All Over The Map: Street named for Nora Hendrix, Jimi’s grandma
Feb 12, 2021, 8:28 AM | Updated: 8:28 am
Nora Hendrix – the grandmother of Seattle-born guitar legend Jimi Hendrix – is going to have a new street named in her honor in Vancouver, B.C.
But a group of history-minded activists and community leaders in the Terminal City are not happy with the naming process or with the end result.
The Vancouver City Council voted this week to name a future street Nora Hendrix Way. The new street will be created as part of the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Hospital. The current hospital is located on Burrard Street, but St. Paul’s is building an entirely new 18-acre complex behind the main train station in Vancouver – that abuts what used to be a diverse neighborhood known as Hogan’s Alley.
The Hendrix family’s Vancouver roots stretch back to Hogan’s Alley more than a century ago. Unfortunately, most of the neighborhood was wiped out by freeway construction 50 years ago, but those history-minded activists – the Hogan’s Alley Society – are hoping to revive the area and especially the sense of community that once existed where now concrete pillars dominate. Vancouver’s planned freeway was only ever partially built, and the sections that were built over Hogan’s Alley – the Georgia and Dunsmuir Street viaducts – are now slated for demolition.
Hogan’s Alley is the neighborhood where Nora Hendrix lived for decades. And while her talented grandson is legendary and iconic around the world, Nora Hendrix was a civic leader on streets and byways of Vancouver in her own right, long before Jimi ever sang about “Crosstown Traffic.”
Nora and her husband moved to Vancouver in 1911, and Jimi’s father Al was born there. The civic contributions of Nora Hendrix include working at a number of woman-owned restaurants in and around Hogan’s Alley, and helping found the AME Fountain Chapel Church.
Fountain Chapel was the first Black church in Vancouver, and served as an important community gathering place. Nora Hendrix was on the board of directors for years, and she was a member of the church choir her entire life. She passed away in 1984 at age 100.
The controversy – and what the activists are unhappy about – stems from actions taken by the City of Vancouver’s Civic Asset Naming Committee. This public board was established nearly a decade ago, in part to address longstanding inequities in who and what public spaces are named after in Vancouver.
And what sorts of inequities are there, hidden in plain sight in Vancouver street names? The CBC – Canada’s public broadcaster – did a study and found, among other things, that “40 percent of Vancouver streets are named for white males, compared to 2 percent for women.” By one particular comparison, the number of streets in Vancouver, B.C., named for women is fewer “than the number of streets named for golf courses” there.
The CBC spoke earlier this week with John Atkin, co-chair of the Civic Asset Naming Committee.
“We wanted to recommend a name that was relevant to the neighborhood,” Atkin said. “Having the [new] street pretty much point at the [AME Fountain] chapel, Nora Hendrix Way will be, I think, a really good honor.”
But members of the Hogan’s Alley Society told the CBC that they weren’t formally consulted about the naming of Nora Hendrix Way, and they say that they are disappointed that the new street will be just a single block in length.
The activists also feel that any future plans to honor Nora Hendrix in the neighborhood by naming (or renaming) some more significant street or public area has, in effect, been taken off the table by the actions of the Civic Asset Naming Committee and the City Council.
Hogan’s Alley Society co-chair June Francis spoke with the CBC and expressed frustration that her group was not consulted in the process, and she questioned the city’s motives for taking this action now.
“They want to get a big, symbolic pat on the back for Black History Month,” Francis told the CBC. “And they’ve done it in a way to give themselves credit without truly making fundamental and substantive changes. And we’ve said to them symbolism is not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for real change.”
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