Blood, Sweat and Fear Podcast by Eve Lazarus
On March 9, 1947, Inspector Vance of the Vancouver Police Department was called to an apartment in Kitsilano, Vancouver to check out the suspicious death of Ruth Cooperman. The 17-year-old was found naked and lying dead across her husband’s unconscious body.
Jack Cooperman, Ruth’s 27-year-old husband, had been rushed to Vancouver General Hospital, and police were told that his condition was critical.
On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats.
This story is from Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
Fats Robertson:
On February 26, 1947, three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First Avenue in East Vancouver.
In the early hours of May 2, 1945, 23-year-old Olga Hawryluk was found beaten to death and dumped in the waters of English Bay. A soldier was charged with her murder and defended by scrappy East End lawyer Angelo Branca. Blood, Sweat, and Fear’s Inspector Vance handled the forensics.
Inspector Vance is called to a crime scene at Merritt, B.C. in 1934. Two police officers are missing, believed murdered and the investigation focuses in on an abandoned Model B Ford and members of the Canford Indian band.
The stories for this first series are from my book Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance (Eve Lazarus, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017).
Can’t let Asian Heritage Month go by without a nod to Mary and Walter Chan, the Strathcona activists who helped keep the bulldozers at bay and rallied the community to preserve not only Chinatown, but a big chunk of our city’s culture and heritage.
Chan family outside 658 Keefer ca.1968.
The Vancouver Heritage House tour is coming up Sunday June 2, and I haven’t been this excited since Casa Mia was featured in 2014. Don’t get me wrong, the VHF works hard all year to curate a great mix of architectural styles, neighbourhoods and house sizes, but unless you work at, or have a daughter at Crofton House School, you likely won’t get inside the Old Residence.
By the 1930s, Inspector Vance had become a familiar face at crime scenes and was often called to testify in court because of his knowledge of forensics. In fact, his skills and analytic abilities were so effective that in 1934 there were seven attempts on his life—including a car bomb—and for a time he and his family were under constant police guard from criminals afraid to go up against him in court.
There’s been a lot about laneway houses in the media over the last couple of years. Loosely defined, it’s a legal way of plonking down a small house in your backyard, and depending on your point of view, either exploiting or helping to ease the current rental squeeze.
Laneway houses have to be under 1,000 square feet.
