LIFE
No Proof of Existence
What happens when your childhood favorites no longer exist?
It started with a short memoir by Chris Thompson, Our Last Fifteen Summers, in which the author wrote how he recently returned to Vancouver and came upon the restaurant at the Yaletown Brewing Company, where he had his first date with his wife twenty-nine years ago. The miracle for me is that the place is still there. Tucked within the vicinity are Thompson’s memories with his wife, conspiring to sweeten the nostalgia. The fact that the place is there affirms Thompson’s memories that everything, according to his description, took place. Experts call it the proof of existence.
A few years ago, I took a drive with my teenage niece to an old neighborhood where I grew up and was her age at that point. It’s an unfamiliar part of the city for her and her generation. Gentrification has an unsettling and inconspicuous way of moving people around a city like a river, shapeshifting culture along the way.
To my niece, it was off her beaten path where shopping and entertainment are concerned. “Why are we here on this side of town?” My niece asked with a slight nose wrinkle, as if I were driving her through a black-listed district. Granted, we drove past streets and buildings that have seen better days. The houses were older than my…
