Reading “Sober” on Beatty Street (or, Larwill Park Ephemera) // Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Shazia Hafiz Ramji looks to Larwill Park in Vancouver as part of our guest edited month that delves into the theme of Urban Ephemera.

On Saturday, May 18, I was walking to the Vancouver Public Library from Stadium-Chinatown station, a short walk I take many times a week. On Beatty Street by a wall mural that encloses Larwill Park, I noticed a graffiti tag that I’d seen earlier that month in downtown Vancouver. I took a picture of it then as I’d done before because it made me feel seen and happy. It said “Sober.” I’m a recovering addict and I’ve maintained recovery for close to four and a half years.

There were two Sober tags on a lamppost on Beatty, but there was something else across them on the wall that drew my attention first: three metal strips of signs I’d recognized from the directory for the building that housed the T&T Supermarket in what’s called Paris Square, just a few blocks away on the other side of the station. The signs read:Addictions Counselling, Speech & Language Services 301Harm Reduction / Needle Exchange 101HIV/AIDS, Addiction & Aboriginal Health Services 320

Why were these signs in particular stripped from the original directory on Abbott Street and stuck onto the Beatty Street wall by Larwill Park? Two days later, I was on my way to the library again. The signs were no longer there. *

1. Larwill Park is the proposed site for the location of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s new museum building.
2. It is a parking lot that hosted many meetings in the past, one of which led to the Anti-Oriental riots of 1907 that reflected racism and anti-immigration attitudes towards the Japanese, Chinese, and South Asians who arrived on migrant ships to build the railways, to fish, and to farm and log, respectively.
3. I saw a man asleep in the afternoon in the bushes on Beatty Street, against the mural. His hands were brown.
4. The Beatty Street mural was covered up and painted blue before the 2010 Olympics. It was part of a “cleanup” that displaced many, affecting low-income and homeless residents the most.
5. Last week, I saw a white man sitting by the stairs leading to the parking lot. He was old, wearing a floppy hat that reminded me of my grandpa’s floppy hat. His wooden cane rested beside him. He was looking at no one and nothing in particular, staring into the middle distance. Walking past him didn’t break his gaze.
6. In 2017, Indigenous artists were hired to paint the Beatty Street mural in anticipation of the 150^th anniversary of Canada. The Canada 150 celebrations were mocked locally as “Colonialism 150,” a celebration of colonialism.
7. A couple of weeks ago, there were about 7-8 books askew in a row on the stone wall surrounding the bushes, where the old man sat. One of them was Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez. Another was The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King.
8. I have walked past empty syringes and a belt at least twice in that same spot.
9. In 1908, the first federal law was passed: the Opium Act of 1908, which prohibited “the importation, manufacture and sale of opium for other than medicinal purposes.” Legislation was aimed at opium dealers, most of whom were Chinese.
10. Some years ago, I was at an eighties and nineties dance party at the Library Square pub across the street from Larwill Park. One one of those nights, I met a guy named Richard and we bonded over Joy Division. We went outside for a cigarette and he passed out. I was too intoxicated to remember how the rest of the night played out. I tell myself that he went to the goth club afterwards and had a nice night. I tell myself he’s okay, he’s somewhere in the city.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her writing has recently appeared in Poetry Northwest, Music & Literature, and Canadian Literature. She is at work on a novel.