Union Street

Spanning across three generations, Union Street chronicles the ongoing effects of racism, displacement and the cultural erasure of African Canadians. While examining the systemic and political mechanisms that destroyed Hogan’s Alley in the 1960s, Vancouver’s historic Black community for almost a century is brought back into the spotlight. Train porters, speakeasies, juke joints and a thriving community all existed in the Black neighbourhood; and so did musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. The reverberations of this thriving community and its erasure are still felt, and in the face of adversity a new generation of Black Vancouverites work to rebuild community and facilitate Black joy. As they reclaim cultural space and give voice to black experiences in Vancouver, they also redefine what it means to be African-Canadian.

The VIFF Centre screenings of Union Street will be preceded by the short Militant Mothers (8 min) that documents a true story that happened in Strathcona in the 1970s, and is mentioned in Union Street. To get to class on time, children from the Raymur Place social housing project were forced to jump shunting train cars that stood in their path; there were no other routes to the school. In 1971, after months of petitioning the city of Vancouver for a safe crossing in their neighbourhood, a fierce group of Strathcona mothers made their voices heard by blockading CN rail from delivering goods. Their fight made a lasting impact.

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