Over the last two decades, the urban sprawl of construction originating in Vancouver, has spread all the way to the distant suburbs and beyond. The Ioco / Belcarra Cottages / Port Moody installation makes tangible the disappearing ways of living of the region by presenting the soon-to-be demolished and forgotten buildings of a bygone time.

The subject matter is inspired by the way Metro Vancouver is experiencing a housing crisis due to unaffordability and extremely low rental opportunities, despite the fact that numerous new buildings have been built in the last 15 years or are soon to be built. Whole neighbourhoods are displaced and replaced.

This triptych ties together these three areas of Port Moody to demonstrate both the transitory nature of memory and how we casually discard historical areas without contemplation of the consequences. Each represents a way of living that has been disappearing consistently over several decades in BC. The Ioco townsite is the second-last company town in the Lower Mainland. The summer cottages of Belcarra South, once common around Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm, are the last ones in this area. Downtown Port Moody, which still has many characteristics of a small town, will be radically changed by the expansion of the regional transit system. The loss of these last remnants of a previous time will erase Port Moody’s unique identity as it is absorbed into the uniformity of a generic Metro Vancouver.

When a landmark is gone, we quickly forget what was there before. Our previous notion of the space we occupy is lost. The many changes in these areas cannot be shown by just a few static photographic prints on a wall. The three concurrent video displays show many disappearing places in an attempt to question the place heritage buildings have in Metro Vancouver as well as the urgent need for affordable housing and saving the local agricultural lands.

2019 – Art Gallery of St. Albert, St. Albert, AB / Opening with artist in attendance, followed by artist talk
2019 – UBC Vancouver Campus, screening and panel discussion