Walter and Mary Lee Chan House

Walter and Mary Lee Chan were the driving force behind the campaign to stop urban renewal in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood in the 1960s. Walter, Mary and friends organized the neighbourhood into the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association (SPOTA), which halted the “wholesale destruction of older housing” and advocated that urban renewal funds be redirected to repair neighbourhood homes, an idea that soon became a national program.