Malcolm Lowry
Haywood Bandstand, 1755 Beach Ave.
"They are taking down the beautiful houses once built with
[loving hands
But still the old bandstand stands where no band stands
With clawbars they have gone to work on the poor lovely
[houses above the sands
At their callous work of eviction that no human law
[countermands"
From Lament in the Pacific Northwest
Malcolm Lowry was an alcoholic novelist whose relationship to Vancouver – and much else – was uncertain, though there is no doubt that he did his best work here. In Under the Volcano, arguably the most famous novel ever written in British Columbia, he offhandedly refers to Vancouver as a place “where they eat sausage meals from which you expect the Union Jack to appear at any minute.” During his fourteen years in the Lower Mainland, mainly in North Vancouver, Malcolm Lowry briefly resided at three West End locations giving rise to his poem, “Lament in the Pacific Northwest”, about the Haywood Bandstand, at English Bay, which was built in 1914 and restored in 1988.
