ca or check out his website: http://www.homehistoryresearch.com/