Eve Lazarus
Earlier this month, St. John Alexander invited me to hang out at Overlynn, a Burnaby mansion for a CTV news Halloween segment. I spent an amazing Saturday with St. John, Greg Mansfield and Amanda Quill—two experienced ghost hunters.
Listen to Cold Case Canada podcast Episode 34
Charles Peter:
As the history geek in the group, I discovered that Overlynn, which is in Vancouver Heights, is part of North Burnaby.
As Chef Jean-Francois Dube discovered in 1999, North Vancouver’s Pacific Starlight Dinner train was haunted
In 1997, I was the Vancouver Correspondent for Marketing Magazine and one of a few dozen media invited along to launch BC Rail’s Pacific Starlight Dinner Train. It was a fantastic night, beginning with a musical send-off from the old North Vancouver station, great food, a stop at Porteau Cove and free booze all the way up and back.
October is women’s history month, and I can’t think of anyone more inspirational than Ivy Granstrom: Queen of the Polar Bears
This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Meet Ivy Granstrom:
Ivy Granstrom participated in 76 consecutive polar bear swims.
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.
In 1957, the PNE prize home, at 1,444 square feet, was one and a half times the size of a normal house.
Story from: Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the city’s hidden history
1957:
In 1957, things were a lot less complicated. People went out to movies and drank Nescafe in the kitchen.
The first PNE was in 1910, and, not surprising, a lot of things have changed since then. Some things will be missed and others not so much. Here are 10 things you won’t be seeing this year.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
1. A brill trolley bus
Unless it’s taken out of a transit museum, you won’t be taking a brill trolley bus to the fair.
It’s been over seven decades, but I’m confident that the mystery of who blew up one of the courthouse lions in 1942 has now been solved. No one will be charged for this crime, but it’s thanks to a reader—we’ll call him Dave. It was his grandfather who made a bang loud enough that Vancouverites thought the Japanese were invading the city.
On August 2, 1970 three people died when Russian freighter Sergey Yesenin collided with BC ferry the Queen of Victoria in Active Pass. The freighter’s steel bow sliced through the ferry almost cutting it in half.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Active Pass:
One of the highlights of taking a BC Ferry from Vancouver to Victoria is Active Pass, that narrow channel of water that runs through the Gulf Islands.
