Eve Lazarus
If you’re a property owner in Metro Vancouver and looking for relief in this year’s property tax bill, well let’s just say it’s not going to happen. For property owners living in one of the priciest regions of the country—the West Coast real estate market keeps going up—and so does your bill.
The good news is that BC Assessment also released the 500 most expensive properties in the province today, and it gives you a glimpse into how the rich get richer.
Every now and then I run a story under a series I call “Our Missing Heritage – What were we thinking?” It came out of my frustration from researching my books on home histories. Often I’d hear or read about a great story that happened in a house, or see a picture of an amazing building only to find out that it had turned into a parking lot, a boxy condo tower or a monster house.
It’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago the Hastings Street area had a thriving theatre district, filled with opulent buildings, cafes and people, and known as the “Hastings Great White Way.”
In past blogs I’ve written about the Strand, the Pantages and the Empress–all theatres that once existed in downtown Vancouver, but have long since been turned into parking lots or cheaper, uninteresting buildings.
One of the best things about messing with history is finding connections, and it’s always exciting when they’re right under your nose. When I found out that Group of Seven artist Fred Varley once lived in an old brown house on Rice Lake road, just minutes from my own, I started poking about in his life and how the few years that he spent teaching and working in Vancouver helped shape art and architecture.
Percy Williams was the world’s fastest human for a time. In these days of super-charged Olympic athletes, he was truly unique.
The following is story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
King Edward High School:
There’s a young, very thin Percy Williams in a picture of the King Edward High School track team of 1926.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
I came across this photo* of downtown Vancouver in 1924 while I was playing on Vancouver Archive’s site a few years ago. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was looking at. There’s the Vancouver Block sticking up in the background—you can see the familiar clock—but check out all those other amazing buildings: the Strand Theatre, the Birks Building and the Second Hotel Vancouver—all missing from our streetscape less than half-a-century later.
Happy Halloween. And, in honour of my favourite non-holiday, here’s a completely true ghost story from the pages of Sensational Vancouver. When Jennifer, Patrick, Graham, 6 and Angus, 3 moved into their home, they didn’t realize they’d be sharing it with strangers. But to Jennifer, an interior designer, it soon because obvious they were not alone.
Now a Cold Case Canada Podcast: Halloween Special – Three Ghost Stories and a Murder
For over six decades a large white house stood at the corner of Williams Street North and Portage Avenue in Chilliwack. The stately old manor had a three-storey tower with a turret topped off by a witch’s hat roof, and for a while, the house put the town on the tourist map.
