In 1990, my parents were looking for a change. We’d just returned from a year in Zimbabwe, and as we returned to Southeast Vancouver mom decided it was time to leave her job with the international social justice wing of the Catholic Church and concentrate on local solidarity. She opted to work in the Downtown Eastside, and she and my dad took up positions at the Downtown Eastside Senior’s Centre. Not prepared to work in that part of town without making it home, the family moved to a run-down 1905 house on East Georgia, directly across the street from Seymour Elementary School.
The history of that house deserves a post of its own. As does Seymour School. For this post however, they simply provide an introduction a historic eastside moment – the struggle and victory of the Militant Mothers of Raymur.
In 1970 a new affordable housing complex was on the horizon for Canada’s poorest neighbourhood. The Raymur Social Housing Project was created just south of Hastings, a few blocks west of Clark Drive. Vancouver’s first residential ‘hood, this was the former site of free speech fights, unemployed workers’ demonstrations, immigrant rights organizing, and anti-immigrant riots. The new project housed a diverse, low-income population, primarily made up of families.
Families mean kids. And while two schools sat within a few blocks walk of Raymur – Strathcona to the west and Seymour to the east – it was into the Seymour district the Raymur kids fell. Only problem being the train tracks that ran between the Raymur Social Housing Project and the school the kids were assigned to.
1970 was still the era of the train in Canada. To this day, trains run through the neighbourhood several times a day, often shutting down traffic for up to 20 minutes as the engines switch from one track to another where the line crosses Venables. But in 1970 there were even more trains. Many more.
Going to school was a short walk. But it also meant dodging some incredibly busy train lines, and despite the fact the city and school board had created the situation, they refused to provide a safe passageway between home and school for these kids. Their mothers wanted an overpass to stop the children from clambering through stopped railway cars in order to make it to school on time. The city delayed and stalled and delayed some more. The mothers went to the railroad companies. They got no meaningful response at all. The mothers got more organized.
Phone calls, petitions, speeches to council and actions at City Hall – nothing got any movement out of the city who sent the kids across the tracks to school or the companies whose trains hurtled through this residential neighbourhood. For of course these were just poor families. And to help them would cost money that no one wanted to spend.
And so government inaction was met with direct action. On January 6, 1971, the mothers of the Raymur Social Housing Project were good and pissed off. With signs reading, “Children vs. Profit” and “Petitions Don’t Work”, they moved to shut down the railroad themselves. 25 women blocked the tracks. They sat together in the path of the engines, and would not move. Well, didn’t take many hours of lost shipments to get the corporate execs interested. Didn’t take long after that before the city responded, too.
The railway companies agreed to alter schedules, restricting train traffic during the times school kids would most likely be crossing. The city agreed to build the overpass.
One day. One direct action. After months of fighting, that’s all it took.
Now, these Raymur moms weren’t stupid. They knew only too well how easy it is to make promises, and that poor families are a pretty low priority for the folks at City Hall and the transportation companies. So they kept it up, occupying the tracks periodically until construction of the overpass actually began in March of that year. By the beginning of the next school year in 1971, the Strathcona pedestrian overpass was built, linking the Raymur Social Housing Project with Seymour Elementary School.
Twenty years later it was still the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. Twenty years later the Raymur project still stood, its kids still enrolled at Seymour. Every day a steady stream of them tramping morning and afternoon up the metal stairs of the overpass, between its chain-link walls, and down the other side to the little cul de sac across from the schoolyard. Twenty years later, when my family moved onto that part of East Georgia, amidst the used condoms and needles and beer cans and broken glass, one of the first stories I heard was the story of the overpass and the militant moms who made it happen.
Some of those women still live in the neighbourhood. Some of those women still struggle and protest and fight for affordable housing and safety. And all of those women remain a vibrant part of its history, a cornerstone of community-building, and a reminder of what a little courage and direct action can accomplish.
Take a walk over the overpass, starting at Seymour School. Pause at the top and look down on the tracks – not as busy now, but still slicing through the ‘hood, marking this mix of residence and industry where Vancouver started. Head down the steps and carrry on west, through the housing projects and towards Chinatown. At the corner of Cambell and Keefer you’ll find a mosaic in the sidewalk, a tribute to the mothers and their struggle. Stop a moment. Study it. It may be overshadowed by the new condos going up. It may be scuffed and dirty. It may be partially hidden beneath a discarded newspaper.
But this is our East Van to remember.
