A city, by God

September 20,2008
It may not have the high-rise skyline, bustling downtown and traffic-clogged streets, but for 150 years this month, Nelson has been able to call itself a city, with both pride and a straight face. Geoff Collett looks at the story behind a milestone. --------------------
As cities go, Nelson is - let's face it - a pipsqueak. To some eyes, it wouldn't be a city at all - a town, maybe, a municipality, yes, but never a metropolis.
But 150 years ago this month, the only authority that mattered decreed otherwise. In the flowery language reserved for such momentous pronouncements, on September 29, 1858, Queen Victoria confirmed that "the said Town of Nelson shall be a City". And so we became.
Which means we have a birthday to celebrate, starting next weekend; and since it is such a momentous anniversary - sesquicentennials don't come around every day - the celebrations will last until April next year.
Appropriately, they will be centred on the Anglican Church because, in truth, the coveted city status came about only through the needs of the church in ministering to the tiny but burgeoning population of the colonial outpost at the top of the South Island (or Middle Island, or New Munster as Victoria knew it).
Nelson was even more of a pipsqueak then than now - a village of 5000, the record suggests - but it had the will and, importantly, the money to make more of itself than its physical size suggested.
Here's the City of Nelson's back-story. In the late 1850s, the Anglican Church was considering how to structure itself in New Zealand to cope with growing demands - where and how to spread around its administrative districts, or dioceses. Nelson Anglicans were able to convince the powers-that-were that, given the enormous geographic areas the church was trying to cover, and the fact the Nelson community had healthy endowments from English religious bodies, it deserved to be a diocese in its own right. With a diocese came a bishop (hence the need for the endowments - the cash to pay his keep); with the bishop came a "see", or seat for him to preside from; and with the see came a royal proclamation of city status. A cathedral city, at that, where a church befitting a bishop could be consecrated.
With the green light from the Queen, a bishop was found - Edmund Hobhouse, a vicar from Oxford, in England - although it was almost 30 years and another bishop later before the cathedral bit was formally added.
So technically, that's what the birthday is about. We've gone through nine bishops since then, with the 10th appointed last year - Richard Ellena, who will be at the forefront of various celebratory activities both next weekend and during follow-up events planned well into next year.
His diary for next March and April is already largely blocked out - he will be walking the entire perimeter of the Nelson diocese, which, while centred on the city, extends down to Greymouth and Kaikoura. The 1000km stroll will be a form of tribute to his earliest predecessor - Hobhouse was renowned for his hiking habit, striding out to take the word of God to the farthest reaches of the diocese. Hobhouse's immediate successor, Andrew Burn Suter, was similarly inclined, and Ellena (who mostly goes by car) says now there is "something deeply spiritual about it, about just retracing the footsteps of those first guys - I feel quite humble when I read their stories, of what they did. There's no way I could fill those shoes. It's quite inspiring. So in some small way, I'll think about those guys as I walk, what they did and where we are now."
So where are we now?
As a city and in purely statistical terms, we remain small (nudging 43,000, according to the last census in 2006, putting us at No 27 among all the cities and districts of the country); white (80 percent of us are European, compared with 68 percent of New Zealanders generally); quite poor (the median income - the mid point if you order everyone's income from highest to lowest - is $23,100, compared with the New Zealand median of $24,400); and old (the median age is 39.4, compared with a national median of 35.9). We're even older than Tauranga, which Nelsonians like to dismiss as a retirement centre. Its median age is 38.9.
As a cathedral city, about 19,000 of us still consider ourselves Christian, and roughly a third of those identify as Anglicans.
The church is clearly not the force it once was and Ellena is careful to say that it does not see itself as anything like an establishment body, or as occupying some kind of privileged position here. Still, it remains acutely aware of the role it has played since the earliest days of European settlement (one of the first things Arthur Wakefield did on stepping ashore with his fellow New Zealand Company settlers in 1841 was conduct a church service), and of the dominant force it became.
"We just feel we're part of the city and we've grown up with the city, so why shouldn't we have a voice in the city, like everyone else does?" Ellena says of the church's civic relationship now. "The city's here because we're here - we're here because the city's here."
More than most places, too, the church's physical presence is unavoidable, thanks to the prominent site occupied by the cathedral. As the church's 1958 centennial history, The Nelson Narrative, recalls, the potential of Church Hill was recognised by the Bishop of New Zealand, George Selwyn, as early as 1842. "A grand situation", he described what has since become central Nelson's most recognisable landmark, "a small mount, rising to the height of one hundred feet, in the centre of a little plain, on which the chief part of the town stands, and with a flat summit, sufficient for the base of a fine building. The hills rise all round, except on the side of the sea, to a height of probably fifteen hundred feet."
The church is treating its anniversary - the city's anniversary - as "an opportunity to remind us of who we are", Ellena says. "Not isolated within the community; we're not some institution within the community. We're actually people who live in the community."
And perhaps it is an opportunity to remind the wider community of the place of the church in its midst. For, as he observes, the City of Nelson "really only does exist because it's got a bishop - if it didn't, Nelson would just be another large provincial town".
And we all know it's something more than that. Anniversary events get under way Nelson's 150th anniversary celebrations start in earnest next weekend to coincide with the anniversary of the signing of the "letters patent" by Queen Victoria in September 1858, which made Nelson a city with its own bishop and the right to consecrate a cathedral.
Given that the consequences of the Queen's proclamation took months to play out, the celebrations will continue well into the new year, focused around the Anglican Church in Nelson, as various landmarks of 150 years ago are commemorated.
Next weekend, September 27-28, the focus will be on upper Trafalgar St and Christ Church Cathedral.
Besides street entertainment starting on Saturday afternoon, re-enactments of the signing of the letters patent are planned. The main event will come late in the day, when the cathedral hosts a civic service involving the city council and local clergy.
The service will include new music composed by the Bishop of Nelson, Richard Ellena (based on Psalm 150), and a special 150th anniversary hymn.
Anglican churches throughout the Nelson diocese (which stretches to Kaikoura and Greymouth) will have 150th anniversary services on Sunday, while in Nelson itself the focus will again return to the cathedral on Sunday afternoon, with an open day planned at the church.
The next round of commemorations will be in mid-February, when the church will re- enact the arrival in Nelson of the letters patent, with Bishop Ellena playing the part of the first Bishop of Nelson, Edmund Hobhouse. During March and April, the bishop will embark on a 1000km, 40-day walk around the perimeter of his diocese as a tribute to the region's first two bishops, Hobhouse and Andrew Burn Suter, who attended to much of their work on foot.
On April 26 next year, the anniversary celebrations will culminate with a commemoration of Hobhouse's formal installation as bishop, with the Bishop of Oxford - Hobhouse's home diocese before Nelson - expected to travel to New Zealand to join the ceremony. Tumultuous time for church As the Anglican Church in Nelson turns 150, the church globally is going through tumultuous times, centred on deepening rifts between the liberal and conservative movements within. Mighty battles have been fought over such questions as the ordination of gays and the true meaning of scripture.
The Bishop of Nelson, Richard Ellena, found his 15 seconds of fame earlier this year when, as a participant at an international bishops' conference at Lambeth in England (home of the Archbishop of Canterbury), he gave a mildly intemperate soundbite to a passing BBC journalist. The gathering - reportedly riven by the evangelical- liberal divide - was "the most expensive exercise in futility I have ever been to", Ellena said, his comments getting coverage in Britain's national media.
He is decidedly more cautious today in his comments on the church's internal conflict. The issue dogs discussion of the church, and he says it has become frustrating. "We keep having to spend so much time addressing that, we can't get on with what we believe is our mission."
Nelson is well-known as a "fairly conservative" diocese, but he is cautious, too, when talk turns to evangelicals and liberals. He fears the evangelical label, which fits Nelson, is too easily caricatured and misunderstood - taken as invoking the narrow, bigoted extremes of the American Bible Belt, for example.
His definition of an evangelical is of "one who wants to take the truth of scripture and try and critique what is going on in culture in the light of scripture". The liberal, in contrast, will seek to interpret the scripture through what is going on in culture.
At times of strain in the church, he says the Diocese of Nelson is trying hard to remain in communion with the other dioceses in New Zealand. Building unity was central to his acceptance of being put forward as the new bishop.


Things change, things stay the same

Landmark birthdays - a 21st, a 40th, 65th, a 150th even - are always a time to ponder, whether on what has passed or what lies ahead. So how should Nelson feel at the grand old age it's reached? Geoff Collett talked to some Nelsonians for their assessment of the shape the city's in. -------------------- You hardly need to think about it to write up a checklist of the sorts of attributes and issues that will inevitably arise when you ask any group of Nelsonians for their thoughts on the sort of city their hometown has become. Great weather, great lifestyle, great views, great place to bring up kids, not too big-not too small, blah blah blah, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And there's the just-as-obvious flipside: the undetected hardship, bored youth, an imbalance between our lovely "lifestyle" and the means for all to enjoy it, a disproportionate churlish element who stand in the way of progress, et cetera.
All those things get mentioned at least in passing by a small cross- section of locals canvassed by the Nelson Mail to get some thoughts on the sort of heart Nelson finds itself in at 150. But another, less predictable, theme came through, whether identified directly or obliquely: that Nelson is increasingly a place founded on choice, a city of people who choose to be here rather than arriving here by chance of birth.
The old order, which insisted on a multi-generational connection here before allowing residents to call themselves "Nelsonians", is slowly but surely dying. Grant Palliser - a prominent member of the city's artistic community - recalls encountering that sort of attitude when he first arrived here 30 years ago. But he came to realise that the city was increasingly home to other "imports", and today is full of them. Nelson, as he sums it up neatly, has become "a city of people who choose to live here, not because they're stuck here and have got no hope of moving on".
The mayor, Kerry Marshall, echoes the observation. "Nelson's got a wonderful cross- section of people who have chosen to live here." And there is, the mayor points out, great strength to be derived from a community of such devoted inhabitants.
But from the mayoral office, Marshall also sees some of the old cliches as alive, well and needing attention.
"You talk to anybody in New Zealand about Nelson and their eyes kind of glow, but when you ask them for details they're a bit hazy about it - a good place to live and lifestyle and so on. And I actually think the challenge for this council is to create some other reasons why Nelson comes to mind."
Inevitably, today's assessments of Nelson at 150 are going to be influenced by events in the here-and- now, rather than the century-and-a- half's worth of progress that got us here.
So chamber of commerce president Craig Dennis is anxious about the present bleak business conditions, particularly in the "secondary industries" (retailing, real estate, car sales). Nelson Tasman Tourism boss Paul Davis is troubled by the serious and unfulfilled need for better infrastructure to support tourism, "particularly infrastructure that allows us to address the extreme seasonality factor we have here" (as in, booming summers followed by the winter's neutron bomb effect, when the people vanish and only the buildings remain).
City councillor Ali Boswijk, one of those who points out that she lives here out of choice rather than chance, wonders whether the current generation has lost some of the far- sightedness that established the core of the city so firmly 50 or 100 years ago. The Bishop of Nelson, Richard Ellena, a relatively recent arrival after a long stint as the vicar of Blenheim, makes the identical point. It has always been a community of entrepreneurs and dreamers, he says, but from what he has seen, there seems to be a propensity to bitterness and divisiveness even after the debate is over.
Barney Thomas, a prominent figure within Te Tau Ihu iwi, is one who doesn't hesitate to take the long view. "There have been a lot of changes, " he muses, since the days when the Europeans arrived. "Right from the reclamations."
It's a good point. After all, 150 years ago the coast came in as near as Anzac Park. Pushing the city's boundaries out into the Haven created the port which so much of the local wealth is predicated on.
So too, as Thomas points out, the early Europeans' interactions with iwi ("some positive, some not so positive") resound today. The imminent settlement of the Te Tau Ihu Treaty of Waitangi claim will be the sharpest reminder of that, but it will also reflect the resurgent role Maori are taking in the city. The work of the Wakatu Incorporation and Ngati Rarua Atiawa Iwi Trust has provided the platform for much of that resurgence. "It's taken a long time for things Maori to be portrayed positively in the community, but I think all in all things are reasonably positive."
Among Grant Palliser's artistic contributions to the city is the large bronze hand (known as The Oracle) that sits out in front of Stoke's library. He intended it to be symbolic at various levels of how he sees Nelson - including of seizing opportunities and not letting them slip through fingers; of the creative element, a place where the creations of the hands can thrive; and of the geography, of the hills as sheltering hands around the city. Needless to say, none of those things that so inspired him when he made The Oracle have changed.
If anyone is a champion for this city, it is this transplanted Cantabrian, who enthuses of the place's soul, its aura, even. He likes a story about meeting some Japanese visitors who asked their Nelson hosts if they went away for holidays - and when told yes, wondered why.
So what about the common charge against the lovely Nelson life, that it's a great place to live if you've got money, but in reality, many of us are hard up, struggling by on "sunshine wages" or benefits. Intriguingly, a couple of those at the very coalface of the city's poorer neighbourhoods - Victory community worker Kindra Douglas and Andrew Burgess, the vicar at All Saints Church in Vanguard St - talk first and foremost not of the hardship and the underbelly stuff they see day to day, but of the simple pleasure of being able to live in Nelson.
"There's a real feel-good factor, " says Douglas. "Where else can I wake up in the morning and look across the bay to mountains and snow, and also feel the warmth of the sun, on a daily basis?
"This has got to be the feel-good town to live in. I just feel it's a lovely, vibrant, creative and interesting city. We are enormously blessed."
And Burgess: "It's a great city . . . a fantastic place to live. Part of that is that scale - it's small enough that it's got ready access to everything."
Not that they deny the hardship. Burgess, whose church is also home to the city's night shelter, worries that there is an impoverished element which is missed even by the community workers toiling to support the hard-up.
On the flipside, while everyone likes to trill about the growing ethnic diversity that is slowly but surely diluting the overwhelmingly white face of Nelson, Burgess has seen close up how satisfying that can be, with the arrival of the Chin refugee community. Many are Christian and use All Saints for their weekly services.
"They're a great addition to our community, they really are. They're very hard-working, community-minded people with strong values and strong morals." An ethnic dimension, in other words, that goes beyond offering another interesting restaurant to check out.
Sarah Holman, the secretary of Nelson's heritage advisory group, points out that immigration has always been part of the backdrop to Nelson, an important factor in our civic pride and in the rich (and continuing) historical record.
But that record is perhaps most visible in buildings - "a wonderful legacy", she says, and one that, just as today's migrants are adding their touches to the city tapestry, so she hopes will the current crop of architects, builders and building owners do their bit to enhance the physical evidence of that pride.
Alison Heslop, the president of the Nelson branch of the National Council of Women, sees strength across the range - the city's built and natural environment, and quiet lifestyle ("and I hope we're able to, with planning, keep that quality"); the increasing role of Maori; the level of engagement in the mass of community organisations that keep the place functioning; and the quality of education - not least, the development of the polytechnic and the part it has played in boosting the number of young people around the place.
But, "one thing we do note in a city for its size, is it lacks a venue for the performing arts".
Which raises the temptation to suggest that Nelson will celebrate its 150th with the thing it does best: a civic tussle over spending on big-ticket projects - sportsgrounds, theatres, conference centres and the like.
The small sample group essentially captures the flavour. Kindra Douglas is one of those who cautions that however tempting the wishlist, the needs and realities of Nelson need to be taken on board, including the risk of burdening an ageing population with high-cost projects.
But Paul Davis says that there is a strong feeling that "the city has been held back for no good reason". He hears from businesspeople who "look outside at other communities of similar sizes around New Zealand and ask, 'Why don't we have the same infrastructure that they do?' ".
Craig Dennis steps back from the here and now - however much of a distraction the black clouds heaping up on the horizon may be - and observes that, from a business perspective at least, the various issues which excite Nelson in 2008 are much the same as they have been in any decade of the past 15. Different backdrop, maybe, but familiar challenges.
As he wrote in the history of the chamber of commerce earlier this year - it too has been marking a sesquicentennial - "As in our past, this community remains reliant on the confidence of farming, fishing, forestry and foreign visitors . . . In surveying our present challenges of roading, transport, water and land rights, security of energy supply, value of our currency, unaffordable housing and the demands of the community for assets, we could in fact be talking of any decade."