We can all be prone to a certain smugness when reading about the past. How quaint, how how old-fashioned, how backwards, we think. We are so much more evolved than that.
Or are we?
There are many surprises in Jesse Donaldsons new book, This Day in Vancouver, which chronicles a noteworthy event on each calendar day in the citys life over the past 125 years. The 365 days march on in proper order but the years skip back and forth: the entry for June 13 talks about the great fire of 1886 while on the next page were reminded of the June 14, 1994 Stanley Cup riots.
One expects to read stories about racism, such as the April 11, 1903 account of a joyous headline proclaiming no more Japanese will come here. After all, we like to think that racism or any other negative kind of ism is a thing of the past. But then Donaldson surprises us by writing about the November 17, 2001 beating death of a gay man. 2001? That wasnt so long ago. And how could there have been a Klu Klux Klan rally in Vancouver as recently as October 17, 1980? (The 1920s KKK headquarters is now home to Canuck Place.)
Of course, many of the entries are much more innocuous or have that patina of quaintness. Poet Pauline Johnsons wonderful elocutionary and dramatic prowess wowed the crowd on October 21, 1897 while on October 11, 1957, the Vancouver Mounties were found guilty of the sin of playing professional baseball on the Lords Day (Sunday.)
All of the stories are reminders that we should never forget the past, but also that the past is not as far back as wed sometimes like to think.
