About
In 2022, we were privileged to be awarded a 150 Time Immemorial Grant* administered by Heritage BC for “Kuwentong Pamamahay”, a collaboration between Heritage Vancouver Society (HVS), Sliced Mango Collective (SMC), UBC Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies (ACAM) and the UBC Public Humanities Hub (PHH). We publicly launched “Kuwentong Pamamahay” on June 1, 2024, an accessible and resilient digital resource of stories representing an intersectional Filipino Canadian community working through the realities of what it means to make a home in Vancouver.
A basic translation of “Kuwentong Pamamahay” is “Stories of Home-Making”. The project’s oral histories communicate how the Filipino Canadian immigrant experience and search for identity across generations shapes places that have become important to them.
Why on Top10
This project arose from the situation facing a cluster of food businesses near Joyce-Collingwood station important to the Filipino Canadian community. We worked with SMC on programming in 2021 and 2022 to discuss the impacts of transit oriented development at Joyce Collingwood and more intimate conversations listening to community members about why the food hub is important. This is significant because it gives insight into what connections are formed, what is important, how these relationships are important for people and what it means for a piece of the identity of the city, the experiences of these people.
We have long championed what are community member understandings of places that are unrevealed and unknown because they do not factor into planning and planning regulations. We feel that this oral histories project is important because it enables and empowers community members to collect, communicate, and present their stories and the stories of their community members so that they can voice their heritage themselves. Standard city planning and heritage planning consultations do not tend to place community members in the foreground since they are not regarded as experts or planning professionals. The Joyce Collingwood Precinct Plan makes no mention of the significance of the station area to the Filipino Canadian community. These oral histories help us learn about the attachments, meanings and identities connected to places, especially, but not limited to the Joyce Collingwood area.
City of Vancouver urban planning in more recent years has started giving some attention to recognizing that some services or businesses are important to the ways of life and identities of ethno-cultural communities. The Vancouver Plan of 2022 includes ethno-cultural community areas which it defines as:
Areas where there is a concentration of cultural heritage assets, services, and/or businesses for or from specific racialized ethnic communities (e.g., Black and African descent communities, Punjabi, Chinese, or Vietnamese) or white ethnic communities (e.g., Greek, Italian, or Ukrainian).
The plan itself recognizes that:
heritage resources are vulnerable to redevelopment pressures. If left unchecked, Vancouver will lose its highly valued arts, cultural, and heritage resources.
And includes action to “explore protection of cultural heritage assets, heritage values, services, and/or businesses for or from ethnic communities” for Chinatown, Paeru Gai (Powell Street), Little Saigon, and Punjabi Market- four areas specifically identified. (p.127)
As stated by the City itself, these areas face a lot of pressure and are highly vulnerable to loss. Storytelling initiatives are important for keeping attention and sustaining efforts by communities to be heard by planning regulations and systems that do not recognize them.
The project website is here: https://kuwentongpamamahay.github.io/
Additional Information
* The full project is funded by the Province of British Columbia through the 150 Time Immemorial Grant Program administered by Heritage BC, and the City of Vancouver Cultural Grants Program under the Communities and Artists Shifting Culture stream. We are also indebted to UBC ACAM for their generous support. Alyssa Sy de Jesus is also a very important supporter and collaborator on this project, especially in the early days when we were applying for funding.
https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/joyce-collingwood-station-precinct-review.aspx
https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/vancouver-plan.aspx#redirect
We acknowledge the financial assistance of the Province of British Columbia
