In East Van, tour group celebrates a rat's celebrity
By CHRIS DAFOE

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may come and rats may go, but
0 artRats
—
even
rat art — lives on forever.
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As a case in point, consider Sniffy the
Rat, who made headlines around the
w o r l d in 1990 w h e n V a n c o u v e r
a r t i s t / p r o v o c a t e u r Rick Gibson
announced he was going to crush the
piebald rodent between two canvas-lined
concrete blocks. Sniffy survived the art
project — at the last minute, Gibson
returned the rented rat to the Aquariums
West pet store, where he was purchased
by Peter Hamilton of Lifeforce, an animal rights group — only to succumb to a
respiratory infection later that year.
But if Sniffy has gone to the great exercise wheel in the sky, he lives on in
memory and now, in the form of The
10th Anniversary Sniffy the Rat Bus
Tour, which made its first — and possibly last — run Sunday afternoon.
Created by Andrew Laurenson of

Radix Theatre and presented as part of
LIVE performance art biennial, the
Sniffy tour (motto: "For a little while, the
world cared about a rat....) visited a variety of locations associated with Vancouver's most famous rodent, connecting the dots with a multimedia package
that offered a wry and revealing look at
the media and public furore Gibson provoked and performance art in general,
all while sending up that great Vancouver institution, the tour bus.
Tour guide/narrator Ian Ross MacDonald kicked things off with a lament
about the sorry fate of the hated and
hunted Granville Island rat, accompanied on guitar by Sniffy stand-in Ron
Samworth, who was decked out in rat
ears and nose. After donning our performance art smocks — bright yellow
garbage bags — we were warned about
the possible dangers of East Vancouver
as the bus headed to the basement apartment just off Knight Street where Gib-

son lived in 1990. Along the way, the onboard television sets offered Sniffy's
back story, pieced together from radio
and television interviews Gibson did at
the time and the reminiscences of those
involved in promoting and covering the
story. There was even a singalong, a rollicking tribute to rats in general and
Sniffy in particular.
One can only imagine what the neighbours thought when they saw 60 people,
all dressed in yellow garbage bags, disembark from the tour bus and begin posing for pictures with a tall, thin man
dressed as rat. Most seemed to take it
stride; while one neighbour peeked nervously from behind the curtains, at
another house a dozen children gathered at the window to wave.
Once back on the bus, we were
offered a performance art primer from
grunt gallery director Glen Alteen and
the very amusing film, 22 Short Films
About Sniffy, which illustrated, in pen

and ink drawings, the
other ways Sniffy could
have met his end. As we
passed the old library,
the onboard televisions
replayed news coverage
of Gibson running for his
life down Burrard Street
pursued by several hundred angry animal
lovers. He found refuge
in the Hotel Vancouver,
but not before running
i n t o smack i n t o t h e
PETER BATTISTONI/VANCOUVER SUN FILES
hotel's door, an accident
reenacted on tape by a The late Sniffy the Rat garnered international fame.
Gibson doppelganger.
The tour ended, many laughs and sev- leading Laurenson to suggest that the
eral singalongs later, with drinks at the Sniffy show may ride again. We can only
Railway Club, where, in 1990, Gibson's hope. Sniffy may not be what most peosupporters fled a media horde led by ple have in mind when they talk about
Pamela Wallin.
cultural tourism, but it's a good deal
While Sunday's show was planned as more fun than another trip to the totem
one-off event, it played to a full bus, poles in Stanley Park.