A bit of Richmond folklore is being employed by McNair secondary marketing teacher Randy Sangha with the advent of his East Richmond t-shirt sale to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society.
Inspired by similar t-shirts for Steveston and East Vancouver, Sangha thought to shine some light on an area of Richmond that has various pockets of unique characteristics but also has aspersions cast upon it, at times.
“There are some out there that feel that the east side of Richmond and schools here are rougher and not as motivated,” said Sangha.
East Richmond is generally considered to start where the city’s urban, commercial and residential core ends and meets rural farmland and industrial sector. It’s subjective as to where the line can be drawn, however anything east of Highway 99 would be considered by most to be East Richmond. The federal riding of East Richmond-Steveston uses most of No. 3 Road and the northern portion of No. 4 Road and Highway 99 to draw a line through the city, granted evenly distributing population is the primary factor.
As such, Highway 99 is represented on the back of each shirt (black or white) by the number 99. The shirts also feature nine other local roads that help connect East Richmond to its more Tony, gentrified, developed and cubed West Richmond counterpart. They are: Cambie, Blundell, No. 4, No. 5, Williams, Bridgeport, Westminster, Shell and Hamilton.
“I tasked the (Marketing 12) students to create their own designs and choose streets/locations to represent this part of Richmond. We then, as a collective, voted on the winning design and created posters to be put out in East Richmond locations. I took it upon myself to market via social media to help the students raise awareness about our campaign,” said Sangha, via email to the Richmond News.
Sangha said he has raised more than $4,000 over the past five years for the Society, with various student-led projects. The school has 100 shirts available for $20 each, with $9 from each sale benefitting the fight against cancer. He said a second run of shirts to order can be placed (email [email protected] or visit McNair around noon).
The shirts are meaningful to community activist Henry Yao on many levels. First, as a McNair alumnus he wanted to help his soon-to-be fellow graduates. However, Yao also overcame a prior cancer diagnosis, as well.
“I too am a cancer survivor so I have a soft spot when the charity is fundraising for cancer research. Plus, I also loved my experience at McNair and that is the least I can do to help the school, students and empower the research that kept me alive till today,” Yao told the News.
However, in Yao’s experience, attending McNair and growing up in Shellmont didn’t give him a feeling that his experience was much more different than his westerly friends.
“I never saw myself as a person from East Richmond. I just saw myself a Richmond resident.
When I was growing up Richmond doesn’t change that much from east to west with the exception of farm land and Steveston. I do love the wilderness like environment in the neighbourhood and love the exploration of the back yard forest when I was kid,” said Yao.
