The Tyee: Michael Kluckner about the importance 
of Kogawa House and The Land Conservancy of BC

Michael Kluckner is a writer/painter and heritage advocate.  He has done 

wonderful things to promote the heritage of BC, documented in his book

and his works titled  Vanishing British Columbia.  In a recent article by 

Charles Campbell in The Tyee, Kluckner talks about the importance of 

Kogawa House and the wonderful work by The Land Conservancy of BC.

see: http://thetyee.ca/Photo/2006/12/08/VanishingBC/

On the virtue of taking individual heritage preservation initiatives out of government hands:

"The Land Conservancy is one of the partners in the heritage legacy fund, and they're going out and doing things like this marvellous high-wire act with the Kogawa house [where Obasan author Joy Kogawa lived before the Second World War internment of Japanese-Canadians]. In a sense, they are showing how some public money, put into an endowment administered by a private foundation, with private fundraising, can really make a difference. You think of how significant the Kogawa house is as a site on the cultural map of Canada. They're able to save this in the hottest real estate market that Vancouver's ever seen.

"Politicians come and go, and they're focused on their term of office. Stewardship is a longer-term commitment. The National Trusts in Britain and Australia have never been governmental organizations. There are governmental organizations in England that perform really good roles, but I think the evidence is that governments, whether they are left or right, can't be counted on to have consistent policies that allow for stewardship.

"The grassroots desire to save the Kogawa house -- this is not something that was seen by the Liberal or Conservative governments federally as being important. But there were obviously people all over the country who said 'This is important.' The people are ahead of the government on that. A mechanism that allows this to happen is often much more flexible. The reality is that in Australia, England, Scotland, you get people's interests reflected through an organization more than you get people's values reflected through a government. Governments have other fish to fry.

"The city is somehow way more accessible to people. What's missing is the idea of heritage that is more holistic. Going back to the walk-up apartments on South Granville -- somehow these buildings have to be recognized holistically as being part of the city's future as much as they are a part of the past."

On British Columbia's two solitudes:

"But then you get out into the countryside, and you've got the two solitudes, the urban and the rural. In the city, most of the change is due to development. The city's rich, and it can make choices, and most of the time they are pretty good choices. But out in the countryside, change is due to abandonment, and there's no money. And so that layer of human settlement is just disappearing off the landscape, and I think the province is impoverished due to the loss of that layer.

"In terms of heritage planning and inventories, the province has actually been quite proactive at finding money. And now the energy's going into the so-called keynote buildings, because of the development of the national register of historic places. Planning to a certain degree works in communities that are organized. You see it in Kamloops and Kelowna to a certain extent, in terms of retaining these layers.

"But then there's these almost folkloric places. For example, Doukhobor community villages in the Kootenays. There are just a handful now instead of a hundred. This is the evidence of the largest communal living experiment ever in Canada, and fascinating from that point of view. You then get The Land Conservancy [of B.C.] coming in and helping to buy one of the key places. The land conservancies are one of the most positive of the initiatives that have come along, and they've come along privately. The TLC is just a remarkable organization. The Nature Conservancy of Canada is very good too. And they've gotten into cultural sites, as has the land conservancy."

 For more article see: http://thetyee.ca/Photo/2006/12/08/VanishingBC/