I am excited to tell you that City Reflections is now on YouTube. As you’ll read in John Atkin’s story, it was a massive volunteer undertaking by members of the Vancouver Historical Society. It has been, and will continue to be, a huge tool for researchers—I would never have got John Vance (Blood, Sweat, and Fear) to work on his first day in 1907 without it!
By Lani Russwurm
Several years ago, I came across an art project by the Goodweather Collective that re-imagined a Vancouver in which the City had left select old growth trees in those roundabouts that dot the city’s residential neighbourhoods. Their photoshop work was convincing and it was jarring seeing our familiar urban landscape dotted with unfamiliar giant trees.
We probably have more monkey puzzle trees in BC than in all of their native Chile. The quirky trees started arriving in gardens in the 1920s.
In 2012, I wrote a book called Sensational Victoria and one of my favourite chapters was Heritage Gardens. I visited and then wrote about large rich-people’s gardens like Hatley Park, and smaller ones like the Abkhazi Garden on Fairfield road built on the back of a love story.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
I was driving along Hastings the other day when I saw a huge statue in the yard of Ital Decor in Burnaby. It looked suspiciously like one of the WW1 nurses that guarded the 10th floor of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building before it was imploded in 1989.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Bob Cain this week and discovering his beautiful photographs.
Bob grew up in Marpole, at a time when a swing bridge joined Marpole to Sea Island (it was dismantled in 1957 after the Oak Street Bridge opened).
“Marpole was a small town like Kerrisdale and Kitsilano,” he says.
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
During the 1940s, many of Vancouver’s young men aged between 13 and 18 were recruited into “hoodlum gangs.” The youth were good at steering clear of police, members were rarely identified, and their crimes became increasingly serious.
Tony Antonias, a New Westminster resident and former Aussie started as a copywriter at radio station CKNW in 1955. He stayed there for the next 40 years—to the day.
While CKNW creative director, Tony wrote the famous Woodward’s $1.49 day jingle on February 17, 1958.
As Tony told me a few years back, the jingle came about almost by accident after he hit the key on a new typewriter and it made a loud ding.
In July 2016, several large cardboard boxes filled with photographs, clippings, forensic samples, and case notes pre-dating 1950, and thought to be thrown out decades ago, were discovered in a garage on Gabriola Island. They form the basis of Blood, Sweat, and Fear: the story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s first forensic investigator.