Here is an excerpt from one of the walking poems about Vancouver, this one about the namesake of one of the few streets to be named after women. The poetic form involves spacing phrases across the page to mark the rhythm of thought and voicing. The line breaks may not appear correctly if you don't have a wide screen.
"Frances Street" © 2005 Meredith Quartermain
Frances Street –
how many have walked it?
boxed against coastal mountains
Loyale Automotive, Winner Sportswear, New Profession Collision
six blocks –
real-estate-man slash Land Commissioner
Forbes George Vernon’s
up to Queen Vicky’s drive
the columned porches and clapboard,
classic 1905
Sister Frances at St. Luke’s
torn down for Turbocharger Service Centre,
Pacific Plating Bumper Exchange & Custom Chroming
no person shall destroy desecrate deface
no person shall demolish a building or structure
the facade
the unsolved eastern question
Lord Aberdeen, 4th Earl of,
needed a hell of a lot of men
for Russell and Palmerston’s war
can’t have Russkis owning Bethlehem
maybe it’s just one army or another
we’re writing for the sky
to read like fungus writes
maps for us we think its blindness
diggers in Dunsmuir’s pits
$1.20 a ton
2700 pounds on his scales
or maybe a dollar if he thought coal was slumping
and he wasn’t gonna make his $8 a ton profit
$3.00 a day, if he didn’t cut you for rock
buy your powder from the Company
pay your own helper
no pay for bracing tunnels
funny how Mine Inspectors never found
the Right Honourable Robert or the Right Honourable James
Dunsmuir
at fault the Act – whose act?
said miners were responsible
for the gas at Wellington’s No. 6
she’d pop from sparks off the hammers
working on their bellies to breathe
it was miners, the Act said, made her blow –
they brought out brothers cooked to crackling
it was miners
killed 11 in 1881, 65 in 1884, 23 in 1887,
150 in 1888, 75, then 55 in 1901
soldiers of Master Touch Auto Body
Win Sun Produce
Club 21 Sportswear
marching on Frances Street
stone blocks, end to end, where the car tracks went
stitched in to cobbles
streetcars a bust in the 1890s
time of the small pox
I wish you would send a tent of
some kind as some men was
sleeping in filthy cabins and
they are all burnt now they
have no place to sleep
Park Road Quarantine 1888
more yellow flags than dominion ones July 1, 1892
house after house
sent express wagons
driver clanging his bell cleared a path
to Coal Harbour Deadman’s Island
the standard as to quantity is still to be undertaken
if crowding is avoided . . . we would be prepared
to permit a longer period (City Health Dept to Rooming House)
a large airy room, 60 degrees Fahrenheit
remove draperies, books, furniture
(George H. Fox, Practical Treatise on Smallpox)
cut hair and beard short
give purgative of calomel and soda
warm baths sponge the face to cool fever
feed the patient gruel, eggs, broth, milk, jellies
small pieces of ice
on the raging lips tongue throat
in cases of delirium, clean the rectum
an enema of soap and water
introduce four to six ounces milk and brandy
fifty-eight percent die
hemorrhagic form, always
the gut bleeds
scrub the sick room with carbolic soap
solution: bichloride of mercury 1 to 500
bichloride of memory
fumigate with burning sulphur and formaldehyde gas
Palmerston convulsing/ terrifying Europe
dangerous imperious monster, Queen Vicky said
for the glory of Ottoman power
squashing intrigues of Afghanistan
trounced China at Chusan, bagged Hong Kong
five hours in the House yelling
civis romanus sum
the arm of British government protects her subjects
against injustice and wrong
the arms
wherever they are
Frances Street –
four miles of straw-sacks at Scutari
4000 soldiers lying in gore-stiff uniforms
packed into place for 1700 candles stuck
in empty beer bottles
open sewer under the floor
no water, no soap, no linen
no forks, no knives
four hours to serve a putrid meal
for soap, bandages, food, 2000 in Barrack Hospital
die
Brilliant Doors & Co
Anglo-Canadian Automotive Supply
Foo Hoo Enterprises
diakonia from the verb diakonein to minister or serve
St. Luke xxii 27: I am among you as he that serveth: diakonon
Romans xvi 1: Phebe our sister . . . a servant (diakonos)
refuge to orphans, aged and sick
to the Right Honourable millionaire
for 75 miles of track,
two million acres (one quarter Vancouver island)
all mineral and timber rights
and 750,000 dollars
as per the Settlement Act
miners living in two-room shacks
funny how settlers couldn’t get
lots under the Settlement Act
till the track went in
and they had to pay Dunsmuir’s price
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for the letter
and enclosed cheque I received
from you in response to my application
to the Mayor regarding the child
I wanted placed out. We found a woman
willing to take it and so,
as you say,
the first month
is settled for.
Yours very truly
Frances
St. Luke’s Home May 6 1889
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