Tracing Histories in Oppenheimer Park: An Exercise in Cognitive Mapping

Abstract

The following is an exploration of personal memories and historical narratives in Oppenheimer Park, a highly politicized park in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Cognitive maps of Oppenheimer Park—maps drawn from memory by regular users of the Park—were collected via postcards in the summer of 2008. With attention to Fredric Jameson’s invitation to trace the relationship of individuals to broader social space, the purpose of this paper is to identify Downtown Eastside historical narratives—often marginalized or obscured in popular representations of Vancouver’s history—through the pathways, figures and landmarks indicated in the visual renderings of Oppenheimer Park, and to set those histories against broader processes of spatial reproduction. The interpretive analysis of the collected images brings to the surface the social histories embedded within the Park and postcards in a meaningful way without smoothing over or reconciling the conflicting, multiaccentual significations that refract the historical and social landscape.