When Catherine Cartwright moved to Sapperton 20 years ago, she instantly felt the sense of community that many local residents describe.
“In one week being out in my yard, gardening, I met more people in one week than I met in six years living in Vancouver,” she says.
Cartwright, 55 and now president of the local residents’ association, says the people are really what define the community.
“You feel like you belong, you feel like everybody supports and cares for each other, and there’s a real diversity in the neighbourhood, which I think is very important,” she says. “There’s old people, there’s middle-aged people, there’s young people, there’s babies, there’s teenagers, there’s a real cross section of nationalities, there’s a cross section of sexualities, there’s a real representation of all diversity in the community at large, and I think that’s really a good thing.”
Most people are familiar with the Sapperton Day Street Festival, an annual community celebration that draws thousands. But feeling connected to your community goes beyond public festivals; it’s also important to know your neighbours.
According to a 2012 report by the Vancouver Foundation, many people are pulling away from community life. Roughly a third of people surveyed in Metro Vancouver find it difficult to make friends in the city and connections are “cordial but weak.” Many people do not know their neighbours, and one in four report feeling alone.
Sapperton appears to be an exception.
When Cartwright describes the neighbourhood, she talks of block parties with live bands, a women’s group where they gather and drink wine, or neighbours organizing a field trip to Trout Lake for the lantern festival. There’s a social club called SAW, short for the Sapperton Association of Woodworkers.
“They get together and talk about stuff that guys talk about. They do projects, they help each other out,” Cartwright says. One member has created a community message board at his home, so if there’s an emergency, there’s a common place people can gather and leave messages, she adds.
Cartwright, who runs a home-based construction business with her husband, moved to Sapperton in 1991. But that strong sense of community wasn’t the only draw. She also likes the central location and the proximity to the highway.
“At the time, it was the last community that was affordable without going across a bridge,” she says. “When we moved into Sapperton, it was kind of a forgotten little pocket. It was surrounded by little roads. Most of the people in the neighbourhood were original owners. … It was a really family (oriented) neighbourhood, and people stayed. It was kind of overlooked by the real estate market, so it was a lot less expensive. … But it’s obviously been discovered now.”
Two decades later, people still stop to talk while Cartwright gardens in front of her home.
“There was a time I used to stop and chat, now I keep digging,” she says laughing. “Otherwise I would never get anything done.”
