Sandy Calder On Vancouver's Olympic Legacy

Sandy Calder, Vancouver Downtown Eastside, resident, hotel eviction, VANOC, Olympics 2010

Am Johal , Vancouver, BC - site of 2010 Olympics

Date Posted: 12/03/07

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Sandy Calder, a 68-year-old Downtown Eastside resident is expected to be evicted from the Dominion Hotel on December 31, 2007. Over 700 low-income hotel rooms have been converted in Vancouver’s inner city Downtown Eastside neighbourhood since the 2010 Winter Olympics were awarded to the city. An additional 660 rooms are under threat of conversion by the time the opening ceremonies kick off in February 2010. Additionally, hundreds more temporary evictions are expected due to existing loopholes in legislation to protect tenants. Sandy Calder met with Am Johal at Blake’s coffee shop near his home in Gastown.

When did you move in to the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood and how long have you been living here?

I’ve been in the Dominion for a little over a year, I was at the Hildon Hotel for five years. Prior to that, I lived in the Piccadilly Hotel on Pender Street for 12 years.

It was great. It was right in the middle of the Downtown core - look at all this noise down here now and construction. I was living in Gastown during the riots in late sixties. There were a lot of hippies here. The police used to be on horseback.

We used to hang out at the Europe Hotel. I was a hard-core drinker. We used to be there at 9 in the morning. Forty long-haired hippies. We would be making $2/hour. We had a crew of 40 guys, there job was to drink as many beers in the morning, then they would go to work after a few hours, then it was our turn to take a break and get some drinks.

It was pretty brutal. That was when Gassy Jacks’s statue was on the other side of the street near the Europe Hotel. There was a liquor store on Carrall Street that was open until 2 in the morning and another one on Main Street. They had the largest wine selection, not a lot of variety, but you could get what you wanted. It was great. There were other downtown liquor stores, one on Pender beside Chapmans, one on Hornby and Robson that were also open until 2 in the morning.

But I don’t drink any more, but it used to be a pretty important part of my life back then.

Where have you lived in Vancouver?

I lived in Kitsilano, in the West End, above Murphy’s Pub, beside the Piccadilly.