 |
| My Lillooet daughter Alexandra now 55 posing by the Royal Hudson |
A Respectful Open Letter to The Honourable David Eby, M.L.A.,Premier of the Province of British Columbia
Dear Sir,
In my past I lived in two large metropolitan areas, Buenos Aires & Mexico City. In both cases politicians spent a lot of effort in fixing the problems of their large cities, sometimes at the expense of the provinces or states of their countries.
I believe that here in Vancouver we are so concerned on the events of what is called The Lower Mainland that the interior of our large province is ignored.
Since my arrival with my two daughters and Canadian wife to Vancouver in 1975 I was always a freelance photographer. For almost 30 years I worked for Canadian Pacific Limited and gained experience on their railway system. Because of the efficient railway system built by the English in Argentina I have some knowledge of what could be done in BC.
For many years I photographed all the heads of the Federal and Provincial NDP. I vote NDP.
Nini Baird (now 90 and working on projects with BC Tel) quite a few years ago started The Outreach Program of Emily Carr (now defunct) which had artist/ teachers (I was one of them) go into the interior of BC to impart artistic culture. I went to small towns and in many wonderful cases my classes consisted of Indigenous peoples who were eager to learn photography. Baird said that folks in the interior paid taxes for culture but got none of it.
Nini Baird's Baby & The Densification of Vancouver Through The Population Depletion Of BC's Interior
I have a daughter, now 55 who just retired as a teacher in Lillooet. If I want to visit her or if she wants to visit me you need a car. When she goes to Kamloops to see specialists, without her car she is stuck.
Lillooet has a lovely but empty train station. It is my
belief that from West Vancouver to Squamish there are places where short ½ km
double tracking could be built so a train going in one direction would wait for
the other to go past. I am old enough to have gone to Lillooet in a Budd car
train. Lillooet has a lovely but empty train station. Pemberton's is a café.
With the demise of Greyhound and little train activity in the interior of BC Nini Baird wrote some years ago why Vancouver was getting so many “immigrants” from the interior. A carbon tax and an increase in gasoline prices puts a burden on the people who live in our province’s interior.
In 1530 Basque/Spanish priest Vasco de Quiroga arrived to what is now Mexico. He settled in the now State of Michoacán. It seems that on his way from Spain he read Thomas More’s Utopia. In Michoacán he taught the Indigenous communities of each town to make something. To this day Paracho ‘s guitars are famous as is the copper ware of Santa Clara del Cobre.
When I was repatriated after my service in the Argentine Navy in 1967 I was placed in a Victory Ship (an improvement of Henry Kaiser’s Liberty Ships) to my mother’s home in Mexico. It was only a few years ago that I found out that my Río Aguapey had been built at the Burrard Shipyards.
.jpg) |
| My Río Aguapey built at the Burrard Shipyards |
Except for fruit and wine in the Okanagan, nothing is made in the interior of our province. Some years ago enterprising students of mine at Emily Carr began to design furniture made of Parallam.
Considering that Lillooet’s motto is “Guaranteed Rugged” they could manufacture camping equipment or boots.
What can you buy in Prince George that is made there?
If you graduate from high school in Lillooet what can be your future?
I have this list that I ask my friends. Few know the answers and I tell them that it is not their fault but that of the institutions concerned:
1. Who heads the VAG?
2. Head of the Maritime Museum (and when was the last time you went there?)
3. Director of the Museum of Anthropology.
4. Head of Ballet BC.
5. Head of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
6. Who directs the Vancouver Opera?
7. What is MOV and where is it?
8. Name the good art gallery inside UBC.
9. What is the Turning Point Ensemble and where does it perform?
10. When was the last time you went to a performance at the Telus Theatre at the Chan Centre?
If writer Sean Rossiter were alive he would write in a
magazine or newspaper that no longer exists that the Queen E and the Vancouver Playhouse
are white elephants and that the Annex and Pyatt Hall are the future of performance
here. Tax dollars are wasted keeping the Queen E and the Vancouver Playhouse in working order.
The only institution that does not need to sell advertising and that could promote culture in our city and province is CBC Radio. There is no will there to do anything about it.
George Laverock, former head of classical music at the CBC told me that Studio One has the best sound of any studio in all of Canada. This studio (designed by Paul Merrick) is rented out to people that make videos.
And lastly sir, we have in Vancouver people in their 80s with their marbles intact that live now in anonymity.
1. George Bowering – the first Parliamentary Poet Laureate
2. George McWhirter – the first Vancouver Poet Laureate.
3. Nini Baird
4. Not that old at all, one of our finest poets Susan Musgrave, is she remembered?
Yes, communication to our interior and culture should be of your concern.
Sincerely yours,
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
