Posts from — December 2009

Christmas Eve mural created in Melbourne by Oz graffiti artist Meggs and friends.

The sudden disappearance of the Steve Nash charity graffiti murals around Larwill Park, soon to be home to the City of Vancouver’s 2010 Games downtown live site, may be dumbing down some walls in this part of the world, but the House of Meggs is more than making up for it Down Under. (We’ve corresponded and he’s no relation — but surely, there must be some connection.)

That Meggs, who takes his name from a well-known Aussie children’s comic hero named Ginger Meggs, has exhibited in Melbourne — especially lanes in the city’s business district — as well as Paris and Tokyo.

This Mount Pleasant apple tree was probably planted in 1917, the same year this small home was built for a Vancouver milk delivery man by his employer.

The Mount Pleasant apple tree that graces the front yard of a Mount Pleasant heritage home, both facing redevelopment to make way for a new BC Transmission Corp. substation, has been given a brief reprieve from the chain saw.

And friends of the tree are rallying to keep it growing, either with a complete transplant to a nearby property, or through propagation of grafted shoots that can be raised in a Richmond nursery for later transplant to new homes.

(The project is part of BCTC’s Vancouver Central City Transmission project to expand power capacity in Mount Pleasant and south False Creek. Here’s a recent update on the program, including the substation.)

According to BCTC spokesperson Mike Witherly, demolition and site clearing are now scheduled for early in the New Year, leaving another month to see if the tree, at least, can find a new life elsewhere.

Witherly said earlier this month that a nearby property owner may be able to  take the tree down the street. If not, I’ve been in touch with urban farmers at the Vancouver Fruit Tree Project, who  are ready to organize a harvest of “scion” wood for grafting onto new shoots that can be raised in a Richmond orchard until they’re ready to return to Vancouver.

Both the tree and the house are links to the earliest days of one of Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhoods, proof that both urban agriculture and the need for affordable workers’ housing are as old as the city itself.

When I first encountered the tree last August, it dominated its 6th and Alberta corner with a bumper crop of apples. The tree, not the home, piqued my interest as a a veteran of the earliest days of Vancouver urban agriculture. Others, including the Sun’s Rebecca Terbrake, picked up the story.

When I consulted Kwantlen University’s Kent Mullinix, one of BC’s leading apple experts, about the prospects for the tree, he went to see for himself.

His assessment: the tree was indeed the bearer of a good crop of dessert apples of an unknown heritage variety. It could be transplanted — although a successful replanting was not guaranteed — provided it had an appropriate pruning, a good new location and a bit of luck. [Read more →]

The city’s new procurement policy, the lengthy document that is last but not least on this year’s final regular council agenda, not only tightens oversight over the purchase of goods and services, it will save money and help the city secure environmental and social sustainability from its suppliers. (It’s policy report 6 on this massive council agenda.)

Example: instead of three city purchases seeking office suppliers independently, a single buying system will call on suppliers to compete on price and how green their products from the forest, through the pulp mill and right to the loading dock. Five “category managers” in the new system will each be responsible for finding the best price and value in a particular area of purchasing.

A product of the Vancouver Services Review, the new system streamlines purchasing into a single system to increase buying power and consistency. It implements corporate best practices to ensure more competitive bidding and closer oversight of contracts.

Perhaps most importantly, it allows the city to drive its sustainability agenda with its own purchasing power, encouraging more suppliers to verify they are green and doing everything possible to support the city’s objectives for environmental and social sustainability.

The removal of a graffiti-like mural at Main and Cordova was manna from heaven for critics of the city’s 2010 Games bylaws, proof that a widespread crackdown was under way on the right to free speech.

Except that it’s not.

Now the mural’s back up. It looks a little like graffiti, but it’s not. It’s art, it’s free expression. It’s fine.

As you were.