White people in Metro Vancouver are being urged to show their support for African Canadian culture that was pushed out of Strathcona in the late 1960s.

Housing and antipoverty activists say they will be "reclaiming" the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts at 11 a.m. today "to honour the Black life and community that once thrived in these exact streets".

And they want whites at the front of the demonstration.

Organizers have drawn parallels between the forcible eviction of a tent city in a parking lot by CRAB Park and the destruction of Hogan's Alley, which was a diverse neighbourhood between Prior, Union, Main, and Jackson.

"Black cultural institutions the neighbourhood was known for included “chicken house” restaurants, which often doubled as speakeasies—best known was Vie’s Chicken and Steak house—as well as the African Methodist Episcopal Fountain Chapel (1922-1950s) and the residential quarters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters," the Vancouver Heritage Foundation states on its website. "At its height in the 1940s, the Black population in Strathcona numbered approximately 800."

Homes were destroyed and the community was dispersed to make way for construction of the viaducts, which were completed in 1971.

Today's shutdown of the viaducts is also intended to commemorate "the lives of LGBTQS+ folks in Canada and around the world lost to anti-Blackness and police brutality".

These viaducts were supposed to be part of a highway project bringing people into Vancouver, but widespread local opposition prevented that thoroughfare from being developed, thereby preserving historic Chinatown and Gastown.