The Concept of Vancouver

This week Brock University is hosting the 30th Annual Two Days in Canada Conference. This year's conference is entitled The Concept of Vancouver, and I am one of five plenary presenters.

Although I am still at work on my presentation I am fairly certain it will begin with what I thought I would present when asked to participate last spring, and will finish first with a reconsideration of something that once bothered me about George Bowering's meta-novel Burning Water (1980), but now seems relevant given the ascendence of fancy over imagination (as defined by Coleridge and deployed by Bowering) in the market city of Vancouver, and second, how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has changed the way I look at and participate in the cultural production of the city.