Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6.1
Essential Shaughnessy
as an ontological unit in civic politics, part of a broader move in postmodern
planning where the authority of the meta-narrative of 'the master plan' was
demoted to make room for the micro-narratives of local plans. In 1976 it
was Shaughnessy's turn for local area planning.
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As Vancouver's established
elite district, the district had been vigorously defended at first by its developer,
the Canadian Pacific Railway, and from the 1930s by the Shaughnessy Heights
Property Owners' Association (SHPOA), an astute, vigilant and effective rate-
payers' association (Duncan 1994). The Shaughnessy landscape expressed,
particularly in the oldest section of First Shaughnessy, an elite English land-
scape taste with mansions on large lots half-concealed behind mature trees
and shrubs (Figure 6.1). Houses were typically in a European revival style,
with Tudor the most popular design. Architectural historians recognized in
Shaughnessy a distinctive cultural landscape: 'Its English ancestry and pictur-
esque appearance made the half-timbered Tudor revival the favourite mode in
Shaughnessy Heights' (Kalman and Roaf 1974: 136).
These descriptive terms were not selected idly. The landscape of houses
and gardens did not just reflect some distant cultural memory but helped to
reproduce a present dream world, a shared sub-culture of distinction among
an anglophile class and status elite. Place and identity were joined in mutual
