Sometimes when beauty is surrounded by ugliness it becomes even more beautiful. Such was the case three years ago with a pair of ducks I spotted swimming in a little pond in an empty lot between two bedbug-infested hotels just north of the Main Street Terminal bus station on Vancouver's notorious Lower East Side

Why this mallard duck and his partner had chosen the most unlivable part of the world's “most livable city” struck me as very peculiar. But what was truly shocking was the condition of their habitat: garbage was floating in the water where they swam and was piled high on every side. In fact to call it garbage is too complimentary. What lay around these two ducks was some of the most foul trash imaginable. Tourists from the bus station and from the hostel next door would twist their faces in disgust as they caught a glimpse of this repugnance. To have these ducks desecrated like this immediately struck me as fundamentally wrong.

My first step was to document the horrifying magnitude of the garbage. I roped a friend into riding down on his bike with his camera. In the pictures he took the ducks could be seen swimming with “detour” signs from the Department of Engineering and with all the plastic, Styrofoam, old mattresses and broken chairs which people had dumped over the chain link fence over the years. But the true extent of the refuse could only really be seen on the ground. The dozens of discarded needles and other rotten items had to be viewed with the naked eye. As we surveyed the lot I told him that the plan was to clean up the trash and transform the site into green space. He just looked at me as though I were crazy and said “have fun.”

Fortunately, one of my acquaintances from the Carnegie Centre, a nice young girl from northern BC, was intrigued by the story and offered to volunteer picking up trash. The staff at the centre was generous enough to donate numerous garbage bags and the use of a pair of squeezers to pick up the needles and other dangerous trash. My acquaintance, not knowing what to expect, showed up in brilliant white and a pair of thinly soled shoes looking very worried as her eyes darted nervously across the lot. We found an area which had already been cleaned of dangerous items and she worked away with a heavy expression on her face. She did however soldier on and together we carried out bag after bag of some of the vilest trash either of us had ever laid eyes on. Finally, she almost broke down in tears from the disgusting nature of our work.

Overwhelmed she said “There's a lot of work to do still” and we packed up for the day leaving the lot much better than we had found it earlier that afternoon. Any spare afternoon or evening I would go down to the “green space” lot and chip away at the mountain of trash.

“What are you doing down there? Looking for dead bodies?” was a comment I heard more than once and made me a little nervous.

“You are fighting a losing battle buddy” or “Is this some kind of punishment? What did you do?” were also popular jeers.

“I am a volunteer” I replied.

Crack addicts would routinely walk past and curse me for being crazy.

Slowly but surely, however, the lot started to look pretty good. People would stop and gaze and compliment our efforts. “Looking good!” an old man said kindly.

“Coming along” another said.

The water that had been a toxic sludge turned clear and the earth which had been covered in garbage was coming back to life. Green moss started to grow. The discarded condoms and used needles and the rest of the unspeakable garbage was all cleaned up and more would only turn up intermittently. The major culprits now were cigarette butts and wrappers, straws and newspapers, and of course the ubiquitous paper cup from Starbuck's, McDonald's or 7-11. As we picked up cup after cup with these chains' logos on them we more than once thought there must be a way of making these corporations pay for the disposal of all their garbage.

Another friend helped by driving over a load of soil from a community garden project on the other side of town. We built some steps at one end of the lot and planted a bunch of flower seeds. Before we knew it there were wild flowers popping up everywhere. It was really beautiful to see nature reclaiming this piece of land which had once been a dump but was now green space. Some days we would look around to see that the ducks had flown in and were swimming around in the pond munching on leaves, their feathers shimmering in the sunlight. Looking around it was clear that this empty lot was in fact a wetland area and that is why the ducks had chosen it for their home.

Now children would stop and point at the ducks or look at the flowers.

“Look Mom, it's a duck!”

The mother exclaimed “This place is a little oasis. I always stop and admire the flowers.”

One Saturday, a fellow protestor from Eagleridge Bluffs came with his wife and daughter. He was on trash duty, while his wife, a photographer, took pictures and his young daughter helped plant flowers. Passersby would stop and gawk at this rather wholesome scene happening in this unlikely setting. I told them of our plans to make this into a community garden where children could come and observe nature in an urban setting.

“What are you doing?” an old man on the sidewalk above asked amazed.

“We are volunteers!” we would explain.

“Well good for you. It's very nice to see” he replied.

My friend said “The best part of this volunteer work is talking with all the people who go past. It's really nice.”

Another day a Japanese friend came to the site to volunteer. After getting over the initial shock of the seediness of the neighborhood she became another big fan of the garden and would help out whenever she got some free time. She made for a bit of a surreal scene in this neighborhood with her dainty Japanese fashions. The old-timers from the Ivanhoe pub would stop and stare and make conversation.

An old Chinese woman walked by asking what we were doing picking up garbage. We explained that we were volunteers. The Chinese woman shook her head in bemusement and walked on her way.

One of the first people to take notice of what we were doing was the landlord of the adjacent tenement buildings.

“What are you doing?” he asked me, saying his name was Phil.

“I am a volunteer for green space” I answered.

“Is that right?” he said with a smile and tossed me a two dollar coin which fell in the short grass. “You know this is City land but they don't do a damn thing to maintain it” he explained with a scowl. “You will be rewarded for your efforts” he assured me driving off in his car.

But as our project took on a more permanent look, he became less and less friendly until eventually he stopped talking to us altogether.

One day we came to find our flowers has been pulled out by the roots. A little after that, in September of last year, the City finally took an interest in the land and cut down all the wild bushes and small trees that had been growing.

We replanted what we could and tried to tell ourselves that everything was alright. But these were ominous signs.

Just last week, we went to do the regular garbage pick-up and to prepare the soil for spring planting but instead we were confronted with two giant signs declaring that the land is going to be developed. It seems that this once undesirable piece of land had become valuable after all and that the City had gotten busy. There is another condo project taking place at what used to be the Venus theatre up the street. The condo craze has finally reached the Lower East Side.

If you have been paying attention you can witness an incredible change in our city. As far as the eye can see, new condos are sprouting up in the place of historic buildings or simple green space.

There isn't any money to be made looking at a couple of ducks or some pretty flowers, but what do you think is more truly valuable, a little bit of beauty amongst the ugliness or another condo? It is a question that we have to put to our representatives and to each other if there is going to be anything but another condo to see from our expensive balconies. Let us pay tribute to the things in this city which brought us here—the mountains, the ocean, the views, the wide open green space, and of course the wildlife.

greenspacevancouver@live.ca