I didn’t know which topic I would start The Pickup truck Diaries with first. At least not right away. Hell, I’m still trying to decide if I even bother to do any actual edits on these, and just give it to you raw.
Because really, how does one compile an entire lived experience into neat little sections and articles? I mean… You can’t, there’s simply no way. Life tends to blur together, mixing into one big primordial soup of existence. And sorting it all out is half the battle of articles like these ones. See, I very much want to avoid becoming one of those insufferable forty-something mom bloggers, complete with a “Karen” style haircut and a blog that always keeps coming up when you’re just searching for a god damn baking recipe. No Cindy, I really don’t give a shit about how much your kids love the pie, I just want the recipe and the instructions, in a Jim Carrey kind of “sank you very much.”
I view all art to be only worth creating when it’s impactful. Art can be a catharsis for the soul, yes, but that’s not the art you share. That’s the art you keep just for you. My guitar has become that form of art for me. I’m just not at a point where I can make meaningful change with it. And sorry again, Cindy, but your fucking food blog isn’t going to stop a genocide or fight racial injustice.
There are always undercurrents of themes within a lifetime, of course. These are the themes that flow throughout and within each memory or experience that every small town kid like me has had at some point. Because that’s the goal of this series, right? As much as I love to shit on this metaphorical Cindy character who is feeding into the toxic “everything is art” culture that is ruining the digital space, this series is about making the world better by drawing upon my shitty traumatic childhood in a small town red-neck upbringing.
So Cindy is really here to serve a point. And of course, what point is that, you might ask?
A rather simple one, actually.
This scapegoat character serves as an example of how gentrification is the root of most modern problems, and how it continues to be a poison that is spreading throughout the modern zeitgeist completely unconsciously and with disastrous results. Man, did you see how smooth that segway was by the way? Of course you did you beautiful bastard. Of course, we can’t talk about gentrification without talking about poverty, the flip side of the same coin. It consists of those who are beyond their means to adapt, and whom are pushed out and alienated over time via gentrification without those doing the gentrification having a single fucking clue that they are harming others without intending to in the absolute first place.
Now, I’m not an expert on this, I just spent a helluva lot of my undergraduate focusing on these sorts of issues whenever I was given the chance. Much of it was in relation to one of the most vile and disgusting men on the planet, Jim Pattinson, and outside that nepotistic empire, on the effect of gentrification in the queer communities of Vancouver, B.C., largely the areas of Davie Street and Commercial Drive.
But that’s neither here nor there. I’m here to talk about my home town of Squamish.
I know that usually land acknowledgements come at the beginning of an article, of course. But seeing as land acknowledgements are mostly an excuse for bureaucratic white-folks to continue the status quo without an iota of reflection or actual reconciliation, what I’m going to say is this.
My family is a settler family. We have always been a settler family. And regardless of whether you want to argue that our origin is in Scotland, or Ontario, or Squamish, for the last hundred and twenty years, the Squamish Nation has put up with our shit. Be it my ancestors opening up shops and hotels on their territory without paying them for it in goods or services, or even local elders having to deal with my disabled punk-ass in elementary school as they did their best to preserve their culture and heritage in the face of increasingly difficult odds.
I have enormous respect for them, both living and dead. And I want this series to reflect that they have been affected the most by the ongoing gentrification of their territory, usually in a negative direction. Land acknowledgements aren’t enough. They never truly will be. All I can say is thank you for shaping my upbringing, and for putting up with me and my clan. And for not kicking us out, which you had every right to do. I will owe you an enormous debt for the rest of my life for allowing me to grow up in a place rich in culture, nature, tradition, and community.
Why start with this, you might ask.
Well, it’s all about those undercurrents, remember?
The Quebecois and Commonwealth dominated zoomer and millennial crowd that calls Squamish a playground in the modern era we live in rarely considers some of these churning undercurrents, especially the ones that matter the most. And hell, if I am to be treated like some sort of mystical unicorn for being a “local,” then I sure as fuck need to recognize the true locals that were “local” long before I was ever considered to be such.
But where were we?
Ah yes, gentrification!
See, Squamish started out as nation land. A river delta at the mouth of a cascadian river valley, it has everything one needs to survive. Numerous salmon runs a year, from the pinks to the chum, saskies in the spring, and blackberries in the fall. I remember having to “work” with my dad as a kid, where he’d be off land clearing in the excavator and I’d be wandering through the underbrush, munching away on the green-stemmed shoots that would eventually flourish into orange-red berries. The insides are nice and crisp and crunchy. (I also used to eat young fiddleheads, but apparently there’s only one species of edible fern. Whoops!)
Water access was key of course, and the main river that releases into Howe Sound runs a helluva long way to get there. Numerous other rivers join it along the way – from the Mamquam, to the Cheakamus. Not to mention the various sloughs and blind channels that curl and coil around the estuaries and waterfronts.
Perhaps this is why the settlers set up shop there so early on in the colonial era. Easy access and easily-gathered supplies. It’s a sure thing that better historians than I have done research on such development, and my History Major sure as hell ain’t a masters degree. Regardless, a township sprung up. Named after the nation, I can only assume, the primary resource quickly became the trees growing across the valley and up the mountains on each side. I’m glossing over this for sake of expediency, so acknowledge that stolen land quickly became enormous profit margins for a number of key timber-harvesting companies that clear-cut large swaths of the territory. The town’s entire tilt shifted almost immediately to industrial, and up until the late aughts, it remained as such. This is while the ongoing histories of The Indian Act and residential schools continued on, of course.
I always cackle as an ex-logger myself when tourists and out-of-town folks gape at the forests and grin sheepishly at how beautiful the “old-growth forest” is.
I take a grim delight in pointing out the ancient century-old stumps and chokers left scattered amidst the undergrowth, loudly declaring that this is second or third growth timber, long since pillaged and razed to the ground. The delight comes not from the pillaging itself, for there’s a profound sadness in that knowledge. It rather comes from shattering this idealism of “pristine nature” that so many foolish gentrifiers hold in their minds.
Real nature is wild, untouched, and you sure as hell know it when you see it. Trust me. I spent far too much of my childhood literally lost in the woods.
Alas, this micro-history lesson must draw to a close, as we’re finally nearing the rich, meaty interior of the issue that is gentrification. The one that affects all poor people equally.
Colonialism did one hell of a number on the local terrain, yes, but throughout it all, the town remained exactly what it was described as – a small town. And one of the central markers of a small town is a small community. That means everything is interconnected, and everything has a ripple-effect. Everybody knows the happenings and goings-on, which has both good and bad side-effects.
Over time, folks moved into town with wealth, or acquired wealth after moving to town and tapping untapped markets. Capitalism is ever-voracious in that regard. A beast with a hundred maws as it were, and always trying to grow more.
And the vast majority of the townsfolk did not have such wealth. A very “Stars-on-the-Sneeches” Dr. Seuss level of fuckery, no?
Almost immediately the disparity is clear when one looks. A major feature of many small towns across both Canada and The United States is the trailer park. Whilst many know of these micro-communities from caricatures in “The Trailer Park Boys,” there is some truth hidden within the parody and satire. Trailer parks are often low-income areas. Squamish had no less than three or four trailer parks at any given time. My parents lived in one before I was born, as far as I’m aware.
Next up were the single-family homes, the majority of which were built in waves within specific neighbourhoods, often mass-manufactured quickly according to a central blueprint. I lived in a “Guilford” style home for the majority of my life, as an example, moving from our small rancher when I was about four or five years old.
Finally, there were the unique and well-funded designer homes, manufactured individually for each wealthy family that could afford to have them built. Almost always, these homes were located either on large plots of land within the flood plain itself, or more often perched higher-up along the sides of the ridges and mountains overlooking the town.
If you ever want to know where the wealth in a small town likes to sequester itself, look according to height. Rich people seem to love paying for views and flood security. The other place to look is usually the local Rotary or Lion’s club. Much like country clubs offer a space for the wealthy to congregate sans the annoyances of the poor, such organizations offer an alternative method for those who are well-off to act in the name of charity, for whatever reasons they might have individually.
Now, my family had actually been wealthy in terms of land early on, as they took advantage of the colonial system of land purchase (this is of land the government had no right to sell, of course). Unfortunately, somewhere along the line it was slowly sold off, bit by bit, in order to fund the ailing health of one specific matriarch who held dominion over it. Some few others in the large extended family were able to hold on to some other portions over time, but even they are long dead and gone, now. I can safely say that my immediate family owns nothing in the town in terms of real estate as far as I’m aware.
Life was divided into class. As it usually does in our broken-ass, colonialist-capitalist system. Those with capital were able to sit back and finance endeavours, enriching themselves further in the process, as middle-men and workers at the bottom used initial capital to exponentially increase that capital. Forestry companies often had ties in Squamish to what’s called “quota” which is extremely exclusive rights to timber harvesting in a given region. As many of these quotas were allocated in and around the World Wars, they often fell into the ownership of individual families and companies. They could be bought and sold of course, but few would be so stupid as to sell a license to print money insofar as one had the capital to harvest it.
A middle class still existed back then of course. Anybody who tells you the middle class is still alive and well in the present is either grossly misinformed or misled, or believes themselves to be middle-class when they are often the bottom of the upper class itself.
And thus capitalism churned on, with alcoholism, drug abuse, and all manner of horrors perpetuating rampantly amongst the workers of the lower and middle classes as toxic masculinity dominated the narrative throughout local history up until the early aughts.
See, this is where the story changes.
My family ran their own outfit, meaning that my childhood up until I left home was a series of incredible feast and famine roller-coastering. Those that had no access to quota were forced to bid on “Timber Sales.” These still exist, and historically are horribly mismanaged and mostly exist as a means for the government to argue for the safe management of forestry. (My personal experience has proved this not to be the case, but I’ll let folks far above my pay grade duke this one out.)
Aside from some land sales, forestry has always been a very hard life for those that live it. And up until the aughts, most kids from logging families didn’t really ever see their fathers, as the job required an extremely early wakeup and an extremely late return time. For example, when I was logging for about half a year at one specific spot, wakeup was at 4am to be out the door twenty minutes later, and we’d often not arrive home until 7, sometimes 8pm.
So we’ve finally arrived! I’ve set the stage for you to an adequate degree. Now you can take this scenario, swap out forestry for everything from coal and oil extraction, to fracking, or farming, to mining. And voila! Small-town North America!
See, this is where the gentrification kicks in.
Many small towns are extremely lucrative targets for upper-class folks to move to. Often this is due to lower-cost of living, the ever-increasing cost of home ownership, and the local amenities. In the case of Squamish, a slowly building mountain biking, rock climbing, and windsports scene drove immigration into the town from the 1990’s onwards. This then increased to a literal fever pitch just before and after the 2010 Olympics spotlighted the region and further increased Whistler and the region’s global tourist visibility for the local skiing scene in the Sea to Sky corridor. (This is what we refer to the valleys leading from Squamish where the sea ends, up to the mountains of Whistler and beyond.)
Now, logging had already been kicked in the teeth several times, due to disastrous NDP policies in the 90’s, the Liberals being lecherous, corrupt, nepotistic fucks for the twenty years thereafter, and with there being no viable leftist party with a proper progressive Social Democrat tilt… Well, things weren’t pretty.
One of the pros and simultaneous cons of a small town was knowing everybody and coming together as a community. Key events throughout the year, as well as a number of local grassroots organizations had really solidified folks into a tight-knit society. You couldn’t piss on your neighbour’s lawn or fuck someone over too much because the next day the whole town would know about it. And thus you could be ostracized until you corrected your behaviour. Usually, anyways. There were some selfish sons a’ bitches without ethics in that town. Some of them might even still be there.
Sports, recreation, and industry all sort of worked together, as I remember my dad using his dryland log sort to host the mountain biking technical trials every year around the time of the Test of Metal bike race. And you usually knew who the pricks around town were, who the kooky but good-natured were (RIP Terrill P.), and who the slimy corporate-style capitalists were who fucked everybody in the ass to make as much money as possible. You also knew who had a good heart, and who truly gave a shit about the community, like Constance R. She was a former teacher who served as a school trustee almost until her death, and kept the balance in the school system out of the hands of former administrators. She taught my dad, who is a boomer. Which is a strange thing to consider.
So, when the town was suddenly spotlighted to the world, the world flooded in. And the local town greedily sucked up the tourist dollars of course, as for a long time, the rich/poor divide had been so vast. Poor logging families like mine who had suffered through more famines than feasts in a turbulent industry chained to America and China for the past few decades? Well they were left behind and only the big boys were soon left. The large outfits that could weather a storm or two. Or the ones that worked as subcontractors, of course. Owing money in such a small town was far more common than one would think.
Now, the tourist dollars were great for a while, but then something happened.
A whole bunch of old white people died.
And I say that with a straight face.
On the north shore of nearby Vancouver, all the old white boomers started dying. And as many people know, often the older boomers had kids who inherited their homes.
Now, all of a sudden you had a new class that was wealthy but largely still young and working. They could choose to move to the north shore and live in the homes they inherited of course, or these Degeneration-X miscreants could invest the sale of such a home into a slightly cheaper market. And which place had just been showcased to the world, was already local to Vancouver, had tons of outdoor activities to do, and you could still buy a home for under a million dollars?
You guessed it!
So as the Gorillaz’ song “Fire Coming Out of a Monkey’s Head” goes:
“Then one day, strange folk arrived in the town
They came in camouflage, hidden behind dark glasses, but no one noticed them
They only saw shadows you see, without the truth to the eyes
The happy folk were blind
Falling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes
Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home
Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head
Now everybody dancing, the dance of the dead
The dance of the dead, the dance of the dead.”
It’s a tad exaggerated, of course. For example, most readers won’t know that the Degeneration-X wrestling reference joke up above is brilliant. And just like readers often fail to catch my wittiest jokes, most gentrifying forces won’t have any clue they’re even acting as gentrifying forces.
SO THUS WAS SPOKEN!
SO THUS IT BECAME!
Now, this is where things get hazy, because there are always people profiting off any new change in a society. (Trust me, every change, you just have to look twice.) In this specific change, real estate agents who make 15-20% sales commission jumped up and down in glee, and everybody and their mother told you they were going to get their real estate license. Houses skyrocketed over a short few years to almost double in price. Brand new builds of small two to three bedroom apartments and townhouses were going for up to seven hundred thousand as the feeding frenzy increased to include speculation properties. Big developers flooded the town that before only had a few slavering capitalist fish in a very small pond.
Of course, as this was happening, the town continued to prosper somewhat. Tourist dollars fed key businesses that hungrily devoured this new revenue stream. And why wouldn’t they? Capitalism churns on eternal, unless it is forcibly killed. New businesses sprang up, and speaking as a hipster, I honestly have no qualms about new breweries and amenities, myself. With the influx of young couples in their thirties, the baby population boomed, and every second cross-street you could quickly expect to see a bottle-blonde new mother jogging along with a stroller at hand.
These new folk weren’t malicious.
It wasn’t like they came with an evil intent to eradicate a population, society, or culture.
They were simply capitalizing on their fortune. Providing for them and theirs. Can we truly fault them for ignorance? I hear it’s bliss after all. Us settlers are guilty of the same thing. Poor people doing anything they could to succeed.
…
Oh, right, these people just inherited million dollar homes.
…
Nevermind. Fuck them.
But jokes aside, the side-effect was dramatic. Almost immediately, the housing boom became a catalyst for more rapid change. Those fortunate enough to buy homes, especially after the housing crash of the 1980s, were able to cash in, and they used that money to upgrade with moves further out into the frontier. I hear Powell River and Lillooet both have booming populations of Squamish baby boomers who were able to profit off of this.
The old community dwindled. The tourists filled in the crowd and hid the loss that nobody even realized was happening.
Key events shut down as members of the grassroots communities that made up the society and culture of the town moved away, and nobody came to replace many of them. (Note I didn’t say any.) So in many circumstances, the organizations folded, the events ceased entirely.
And those in poverty? Those with no houses of their own to declare ownership over on stolen nation land? Well… This is where the story gets sadder.
Many rental spaces geared towards low-income folks and areas slowly converted to the Squamish Special – a young couple that has invested in a home, and has suited out a portion of their home so that the rental suite can make up for their mortgage and thus reduce their own cost of living.
Rents rose.
And the people struggling in poverty were faced with a choice. They could stay in a place they either loved or had a connection to, but pay ever-increasing rents whilst knowing that one was further enriching others and helping them get ahead whilst never getting ahead yourself. It was that or they could leave.
I’m sure you all know which the majority of them chose.
And of course, this all happened within a bubble. Despite ever-rising house prices, demand was only kept up artificially due to the ever-hungry purchases of those flipping up, using property as leverage for more property. Up until Covid hit, it was continuing at a fever pitch, hardly slowing ever for more than a few months.
And this is happening across the entire world right now.
The United States is a worse case example of it. Folks in fleets of RVs living across the country in bare necessity. Housing costing so astronomically high that only a few lucky individuals outside inheriting ever managed to buy in.
And now we look at this trend as young people, many of us stuck in this dual-world of have or have not, inheriting and/or having help, or not.
Socioeconomics run ragged.
Squamish isn’t alone.
And maybe this will tie in later as a theme as to why young people are so angry, especially in the buzzing subcultures of youth. They saw it coming. Anybody with half a brain could see that this delicate house of cards built on the backs of the poor could only ever spiral upwards until the disparity became too great and the people left for new fortunes or out of necessity.
But this is not the “angry youth” article. Hell, this isn’t even the “racism” article. Those are coming later.
This is a story I watched in real-time. It’s not very common for anybody who gets out of a small town to ever come back, really. Although there are always some idiots like me who come back hoping that things will still have a semblance of how they used to be in a version of the town that doesn’t exist anymore. One or two friendly faces carries forth this facade.
Gentrification is a cruel and terrible process. It takes the best parts of a place and magnifies them to the stars, but guts the circumstance that created those things in the first place. It’s a sad tale that keeps happening again and again, and which never changes.
Money dictates everything, now.
If you don’t have money, you are worthless.
That’s what gentrification has taught me.
And don’t even get me STARTED on how the boomers have made it so much worse.
That’s another article all by itself, too.
But there you have it, the story of Gentrification, and a small part of the story of Poverty, although there’s a lot more of that theme to come in The Pickup Truck Diaries. You might have no idea!
But all that’s for another time.
Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.
-McRaeWrites
