GVRD Neighborhoods Essay
by Michael Kluckner
Before World War II, communities developed in the Lower Mainland around historic crossroads and strategic spots for river navigation. Always, their existence depended on some kind of local industry--brick making at Clayburn, fish packing and boat building at Steveston, farming at Cloverdale--and the people who lived in the town and in the surrounding countryside focused their attention inward, towards the main street, the post office and, often, the movie house, the cafe and the beer parlor in the hotel.
The shared purpose of so many residents meant that there was also something of a shared vision of the town’s activities and future. Some communities also had strong ties of language and culture--many of the farms in the Fraser Valley were settled by migrants from England; Japanese fisherman and their families put a distinctive stamp on Fraser River fish camps like Annieville and towns like Steveston; the Finns of Finn Slough along the river in south Richmond created a unique community tied more to the water than to the land.
Trips to the metropolis were rare. Although car ownership gradually grew during the Twenties and Thirties, from one car for every twelve people in 1922 to one in seven in 1936 (far below the United States where, for example, in Seattle in 1928, there was one car for every three people), operating costs were still quite high, and many families used their vehicles just for Saturday shopping and Sunday drives.
A new attitude toward the automobile after the Second World War redefined the nature of communities out in the countryside. Traffic was beginning to become “regional,” although in the early 1950s the idea of highways bypassing country towns was dismissed as “absurd,” because “most of the traffic is heading for town anyway.” But with the completion of the Highway One Freeway in the mid 1960s, and extensive improvements to the Lougheed Highway, everything began to change.
First, many people bought into new subdivisions on the outskirts of the old country towns because they wanted affordable space and could now drive easily to their jobs elsewhere in the region. Secondly, many municipal councils rezoned large areas for shopping malls, such as Richmond Centre, Coquitlam Centre, Surrey Centre, and Langley’s Willowbrook; in most cases this economic rivalry was too much for the old town centres, which lost customers to the malls. Old businesses relocated, others closed, and the main streets slipped into a decline. The Whalley Commercial area, now the centre of Surrey City, was one casualty; Haney’s main street along the Lougheed has struggled since the 1970s; Langley’s old downtown along the Fraser Highway is attempting to reverse a decade-long skid with a “heritage” refit.
Not surprisingly, the residents in these new suburbs did not share interests with their neighbors to the same extent as in the old days. Often, both adults in a family worked elsewhere, so a sense of belonging to a community was slower to develop. People might shop on the way home from work, or at the mall thirty miles away, or even in the United States if it suited their fancy.
Residents of these new subdivisions are more inclined to find common ground through schools and recreation rather than through the commerce which used to anchor the old towns. Certainly, the new communities are more homogeneous in their age groups and income levels than were the old ones--young families with children over here, seniors behind the wall over there. As a result, some communities develop identity only in crises, such as a crime wave, or unwelcome redevelopment plans, especially the encroachment of high-density housing into what had previously been a single-family preserve. Sometime they are united only in what they don’t want, as in the oft-heard Langley statement: “We don’t want to become like Walnut Grove!”
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