Vancouver’s literary legacy is strongly associated with Dollarton, a stretch of beach along Burrard Inlet where several cabins, built in the 194s and ’5s, were home to Malcolm Lowry, Earle Birney, Dorothy Livesay and Al Purdy. What remains of that legacy was recently sold to a development company, forcing Dollarton’s last literary residents—the writer and artist Carole Itter, and the writer/artist/musician Al Neil—out of the cabin they’ve lived and worked in since the 196s. The fear is that given Vancouver’s history of redevelopment, the city’s cultural heritage might one day be accessible only by permission: in museums, galleries and special archives. I experienced this first-hand when I had to submit a written request for permission to read Itter’s writing in the confinement of the designated reading area in Special Collections at Simon Fraser University. There I discovered her rare chronicles of people and life in Vancouver in scrapbook-like collections of poetry, prose, journal entries, newspaper clippings, photographs, some texts written by hand with the date or exact time recorded, leaving traces of a vanishing Vancouver: in The Log’s Log (Intermedia Press), Itter gives a full account of the time Gerry Gilbert and she made the news by riding the train from Vancouver to Halifax with a 3-pound, 25-foot-long yellow cedar log as carry-on baggage; Opening Doors in Vancouver’s East End: Strathcona, edited by Itter and Daphne Marlatt (Harbour Publishing), is a celebrated collection of stories from residents of the historic Strathcona district in Vancouver, recently republished as part of Vancouver’s 125th anniversary; Birthday, by Itter and Gerry Gilbert (Creative Community Press), collects poems, journal entries, telephone messages, lists of baby names and things to pack for the hospital that become an account of the weeks leading up to her daughter’s birth; and Location Shack (artist’s handbook) contains photos and notes about, one presumes, the cabin she and Neil occupied until they were evicted. Her effort to record ideas, people and places suggests that she knew even then that eventually those days would be gone, and that they deserved to be recalled, if only by special request, as evidence of what came before the waterfront condominiums.