I finally got a chance to drop by the West Vancouver Museum yesterday to check out the latest exhibition on the photography of Selwyn Pullan. Assistant curator Kiriko Watanabe has done an amazing job, not only pulling out some of Selwyn’s most interesting work, but also displaying the cameras that he used to shoot them… Continue reading Selwyn Pullan Photography: What’s Lost

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History I had the pleasure of visiting Neptoon Records on Main Street for the first time last week. The place was packed with browsers, most of them young. The second thing I noticed was the sheer number of records—thousands of them everywhere you look. They are filed… Continue reading How the Museum of Exotic World became Main Street’s Neptoon Records

On May 26, 1896, 143 people crammed onto Streetcar No. 16 to cross the Point Ellice Bridge. It was Queen Victoria’s birthday and they were on their way to attend the celebrations at Macaulay Point Park in Esquimalt. They never made it. The middle span of the bridge collapsed under the weight and the streetcar… Continue reading The Point Ellice Bridge Disaster – May 26, 1896

After I stumbled over a photo of the former Vancouver Police Headquarters on East Cordova Street, I asked my friend Tom Carter if he knew why it had been destroyed. Was it to make way for the uninspiring three-storey building that took its place? Tom didn’t know, but I thought his comment was interesting—that it… Continue reading Our Missing Heritage – Vancouver Police HQ

There’s a Facebook post going around about “pedestrian scrambles”—intersections where every car stops and pedestrians cross in all directions. It’s a simple concept that saves you from being turned into road kill by a turning car. The video goes onto tell us that “over 40% of pedestrian crashes happen at intersections,” and after scrambles are… Continue reading Let’s Do The Scramble

The Traveller’s Hotel opened in Ladysmith in 1913. The swastikas on the facade meant good luck in Sanskrit I was over on Vancouver Island this week doing some biking and stopped in at Ladysmith. It’s the first time I’ve been there and it was great to walk down a main drag that still has many… Continue reading Swastikas and the Traveller’s Hotel

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… Continue reading City Reflections: The Epic

Did you see the article in the Georgia Straight last week headlined “Modest Vancouver heritage home proposed to be reborn as boutique restaurant”? The accompanying picture showed a funky purple Victorian house with pink trim and the kind of cool architectural doodads, that we don’t see anymore. Sweet, I thought. Instead of pulling down another… Continue reading Mount Pleasant’s Coulter House

Originally from Edmonton, Raymond Biesinger is a Montreal-based illustrator whose work regularly appears in the New Yorker, Le Monde and the Guardian. In his spare time, he likes to draw lost buildings.  Biesinger uses geometric shapes to ‘build’ his building illustrations In his down-time, Biesinger is drawing his way through nine of Canada’s largest cities.… Continue reading Our Missing Heritage: 18 Lost Buildings of Vancouver

If you’re looking for something a little different, skip Quarry Rock, Honey’s Donuts and the ice-cream shops of Panorama Drive and head to Cates Park. There’s a ton of history spread over the six kilometres of waterfront park. Robert Dollar: In 1916 a San Francisco-based lumber baron named Robert Dollar bought 100 acres and built… Continue reading A Short History of Cates Park

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… Continue reading The Mysterious Visit of John and Yoko to Stanley Park

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… Continue reading Vancouver’s Monkey Puzzle Tree Obsession

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… Continue reading Finding the Rhea Sisters  

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.… Continue reading The Photography of Bob Cain

Name recognition: Her name adorns a university, a school, a bridge, and a library. She is the subject of several documentaries, museum exhibits, books and plays. In 2009, her painting Wind in the Tree Tops sold for more than $2.1 million, one of the highest-priced Canadian paintings ever sold at auction. Tourists visit her family… Continue reading Emily Carr’s James Bay

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… Continue reading $1.49 Day Woodward’s. $1.49 Day Tuesday

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.  Crime Scene: I… Continue reading The life’s work of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s first forensic investigator

On February 7, 1968 a Canadian Pacific Airlines flight from Honolulu was on final descent into Vancouver when it hit a small fog patch just above the runway. The Boeing 707 touched down, swerved out of control and smashed through light planes, trucks and a workshop before crashing into a concrete building. Martinus Verhoef, a… Continue reading Fifty Years Ago: Vancouver International Airport

A couple of weeks ago Bill Allman, Tom Carter and I were sipping martinis and discussing bits of history that have been saved from the dumpster. The subject of the rescued lights from the Orpheum Theatre came up, and next thing he knew, Bill had agreed to write this blog. By Bill Allman Deep in… Continue reading Saving History: the autographed lights from the Orpheum Theatre

City archivist Heather Gordon says the recent donation of a whopping two million negatives from the Sun and Province (Postmedia) photo library is the largest photographic collection that Vancouver Archives has ever received. It’s also one of the most important. “The Sun and Province photographers were everywhere, documenting everything, so their work is an extraordinarily… Continue reading Vancouver Archives Receives Two Million Negs