STRATHCONA
Strathcona is one of Vancouver’s earliest neighbourhoods, growing out of the small settlement around Hastings Mill. Before it was called Strathcona, it was known as the East End.
For centuries before Vancouver existed, the area was connected to Coast Salish presence, including a seasonal camp known as Kumkumalay, meaning “big leaf maple trees.”
Strathcona has always been a mixed neighbourhood: houses, apartments, rooming houses, corner stores, parks, gardens, front porches, and constant pressure from the city changing around it.
In the 1890s, Strathcona became a key settlement area for migrant labourers of Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian descent, many connected to rail, mill, and industrial work.
Strathcona has also been home, at different points, to Japanese, Eastern European, Black, Jewish, Vietnamese, Indigenous, and other communities. Basically: Vancouver before Vancouver started marketing itself as “diverse.”
Around the First World War, as Chinatown became overcrowded, Chinese residents began expanding east into Strathcona. During the 1918 flu period, there were around 7,000 Chinese residents in Vancouver, making the Chinese community the city’s largest immigrant community at the time.
Hogan’s Alley ran through the southwest corner of Strathcona, roughly between Union and Prior and from Main toward Jackson. It was one of Vancouver’s most important Black neighbourhoods.
Hogan’s Alley was not only Black. It was also home to Black, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Indigenous, and other residents. Which feels like a very Strathcona answer to the question, “So who lived here?”
By the early 1920s, Vancouver’s Black community had established itself around Hogan’s Alley and Black Strathcona. At its height in the 1940s, the Black population was approximately 800 people.
Hogan’s Alley was known for restaurants, clubs, music, and nightlife, serving residents, railway porters, and touring musicians. Translation: the neighbourhood had soul before condo copywriters discovered the word “vibrant.”
Vie’s Chicken and Steak House was a legendary Hogan’s Alley spot, remembered as both a culinary and cultural centre. Jimi Hendrix’s grandmother, Nora Hendrix, worked nearby, and local memory holds that Jimi spent time in the area when visiting family.
Nora Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix’s grandmother, was a major figure in Vancouver’s Black community. She co-founded the Fountain Chapel, Vancouver’s first Black church, and led the choir.
The Fountain Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopal church, was once located in Hogan’s Alley and became the city’s only Black church at the time. Not a small footnote: that is community infrastructure.
Much of Hogan’s Alley was demolished in the late 1960s for the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. The phrase “urban renewal” did a lot of damage in this neighbourhood.
Strathcona itself was targeted for large-scale demolition in the 1950s and 1960s, but residents organized and pushed back. The neighbourhood survived because people fought for it.
SPOTA, the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association, helped stop the destruction of Strathcona. It was largely led by Chinese residents and became a major example of neighbourhood resistance.
The Militant Mothers of Raymur are one of the great Strathcona stories. In 1971, mothers from Raymur Housing blockaded railway tracks because their kids had to cross active tracks to get to school. The city built an overpass. Direct action, stroller edition.
RayCam Cooperative Centre grew out of that same community organizing tradition. Strathcona’s civic culture was not built by branding consultants. It was built by neighbours who refused to be ignored.
Strathcona Community Gardens began in 1985 when local residents started transforming unused land from an informal dump into a volunteer-managed public green space.
The garden now covers about 1.35 hectares, or 3.34 acres, on city land. It includes garden plots, orchard, herb garden, wild areas, and community space. A small miracle with compost.
In the early days of the Strathcona Community Gardens, local artists and activists began with “random acts of gardening” and sculpture. That phrase alone basically explains the neighbourhood.
Strathcona is part of the Eastside Culture Crawl’s geography, one of Vancouver’s major visual arts events. The Crawl now involves 500+ artists opening studios across the Eastside.
The Eastside Culture Crawl includes painters, jewellers, sculptors, furniture makers, weavers, potters, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers, and more. Basically, if it can be made by hand in a studio with questionable ventilation and enormous integrity, it probably appears somewhere nearby.
Paneficio Studios in Strathcona has been home to a small community of artists for about 30 years. Its owner Valerie Arntzen was also a co-founder of the Eastside Culture Crawl.
Razstone Studios in Strathcona has operated as artist studios since 2004 and was formerly home to Press Gang Publishers, a feminist press. Good neighbourhoods have ghosts. Great neighbourhoods have feminist publishing ghosts.
The Strathcona Community Centre has Indigenous-led public art, including the “Cycles” mural by Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Ocean Hyland, Atheana Picha, and Kelsey Sparrow.
In 2009, the Traces project used artistic mediums to connect youth, seniors, and artists in documenting and celebrating Strathcona’s living history.
Strathcona’s character is not just heritage houses. It is restored row houses, flower gardens, corner stores, tai chi in the parks, community gardens, rooming houses, and porches that actually get used.
The neighbourhood has survived rail lines, viaducts, industrial pressure, gentrification, demolition plans, and several decades of people “discovering” it. Strathcona’s real superpower is stubbornness with good architecture.