{"id":6908,"date":"2016-05-10T13:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/?p=6908"},"modified":"2016-05-09T01:05:59","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T05:05:59","slug":"book-reviews-hobohemia-crucifixion-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2016\/05\/10\/book-reviews-hobohemia-crucifixion-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Reviews: Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Author:\u00a0Todd McCallum (AU Press, 2014)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In High School film studies, I once made a documentary about homelessness in Vancouver. We had learned about documentaries the weeks prior, with an emphasis on bias: the bias that people have going into a documentary. All films have\u00a0a certain bias, or way of filtering the world. Documentaries are no exception. With this mind, we travelled around the downtown East Side, to Hastings street, and then down along Main, cutting across toward Granville street. It was like a completely different world existed there: a different society that had different rules and boundaries than our own. It wasn\u2019t odd to see someone using heroin standing on a street corner, or sleeping half way off the curb onto the road. It was sad, and we had to ask ourselves, how did this happen? In fact, we asked a lot of those people through interviews. The raw footage was terrifyingly cohesive, a narrative of government loopholes and the idea of the \u201cforgotten\u201d people. I assumed this was a newer problem, something that rose with Vancouver\u2019s success as a city. Through reading Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine: Rival Images of a New World in 1930s\u2019 Vancouver<\/em>\u00a0by Todd McCallum, I was able to understand\u00a0how this all began.<\/p>\n

The treatment of homeless people in Vancouver has not had a stellar track record, that is the easiest way to sum up the book. McCallum is a professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University, and this shows quite heavily in the book. It is daunting in a way, the text is small and the book is a larger format paperback, with fairly few paragraph breaks or pauses. But within, there is a massive collection of history about how Vancouver mishandled so many early situations with its city\u2019s less fortunate.<\/p>\n

An important note:\u00a0even though one anticipates that\u00a0the book will\u00a0to take the side of the \u201chobo\u201d, an explicit\u00a0bias it not evident. I attribute this\u00a0to McCallum\u2019s history background, as well as his great ability to tell fact as fact and let the narrative form as it happened. And that is the darkness that lies in this book, that the facts described within actually happened. For instance, the reaction from the government and police in 1933\u00a0to use spies to infiltrate these \u201ccommunist\u201d labour parties and pull out dissenters, who were\u00a0rioting over labour issues.<\/p>\n

McCallum breaks down the term \u201cHobohemia\u201d in the early stages of the book:<\/p>\n

British Columbia\u2019s Hobohemia, as understood here, fits comfortably within this description of heterotopias as \u2018places that are outside all places\u2019 and that gather together a host of discarded, disparate elements \u2018within the culture\u2019 in ways that allow for contestation and reversal.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is critically important\u00a0as it is the foundation for the rest of the history. The fact that the relief aid, at the beginning of the 1930’s, just could not keep up with the demand for these\u00a0outcasts\u00a0due to the privatization of what were government programs prior, helped Vancouver not fall into bankruptcy, yes, but at the same time, created these heterotopias, where men, women, and children fell through the cracks.<\/p>\n

Given the complexity of the subject\u2014weaving philosophical thought through historical fact\u2014makes for a\u00a0cerebral book. However, if there is one thing that stood out to me most about McCallum\u2019s message in the book,\u00a0it is\u00a0that we need to remember what being a decent human being is and that the foundations of our city are built on the backs of individuals who were put through some terrible situations.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, many issues\u00a0described within the book are difficult and transcendent ones, not the kind that we will likely ever fix. We constantly hear about the \u201chomeless problem\u201d but it seems to have always\u00a0been present, and may never change. What we can do, though, is alter our perspective on how we got here, and to whom we owe some of the credit. The individuals jumping off the rails in Vancouver built and shaped this city, and Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine<\/em> tells you the how, the why, and the darker sides of history of our city.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For more information, visit the AU Press\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Jeremy Senko<\/em><\/strong> is happily lost in the world of theoretical architecture and design. He is forever a student at heart, consistently reading, experiencing and learning about the world he inhabits. More specifically, he works as an Interior Designer in Vancouver and plays an active part in bettering the environments we live in.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author:\u00a0Todd McCallum (AU Press, 2014) In High School film studies, I once made a documentary about homelessness in Vancouver. We had learned about documentaries the weeks prior, with an emphasis on bias: the bias that people have going into a documentary. All films have\u00a0a certain bias, or way of filtering the world. Documentaries are noContinue reading “Book Reviews: Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8146,"featured_media":6983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[417],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBook Reviews: Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine - Spacing National<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2016\/05\/10\/book-reviews-hobohemia-crucifixion-machine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Reviews: Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine - Spacing National\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Author:\u00a0Todd McCallum (AU Press, 2014) In High School film studies, I once made a documentary about homelessness in Vancouver. 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