Vancouver Vanishes: Narratives of Demolition and Revival

Literary Nonfiction. Architecture. Social History. Photography. #1 on the BC Bestseller List. Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes), 2016. Essays by Caroline Adderson, Eve Lazarus, Kerry Gold, John Atkin, John Mackie, and Elise and Stephen Partridge, with photographs by Tracey Ayton and Caroline Adderson. Foreword by Michael Kluckner.

Since 2005, nearly 9,000 demo permits for residential buildings have been issued in Vancouver. An average of three houses a day are torn down, many of them original homes built for the middle and working class in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Very few are deemed significant enough to earn the protection of a heritage designation, but they are part of our heritage nonetheless and their demolition is not only an architectural loss.

When these old homes come down, a whole history goes with them the materials that were used to build them, the gardens, the successive owners and their secrets. These old houses and apartments are repositories of narrative. The story of our city is diminished every time one disappears.

Based on the popular Facebook page, VANCOUVER VANISHES is a collection of essays and photographs that together form a lament for, and celebration of, the vanishing character homes and apartments in the city.

"provides a most useful contribution to the increasingly anxiety-ridden conversation that continues to grip this town over the subject of housing" Allen Garr, Vancouver Courier

"a gorgeous but troubling commentary on the disposability of our young city's architectural history" Shelley Fralic, The Vancouver Sun

" a shared attempt to document and protest the rampant destruction of perfectly fine family dwellings in Vancouver for no reason other than speculative profit As a novelist, Adderson contends suburban renewal is tantamount to a loss of shared narratives. Even if that perspective seems a tad airy- fairy to you Hey, don't those new mega-houses, often owned by folks from afar, constitute the growth of new stories in other languages? it's a lot more difficult to debunk her contention that wide-scale destruction of wooden houses is antithetical to the conceit of Vancouver City council to make Vancouver into the greenest city on the planet." BC BookWorld"