Speaking for a Long Time

In the late 1990s, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside became the setting for three monuments – Crab Park Boulder, Marker of Change, and Standing with Courage, Strength and Pride. The monuments were grassroots initiatives that challenged the norms of civic art by claiming a place in public space for society’s most vulnerable groups, and each figured in debates about many kinds of violence.

This vivid account of the creation of memory-scapes in a marginalized community offers unique insights into the links between power, public space, and social memory and asks us to reconsider what constitutes public art that will “speak for a long time.” Emphasizing the resilience and agency of artists, activists, and residents, Adrienne Burk shows that grassroots activism can give the socially marginalized a visible presence in our urban landscapes.

Daniel Francis, Vancouver historian, author, and editor of Encyclopedia of British Columbia:
What is the meaning of public monuments? In seeking answers to this innocuous-seeming question, Adrienne Burk has produced a fascinating study of urban space, social memory and community history. Burk is not an academic who remains in the ivory tower; the value of her book is that she is down on the sidewalk: observing, talking, recording, reflecting.

Suzanne Laplante-Edward:
The tragedy at École Polytechnique that took the lives of our daughter Anne-Marie Edward and her engineering school companions, and the ongoing tragedy of the murder of Aboriginal women, have changed our collective social consciousness about violence against women. Adrienne Burk’s beautiful and sensitive account of three commemoration sites in Vancouver dedicated to women murdered by men is a case in point, written with extraordinary insight. Speaking for a Long Time will indeed speak for a long time.