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The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver Chuck Davis Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 20II. 592 pp. $49.95 cloth.
Everyone who has spent any time researching Vancouver history seems to have a Chuck Davis story. Here's mine. It's about 1980, I'm a callow not-easily-impressed grad student doing work on some arcane heritage tax law and someone suggests I call Chuck because, of course, he knows everybody. I get his answering machine - for the record, this was my very first encounter with such a contraption, which qualifies Chuck as an early adopter. What comes whispering down the line initially is car traffic, distant voices, maybe some construction noises, then "Hear that? That's the sound of the city. And this? This is the sound of me, Chuck Davis. Leave a message." Playful and intimately connected to the city he loved, even on his answering machine, there was something incorrigibly original and authentic about Chuck.
That's a fact and it's a fun fact as well. Which was Chuck's stock in trade and the overarching theme of his latest, last, and legacy project. His original Vancouver Book is long out of print and obsolete, though its successor, The Greater Vancouver Book (a bigger, better "urban encyclopedia") might still...