Gastown is centered around a large steam clock that whistles every hour, reminding us that time has passed. A plaque at its base informs readers that this is the world’s first steam-powered clock, “created for the enjoyment of everyone”. The Gastown Steam Clock bills itself as a symbol of progress, technology, and efficiency; it stands in contrast to the representations of First Nations people that fill Gastown souvenir shops and native art galleries. The clock speaks of ingenuity and inventiveness, a reminder of past innovation, a validation of western technological superiority; it connects the tourist to their sepia-toned photographs, and claims authority over the history of this place.  The “Indian” tourist kitsch that surrounds the clock does not speak at all, conveying the image of an Indian that exists only as a part of the history that the narrative of steam-clock and frontier character defines.

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard tells us “we require a visible past, a visible continuum, a visible myth of origin, which reassures us about our end” (1994:10). Similarly, Benedict Anderson has presented the idea of the nation as an imagined community with “a deep horizontal comradeship” (1991:7), that looms “out of an immemorial past, and, still more important, glide[s] into a limitless future” (1991:11-12). The juxtaposition of the Gastown steam clock with colonial representations of indigenous people creates a history of Canada that is, as sociologist Renissa Mawani has pointed out, “a simultaneous evocation and erasure of Native peoples” (2003:100). For Mawani, seen in the context of the creation of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, this is a history of “colonial triumph, progress and city making, a narrative that has obscured the displacement and resistance from Aboriginal peoples” (2003:133).