When is a South Van’er not a South Van’er?
When he/she is an East Sider.
Nick Marino, author of East Side Story: Growing Up at the PNE, explains it this way:
Although I grew up in Vancouver’s East Side, my neighbourhood in the Killarney area didn’t feel like East Van to me at the time, even though it technically was. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I expanded my definition of East Vancouver to include the southeast part of the city. The traditional view of East Van is more the northeast section of the city. However, the major divide in Vancouver has always been an east/west one, and anyone who has lived east of Main Street is aware which side they are on.
As a teen, working summers at the PNE, Marino met kids from all the different East Side schools and that connection bonded them as a tribe.
His book is a warts-and-all history of the fair and includes employee scams, visitor hijinks and some of the city’s darkest moments, as when thousands of Japanese-Canadians were incarcerated within scream shot of the PNE’s amusement park. (In 1942, the rides section was called Happy Land.)
East Side Story is recommended reading for anyone who has ever marvelled at the way a placid Sturgeon Moon hovers patiently between the rollercoaster peaks, while carnival chaos spins and breaches beneath it.