Very Vancouver is a fascinating odyssey through Vancouver’s diverse neighborhoods, revealing the hidden stories that have shaped Canada’s most misunderstood city

Vancouver journalist Christopher Cheung has spent most of his career chasing the stories that no one else was covering, taking readers beneath the surface of the “city of glass” to expose the beating, multicultural heart of a place that has too easily been characterized by multimillion-dollar condos and yoga pants. In 15 deeply human and well-researched stories, Very Vancouver tours the city to reveal how families, businesses, and individuals are just trying to make a home in this beautiful, and challenging, place of plurality.

There are the families who were the first to mass-produce Canadian tofu and put beef balls in the earliest bowls of east-side phở. There is the diligent population of binners who scavenge alleyways for refundable cans and bottles. There is the roller-coaster story of how migration has shaped the kaleidoscopic menu — with bear claws, bánh mì, and tamales — of the legendary late-night Duffin’s Donuts. And, of course, there is the mysterious Baklava Man, who sold his treats on downtown streets after a career as an outspoken politician in Syria led to his exile.

Very Vancouver is a tribute to the city’s diasporas and examines the inequalities and fractured histories that mark every backyard vegetable garden and ubiquitous Vancouver Special, the boxy and derided design that housed newcomers. Vancouver is renowned for its natural beauty, but it’s also a place built on a foundation of migration, colonization, the working poor, and families who woke up every morning hoping for better.

Available from ECW Press

Christopher Cheung is the author of Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism. He has worked as a reporter at The Tyee, Metro, and the Vancouver Courier and has received two Webster Awards, BC’s top journalism prize. He was born and raised in Vancouver, where he still lives.

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.