Since 1993 the Maplewood Mudflats area has been managed by the Wild Bird Trust of B.C. becoming a safe haven for birds of many feathers. Located in North Vancouver’s Dollarton area it is also home to a public art installation depicting squatters’ shacks in the 1960-70’s.
From shangri la to shangri la, Artist, Ken Lum, Courtesy of Public Art Collection, North Vancouver Recreation Commission (NVRC)".
It was created by world renowned Canadian artist, Ken Lum. His work is situated around the slough close to the parking area exhibiting scaled down replicas of the shacks that were part of the mudflats for many decades. Stop to look at them on your next visit and then rather than walking south, as most visitors do, take the path to the left to walk east until you reach a wide view of the mudflats.
View to the East of the Mudflats. Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence.
Then stop to imagine what they looked like scattered with shacks lived in by squatters. And before the shacks and the squatters, and before the first European settlers arrived in the 1860s, imagine the peoples of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation fishing the water’s abundant supply of seafood in what we now call Burrard Inlet. Then look across the water towards the oil refinery, a flare burning fixture on Burnaby’s Burrard slopes since 1935, and snaking along the shoreline below is the CP rail line where, for over a century, huge locomotives have pulled grain hoppers from Prairie farms to the Port of Vancouver.
View to the South of the oil refinery. Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence.
In the late 1960’s the Maplewood Mudflats became a refuge for a cluster of squatters living in shacks built on stilts in the intertidal zone. Many of them were idealistic hippies while others were part time squatters and some people lived there because they wanted to or had nowhere else to live. But shacks at the Mudflats had existed since the early 20th Century long before these hippies arrived to seek a utopia. Long time North Vancouver resident Faye Cooper’s late husband, Brian, spent idyllic summers there with his father, Bill, starting at around age five in 1937. Like many occupants of the Mudflats, Bill constructed his shack from what he could find or scavenge for his get-away. He had another home across the inlet on Trinity Street in Burnaby, where he lived with his wife Jessica, but for years spent time at the Mudflats with his young son Brian who learned to set crab traps in the inlet and often arrived back to the shack with a full bucket of shrimp bought from a fisher for 25 cents. His mother, Jessica, would visit them, swimming across the inlet to reach them.
“Hippies’ Home, Squatters Shack on the Mudflats, Burrard Inlet background & Oil Refiner”, Photographer, Tony Westman, Source: ‘MONOVA: Archives of North Vancouver’ Inventory # 15825.
The long-time shack settlement came to an end on Saturday, December 18, 1971. With Christmas just one week away North Shore residents would have been busy buying gifts, putting up trees, thinking about parties and about being together with friends and family to feast on turkey and sing Christmas Carols about Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All or Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. Open fires were kindled that day in North Vancouver as evicted squatters, including children, watched the shacks they had called home being torched and razed. The civic order for this action was based on the assertion by the District of North Vancouver that living in the shacks without basic services presented a serious health hazard to the inhabitants. The District of North Vancouver Council had also earmarked use of the area to develop a shopping centre and needed the squatters gone.
B&W Shack with Boat. Photographer Leonard Helmer, circa 1957, Source: ‘MONOVA: Archives of North Vancouver’ Inventory # 10507.
Squatter’s shack 1960’s, Source: ‘MONOVA: Archives of North Vancouver’ Inventory # 8602.
Many of the squatters evicted that day belonged to the group of hippies seeking a utopia or a Shangri-la. They held anti-establishment beliefs and had found liberty from urban constraints in their life style by living off-grid in the intertidal zone with no taxes to pay and no services connected, such as water or sewer. Living freely under these conditions had put them at loggerheads with the District of North Vancouver Council and Mayor Ron Andrews. One of the hippies, Dr Paul Spong (Orca researcher and founder of Orca Lab near Vancouver Island) said in a 1972 National Film Board documentary, Mudflats Living, that the community was a vexation to the mayor. But the mayor and council did have substantial support from North Vancouver taxpayers, obliged through municipal by-law to be hooked up to services, who were not sympathetic to the counterculture community at the Mudflats.
The National Film Board’s documentary, Mudflats Living, includes Dr. Spong, the late District of North Vancouver mayor, Mayor Ron Andrews, and the late Leonard George at age 25, who become Chief Leonard George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. The NFB’s description says: In this short documentary from the 70s, we get a glimpse of life inside an artistic community in the mudflats area of North Vancouver. An anti-establishment group, they live as squatters, rejecting drugs while practicing a philosophy of love for the universe. They also reject the values of mainstream society, as embodied by the mayor of North Vancouver, who wants to turn their “home” into a shopping centre”. The film reveals many conflicting interests over the future use of the Mudflats at that time. Future First Nations Chief, Leonard George, worries that the impact of expanding urbanization will rob his people of their way of life. Mayor Andrews asserts that the land is needed for development rather than conservation. The squatters assert that they have a right to remain on the land.
For years after the evictions and fire, the area remained in danger of development and was left in a neglected state rather than being conserved and protected until it was rescued from development in 1993 when it was designated as a Conservation Area and the Wild Bird Trust of BC took over management of the site creating the sanctuary. Today, the Wild Bird Trust is working to collaboratively participate in the stewardship of Maplewood Flats with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation with the ultimate goal of returning the Flats to their jurisdiction.
Niih ten sxelt nata skwi its’ay by Tsleil-Waututh Artist & Activist, Ocean Hyland. Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence with permission to use image, WBT.
In 2010, during the Winter Olympics, another District of North Vancouver mayor, Mayor Richard Walton, unexpectedly came across the art installation of the shacks at the Shangri la Hotel in Vancouver created by artist, Ken Lum, Entitled From Shangri la to Shangri la it had been commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery. Mayor Walton immediately recognized Lum’s work as depicting the shacks from the Mudflats and also Malcolm Lowry’s shack at Lazy Bay, Cates Park. Artist Ken Lum generously gifted the installation to the District of North Vancouver’s Civic Art collection and the shacks found their way back home to the Mudflats in 2012 where they sit at water’s edge at the entrance of the Wild Bird Sanctuary.
Fast Facts
Wild Bird Trust BC - The Maplewood Flats area was designated as a Conservation Area in 1993. The site is managed by the Wild Bird Trust (WBT), a non-profit charitable organization. The establishment of the Conservation Area protected the land from development. The site includes a 96-hectare intertidal area composed of mudflats and salt marsh. A 30-hectare upland area features deciduous and mixed forest, rough grassland, and freshwater habitats. The Wild Bird Trust has also partnered with Takaya Tours to offer cultural programs to showcase the deep connection Tsleil-Waututh Nation continues to have to their lands. The Wild Bird Trust delivers with its Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh staff and presenters dozens of public events each year addressing Coast Salish ethnobotany and culture. Wild Bird Trust President, Irwin Oostindie, believes that bringing in settler heritage studies with a decolonial lens, supports better stewardship management practices for these shared lands, highlighting the need for ecological and cultural repair. https://wildbirdtrust.org/about-wbt/
Tsleil-Waututh Nation - Maplewood Flats is situated on the unceded lands and waters of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, stewarded for some 14,000 years but industrialized for the past one hundred and since 1993 established as a conservation area managed by the Wild Bird Trust of BC. who work closely with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation https://twnation.ca/
Chief Leonard George was born in 1946 and died in December 2017. He was the elected chief of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation between 1989 and 2001. He appeared in the National Film Board documentary.
Dr. Paul Spong - Among the hippie community in 1971 were Dr. Paul Spong and his wife, at that time, Linda. Today, Dr Spong is co-director of a land-based Orca-Lab whale research station on Hanson Island in British Columbia, and president of the non-profit Pacific Orca Society. Both Dr. Spong and Mayor Ron Andrews, feature in a 1971 National Film Board film made by Robert Fresco and Kris Paterson about the life at the Mudflats – Mudflats Living. https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/people/paul-spong/
Mudflats Living - A 28 minute National Film Board documentary, filmed in 1971 by Robert Fresco & Kris Paterson, about the squatters, their eviction and the torching of the shacks is a time capsule film that no North Shore resident should miss. https://www.nfb.ca/film/mudflats_living/
Ken Lum is a Chinese-Canadian artist and educator. Working in a number of media including painting, sculpture and photography, his art ranges from conceptual in orientation to representational in character and is generally concerned with issues of identity in relation to the categories of language, portraiture and spatial politics. http://kenlumart.com/ /
Malcolm Lowry’s shack: refer to earlier blog https://www.northshoreheritage.org/blog/2021/9/2/malcolm-lowry-a-dollarton-legacy