Eve Lazarus
Henry Switzer’s shocking pink house sat at Mathers and Taylor Way in West Vancouver. It was designed one Sunday and received attention from all over the world.
Local Landmark:
A few years ago, I wrote a story about a West Vancouver house that became a local landmark. Readers told me that they fondly remembered the pink house on the hill as the “airplane house,” the “Jetsons House,” the “windmill house,” and the “helicopter house,” because it appeared to have wings.
On April 28, 1947, Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 3 took off from Lethbridge, Alberta on a routine flight to Vancouver. It never arrived.
Rice Lake:
A couple of Sundays ago, my friend Virginia and I went for a walk around North Vancouver’s Rice Lake. We stopped to pay our respects at the two boulders near the entrance.
The Ironworkers Memorial Bridge collapsed June 17, 1958 killing 18 men, and one diver the following day. It is the worst industrial accident in Vancouver’s history. Thanks to Bruce Stewart for sending photos that his father Angus shot of the tragedy.
Bill Moore:
Bill Moore died on June 17, 1993—exactly 35 years after he survived the collapse of the Ironworker’s Memorial Bridge.
I was driving along Lynn Valley Road for probably the hundredth time this year, stopped at the traffic lights at Fromme. The Lynn Valley Care Centre is on the corner there, sitting behind a stone fence and a very big monkey tree.
For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History, there’s a section on North Vancouver.
In the Halloween Special 2020, we visit the Vogue Theatre, and includes stories of haunted grain elevators, a Chilliwack manor and a once “occupied” house in James Bay, Victoria.
Based on stories from At Home With History: The Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Houses; Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History; and Sensational Victoria and features an interview with former Vogue theatre manager Bill Allman.
An Interview with Jazmin Welch, book designer about working on Vancouver Exposed
I’m excited to tell you that Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History is now in bookstores. And, while the saying goes “don’t judge a book by its cover,” I have to disagree.
In August 1994, Nick and Lisa Masee disappeared from their North Vancouver home. Their case is with the RCMP, filed as missing persons with suspicious circumstances. Are they intentionally missing or murdered? You decide.
I worked for the Vancouver Stock Exchange in the late 1980s—the same time that Forbes Magazine published a cover story calling it the “Scam Capital of the World.” While I never met Nick Masee, the mysterious disappearance of he and his wife Lisa in August 1994 has always intrigued me.
In 1944, Jennie Conroy was a 24-year-old war worker living in North Vancouver. She was murdered and left near the West Vancouver cemetery.
In 2015, I was almost finished Cold Case Vancouver when research archivist Daien Ide sent me an email from the NVMA.
