Every Place Has a Story

Granville and Georgia Streets: 150 Years in Virtual Reality

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It’s Heritage Week (February 19 – 25) and if you’re looking for something to do Sunday, drop by Heritage Hall on Main Street and check out the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s community fair. This year’s theme is Layer by Layer. It’s a great opportunity to meet a host of different community groups and take in Brian Walters’ seven-minute, award-winning virtual reality film.

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The House that Joe Built

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Multiplexes will soon replace single family homes all over Vancouver. How many stories will be erased from our history?

I was reading an article in the Vancouver Sun yesterday called “Multiplexes may be coming to your neighbourhood soon.” It’s City Hall’s way of densifying our neighbourhoods, replacing those entitled single family homes with up to six strata homes on a single lot.

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Vancouver’s Peace House and the Grateful Dead

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I was riding my bike along Point Grey Road this week and snapped a few photos of the Peace House. It’s an interesting looking place, and as it turns out, has quite the past.

3148 Point Grey Road:

It was built in 1908 by R.D. Rorison who was an early real estate agent and developer.

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Vancouver’s O Canada House

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I first came across the O Canada house when I was writing At Home with History around 2005. In those days, there were only hard copies of the city directories at Vancouver Archives and Google Maps was still in the future. Research meant walking neighbourhoods, standing in the hedgerows and staring up at gorgeous old heritage houses.

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Frits Jacobsen: Anatomy of an East Van House

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Frits Jacobsen arrived in Vancouver in 1968. He was a prolific artist and  captured some of Vancouver’s iconic and long-gone buildings such as Birks, the Englesea Lodge, and the Orillia on Robson Street. He also drew some that have survived. Two that I’ve seen are the Manhattan Apartments on Thurlow and Main Street’s Heritage Hall.

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Trans-Canada Air Lines

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I put up a post on April 28 to mark the day that Trans-Canada Air Lines flight 3 took off from Lethbridge on a routine flight to Vancouver. The Lockheed Lodestar never made it, and 47 years would pass until there would be any answers.

See: Remembering TCA Flight 3

Dale Brandon wrote to tell me that her mother Audrey (Tavender) Brandon was supposed to be one of three crew members on that flight.

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SS Greenhill Park: A Vancouver Tragedy

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Just before noon on March 6, 1945, the SS Greenhill Park blew up, killing six longshoremen and two seamen. Twenty-six others, including seven firefighters were injured in the explosion.

On March 6, 1945, nearly 100 men were either loading or getting the SS Greenhill Park ready for its voyage to Australia from CPR’s Pier B-C (now Canada Place).

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Vancouver’s Bailey Bridge

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It took more than a week to fix a large pothole in the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge last month. But in 1944, the Royal Canadian Engineers threw up a Bailey Bridge in just 10 hours.

The bridge was designed by Donald Coleman Bailey, a civil engineer from Southbourne, England. When the Germans blew up bridges in Europe, the good guys could quickly replace them with Bailey’s invention.

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