In the early nineties, I moved to Victoria, British Columbia. I sold the bulk of my worldly possessions, rented a small storage unit for what little remained, loaded my van with the bare essentials, and went in pursuit of music. Inadvertently, I learned a lot about urban farming.
Stuart Munro, my backup guitarist, had invited me to join his Vancouver Island-based band Sunyata as their rhythm guitarist. In exchange, Sunyata would become my backup band. It was a leap of faith I had to take. And a rare musical opportunity.
Stuart had immigrated from Scotland to Canada. At the time of our meeting, he lived on Mason Street in Downtown Victoria, and I lived in Tucson, Arizona. We met at a café where I played in the desert Southwest. Stuart roamed with his wide format camera taking hauntingly beautiful photographs of Southern Utah, and wrote equally haunting instrumental music on his Ovation guitar.
Stuart and I became pen pals. Later that year, I invited him to join me on one of my Southwest tours. We played six nights at Bright Angel Lodge on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, Lost Oasis Café in Fort Wingate, Café Taza in Taos, and La Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The rest is history, with Stuart playing on my subsequent two CD releases. You can hear his stellar guitar playing and Celtic phrasing on many of my songs, including Free Wind, a song about my time in the ancient forests of the Gulf Islands (from the album Eagle’s Gift).
When the tour ended in Las Vegas, Stuart insisted on following me back to Arizona, then invited me to join him on Mason Street. Relieved of the contents of my casita with Stuart’s help, I followed him in tandem across the border, both of us driving old Dodge vans.
Mason Street was a bit like living in a fairy tale where we lived with Brett Black. Brett is a celebrated chef turned urban farmer. I slept in one of his greenhouses surrounded by cacti. An extensive garden further surrounded me, where Brett grew organic food, exotic flowers, and herbs. Being so close to downtown meant that we had to deal with scrutiny. The Mason Street lots had become a prime target for commercial interests. Eight hundred signatures delivered to City Hall petitioned against a proposed rezoning application. The application was successfully denied. Enraged developers lurked in the near distance.
Gardening is a political act. It is more crucial than ever that organic food production be given emergency status, officially, both rurally and in the urban setting.
Another attempt at rezoning took place shortly afterward. That time the groundswell of local support went sky-high, and the developers disappeared before the official hearings. At “The Farm,” as the Mason Street properties came to be known, sheet composting, soil building, and food production have continued. With the help of a small army of local volunteers, Mason Street continues to exist as a tiny island of sanity in a world that fully intends to suffocate. The garden has existed in one form or another for over 80 years, but its future remains uncertain.
Converting four city lots a few minutes’ walk from downtown into a vegetable garden may not be everybody’s idea of urban renewal. But we could learn a thing or two from Brett Black, a proponent of organic growing and food self-sufficiency.
— Canadian Gardening Magazine
In 1994, Francis Backhouse wrote The Urban Farmer, a very eloquent article about my home garden in Victoria, BC, published by Canadian Gardening Magazine. Photography by Paul Bailey (including the cactus garden where I slept!).
Frances Backhouse is a biologist turned writer who calls the British Columbia coast home. She is an award-winning freelance journalist with a passion for Canadian history, and author of the bestselling Women of the Klondike.
To read the entire seven page Canadian Gardening article The Urban Farmer, please subscribe below. (PDF with photos. Article no longer in print. Used by permission.)
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