Forget the ‘hidden gems’ — Christopher Cheung’s Very Vancouver turns touristy kitsch on its head

It starts with Benny’s Market in Strathcona — a neighbourhood gathering place where different communities, cultures and generations cross paths. For longtime journalist Christopher Cheung, it’s places like this which offer clues to how a neighbourhood takes shape, and where its boundaries really lie.

So how do you define a community? Where do you draw the boundaries of a neighbourhood and who gets to decide where they fall?

Those questions run through Cheung’s latest book, Very Vancouver: Uncovering the Soul of a West Coast City, released August 4.
The book explores 15 mostly East Vancouver places, interspersed with reflections on Cheung’s life since he began reporting for the now defunct Vancouver Courier in 2014. A well-loved former reporter for both The Tyee and Metro, Cheung finally hung up his press hat in 2025 to teach journalism at BCIT.

Very Vancouver is Cheung’s second book, following Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism.

In this newest absorbing read, Cheung does not hesitate to challenge our perceptions of neighbourhoods such as Chinatown, Greektown and Little Italy. In his view, it is the diasporas themselves — whose histories have made these neighbourhoods what they are — that should be able to define the boundaries of their communities.

Megaphone: There are a lot of books about Vancouver. Can you share a bit about how Very Vancouver came to be?

Christopher Cheung: When you’re a reporter, there is the daily stuff, which is just for the moment, but then, once in a while, we’re afforded the chance to write a story that might have a longer shelf life. I feel like, for all the stories in this book, there are always people who go back to them again and again. So I had always known that I was going to do this book. I was just waiting for the moment when I had collected these 15 stories. Then I could put them together, and they would be in conversation with each other.

The [book’s] editor, Jen Sookfong Lee, who is a wonderful writer in her own right, had reached out to me a couple of years ago. She told me, “I’m an editor now, and if you ever want to do a project together, let me know.” So I brought her the whole package. We spent about two years combining stories, re-interviewing people and working through the editing process.

Megaphone: It is a really good design, with the short and the long segments alternating. Was there an influence for that?

Oh yeah! I was very conscious about structure. I loved reading books of mythology as a kid — books with self-contained chapters. C.S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in the Narnia series, was a favourite.

I started collecting origin stories. How did the cement lions [on the First Narrows Bridge] come to be? How did the Vancouver Special come to be? The Binners who show up in your alley or visit you in the park…? So I wanted the book, cover to cover, to explain these varied phenomena.

There are also larger-than-life characters, like the Baklava Man — a politician from Syria turned street vendor — and the Sunrise Tofu family, who became tofu makers for the whole country [and also own Sunrise Market].

I wanted people to see that when you look at the cover of Very Vancouver, it doesn’t have the images you would typically see on some of the books on the shelf, where you have the skyline, the bike paths and the beaches.

Megaphone: In your book, you take us to some so-called “hidden treasures.” Can you explain why this language is so problematic?

I find language interesting, because a lot of these places, particularly on the East Side of Vancouver, are either missing from mainstream media or misrepresented. Why do we call something a “hidden gem”? Why do we call it a secret story? Often, the people are poor or from an immigrant background, so it seems quirky. When you read these stories, I don’t want you to have that distance. I wanted it to be an anti-tourism book about Vancouver and about locals’ voices. So wherever I can, I step back and let the people themselves tell their stories.

Megaphone: It seems like looking for community is a theme throughout the book. How would you summarize what you’ve found?

The word “soul” is in the subtitle. You might think I’m covering the soul of Vancouver, but I’d like to pose that question to the reader. First, what is the Vancouver that’s portrayed to the world? A world-class city, lots of real estate, aspirational and all that. I like that everyone in this book is looking for a place to put down roots and make something.

Megaphone: Speaking of making something. I wouldn’t recommend reading this book when you’re hungry. You really show an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the various foods you are describing, including how they are made and tricks of the trade. And there are a lot of them.

I always wanted to write a book that included food. My dad, as a pharmacist, had a lot of clients who were old school. We would get Portuguese bread, Eastside folks would come over post-war, and we would get tiramisu and homemade wine from the Italian customers. The Cantonese ones, who worked at restaurants, would greet us in the restaurant. My mom worked a lot on the West Side and would be given pre-packaged things from overseas. So sharing food, and sharing with the people who prepared it, was always very exciting to me.

Christopher Cheung’s words have been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

James Witwicki was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and moved to Delta and later Burnaby in the early 1970s. He has been living in the Downtown Eastside for more than 15 years. James is a prolific writer and has been published numerous times in Voices of the Street. He stays active in the community through his volunteer work at Strathcona Vineyard Church and works as a copy editor for Megaphone magazine as part of The Shift.

Amy Romer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter works as a mentor for Megaphone's The Shift in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Shift is made up of a diverse group of individuals with lived experience of poverty, who are reporting from the DTES instead of being reported on.

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James Witwicki with Amy Romer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Megaphone Magazine.