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90 CANADIAN A RT • SPRING 2016 canadianart.ca 91

VANCOUVER ART HEADS EAST

OKANAGAN

OUTPOST

BY MICHAEL TURNER

The Upper Barn at Rancho Rasdoul,

January 2 014 PHOTO JANE IRWIN

The late-summer air is soft and warm and the sky

appropriately grey as I veer left off Kingsway at 15th

and walk past the forest of bistros, beauty salons and

galleries known as Little Montparnasse to interview Jane

Irwin at her and Ross Hill’s GreyChurch Collection on

Fraser Street. The focus of my visit is the couple’s largest

and most ambitious project, Rancho Rasdoul, located

45 minutes north of Kamloops at Heffley Louis Creek.

But rather than rehearse my questions, as I often do on

my way to an interview, I allow myself to be distracted

by a running tally of house demolitions. Vancouver

housing prices are the highest in the country—yet not

only are there buyers who can afford these houses, but

there are also buyers who can afford to knock them

down and build bigger ones.

I have lived in Vancouver’s Cedar Cottage neigh-

bourhood long enough to remember GreyChurch’s

predecessor—the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

When the building came on the market in 2007 , Hill

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