Post #998 Save the Artist's Cabin

This is very sad. Destroying something for money. Yes they say it's to clean it all up and remove the toxic chemicals but it's about condos. Everyone can see that when they read this. Tragic that they would treat elderly people like that, especially artists that have been living there for years. Why couldn't they just wait until they pass on. How cruel. Shame on this city and government for treating them this way. Reflects very poorly on the city.

"Mr. Neil, now 90 – a musician, composer and visual artist who received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award last year – has lived in the cabin on and off since 1966, serving as a sort of beach watchman for the company next door, McKenzie Barge. He initially paid rent to the shipyard – $15 a month, “and then eventually they said don’t bother,” says Ms. Itter, a sculptor and writer who joined Mr. Neil 13 years after he moved in."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/protecting-a-colourful-piece-of-vancouvers-art-history/article22531931/   Read more here.

Carole Itter, above, says Port Metro’s warning of financial repercussions for non-compliance are very unnerving: ‘We have a little savings, and if it all gets tied up in that, I don’t know what we would do.’
(John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)

Artists Al Neil and Carole Itter’s cabin under demolition threat in North Vancouver

http://www.straight.com/arts/809251/artists-al-neil-and-carole-itters-cabin-under-demolition-threat-north-vancouver 

 "The cabin—built as a Coal Harbour float home during the 1930s but beached between Deep Cove’s Cates Park and the McKenzie Barge shipyard for the past several decades—has existed in a state of legal limbo for years. It’s on land owned by Port Metro Vancouver, the entity that has given Itter and Neil until January 31 to vacate the premises and that is threatening to charge them for the cabin’s removal or demolition."