As I sift through and arrange Artspeak’s wealth of publications, and as I learn more about the history of the gallery’s current home at 233 Carrall, connective tissues across century-long concerns emerge.
For example, the exhibition catalogue for Susan Schuppli’s 1996 exhibition Domicile includes a text by Patrick Mahon, who explores feminist spatial criticism alongside Schuppli’s work. Early in his essay, Mahon considers how “relations of representation and difference within the spatial matrix of the city . . . are implicit within any history of space” [1]. These matrices include numerous intersections of identity, but the traditional “notion of ‘a public man and a private woman’” in particular informs the city’s earliest examples of gendered economies [2].
Via Mahon’s text, I reflect on the Old Granville Townsite’s (ie. Gastown’s) predominantly ‘masculine’ origins. As former Vancouver Sun journalist Pete McMartin frames it, 85% of the city’s first colonial settlement “consisted of single males with no permanent homes, and sleep was the last thing on their minds” [3]. Sex work was such a prevalent part of the local economy that one of Vancouver’s earliest de facto tax systems was developed specifically for well-known Madame Birdie Stewart and her “ladies,” as their “cash flow rivalled the city’s” [4][5]. As it turns out, this tax against a very public-facing class of women, which “started as a sort of business licence” and “became protection money,” was decided upon at the Bodega Saloon [6].
233 Carrall was built circa 1886 as the Bodega Saloon and housed many businesses of the same name over the years: the Bodega Hotel, Boarding House, Cabaret, Cafe, and so on. In memoriam of its fabled origins, a Vancouver Province journalist wrote in 1900 that “[n]o public meeting could be held, no city council or committee sit without an adjournment to the Bodega, there to fight the battles over again, and incidentally drink a bit” [7]. In other words, the Bodega was a boys club, where men could gather to decide things and settle arguments—whether about government and taxes, real estate and gambling, or what to do about a jailed drove of errant cows (their crime: cabbage patch destruction) [8].
In light of the Bodega’s patriarchal origins, it seems fitting that Artspeak moved into 233 Carrall one hundred years later. An organization helmed by women since its formation, Artspeak has always sought to provide space for cultural conversations which oppose the “historical over-determination of the public world as the domain of a masculine subject” [9]. While these efforts may never completely eradicate the psychic hangovers of the macho Bodega, they do insert a distinctly feminist volume into the building’s storied histories.
— Communications + Operations Manager Alexandra Bischoff on “Summer in the Stacks”.
[1] Schuppli, Susan, and Patrick Mahon. Domicile: Susan Schuppli. Edited by Susan Edelstein, Artspeak Gallery, 1996. pp. 8.
[2] Ibid. pp. 9.
[3] McMartin, Pete. “When Gamblers Flourished.” The Vancouver Sun, 4 June 1986, p. B5.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The timing of this research discovery feels even more pressing, as the federal government’s 2014 Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which criminalizes most aspects of sex work, is slated to be reviewed this year. The “ladies tax” of 1886 may be seen as our city’s first movement toward the criminalization of sex work, the negative consequences of which are still felt.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “In Memoriam – Bodega.” The Vancouver Daily Province (1900-1952), Jul 12, 1900, pp. 3.
[8] Matthews, Major James Skitt. Early Vancouver, Vol. 3. Vancouver: City of Vancouver, 2011. pp. 202.
[9] Schuppli, Susan, and Patrick Mahon. Domicile: Susan Schuppli. Edited by Susan Edelstein, Artspeak Gallery, 1996. pp. 8.