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| George Bowering |
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| George McWhirter |
Without wanting to be disrespectful I am losing patience with our Vancouver City Councillors appearing in photo ops in social media particularly when they are pushing culture.
With the demise of our newspapers and with on-line cultural institution promoters who depend on publicists (few exist) to find out what is going on in the city I do not see how we can navigate out of this.
Tomorrow Saturday 18 an institution, The Turning Point Ensemble will be celebrating their 20 year existence at the downtown campus of Simon Fraser University. This stellar musical group plays music of the 20th and 21st century. Who reading this knows of them? In New York City they would be famous.
I have stated before that the CBC does not need to sell adds as the Vancouver Sun and The Georgia Straight once did. They could have culture (dance, music, theatre, dance, poetry, novelists) on TV and on the radio. There would be tons of people they could interview.
They don’t. But we know what the traffic is on the bridges and we keep being told of the Vancouver temperature when in fact they get their info from the airport. I believe that the airport is in Richmond and at the height of the tower it is always two degrees colder.
In that last century I had access to celebrities and politicians because I worked for magazines and the Globe and Mail. I have portraits of Sting, Audrey Hepburn, Dennis Hopper and Martin Scorsese.
Access is now denied because these celebrities do not come to Vancouver. But I am a lucky man because I have access that many people have forgotten.
Vancouver is a city with a poor memory for its past.
Who would know who the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet
Laureate was? That would be George Bowering in 2001.
Who would know who the first Vancouver Poet Laureate was? That would be George McWhirter in 2007.
Both these men are over 80 and both have their marbles intact. How do I know? I have the lovely access of being their friends and we talk almost once a week.
McWhirter is of better health while Bowering cannot hear or
see very well. He has an electric cart as he cannot walk. His sense of humour and whit is intact.
These two have contributed lots to our city and to Canada. McWhirter translates into English the poems of the finest living Mexican novelist and poet Homero Aridjis, right here in Vancouver.
But when they invariably die, as we all do, we will be quick to sing praises on how wonderful they were and how they are missed.
Does anybody care for them now?
It is time that our city Councillors stop appearing in photo ops and doing something to remedy the nebulous cultural problem of our city. With its booming real-estate, Vancouver is going upwards and onwards while culture is moving into the pits.
City Hall, CBC act!
An Open Letter to the City of Vancouver & City Hall
An Open Letter to the Honourable David Eby - Premier of British Columbia
An Open Letter to the CBC's Catherine Tait
An Open Letter to the Lower Mainland's Dance Community
