Love this photo taken in 1921 from Howe Street looking down West Hastings. The big building closest to the photographer is the Metropolitan at 837 West Hastings. It was built in 1912 to house the Metropolitan Club which then became the Terminal City Club and the building lasted until 1998. It was replaced with a… Continue reading Our Missing Heritage: The original Vancouver Club and the Metropolitan Building

Charles Marega died on March 27, 1939. And, while you may not know his name you will know his work. Those are his two lion statues at the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge. And while the lions may be his most well known work, Charles (or Carlos as he was christened) was a… Continue reading The work of Charles Marega (1871-1939)

  I went to the District of North Vancouver offices to pick up some money owed and was promptly redirected to the City of North Vancouver offices five minutes down the road. It made me wonder yet again why we are running two completely separate bureaucracies for a relatively small population. It also made me… Continue reading A Tale of Two Vancouvers

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History A few people that I know have sold their large houses and downsized to Norgate, one of the few flat areas of North Vancouver just to the east of the Lions Gate Bridge. Norgate is also one of the few areas that hasn’t seen massive change to… Continue reading The Capilano Air Park

This is part four in an occasional series that asks people who work in and around heritage to tell us their favourite buildings and the one that we should never have destroyed. Anne Banner: Anne Banner is the proprietress of Salmagundi, an antiques, oddities and novelties shop located in the J.W.Horne Block.  My favourite existing… Continue reading Heritage Streeters with Anne Banner, Tom Carter, Kerry Gold and Anthony Norfolk

I spent the last three months of 2015 working on an interactive project called Water’s Edge for the North Vancouver Museum and Archives. We started at Indian Arm and went a little west of Ambleside to find the stories that would show the massive changes that have happened to the shoreline and to Burrard Inlet.… Continue reading Aborted Plans: A Third Crossing for the North Shore

Update: Frank passed away in December 2020 I dropped around to see Frank Molnar this week and was happy to see that he’s painting again. Frank is pushing 80 now and he’s not in great health, but you could never tell this from his work. I met Frank several years ago when I profiled him… Continue reading The Life and Art of Frank Molnar

  I went to a Christmas party at the Gregsons last night. Actually, the Gregsons don’t really exist; they are characters in War for the Holidays, a play set in 1915, and which takes place in an 1893 Queen Anne house in Vancouver’s West End. Will Woods, who is well known for his Forbidden Vancouver… Continue reading Christmas at Roedde House

Angus McIntyre was a Vancouver bus driver for 40 years. He has a love for photography, street lighting and transportation systems. Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Angus for tea and a chat. Angus was given his first camera at age eight—an Argus with the little window and the roll through… Continue reading Angus McIntyre

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History If you read my blog regularly, you know that I’m a huge fan of West Coast Modern, and especially of Fred Hollingsworth, an amazing North Vancouver architect who died this year at age 98 after changing the face of architecture. But it wasn’t until I was… Continue reading Fred Hollingsworth’s Sky Bungalow

The following story is an excerpt from Sensational Victoria: “Murders in the Capital.” A few years after the Bests’ bought their James Bay home, a young woman knocked on the door and asked if she could come and take a look inside. She told them that her grandparents had lived in the cottage in the… Continue reading Murder in James Bay

A little before 10:00 am on October 3, 1975, David Samson, an inspector with the Canadian Grain Commission, was walking down the tracks to the Burrard Terminals when he saw a few of the workers he knew moving quickly away from the grain elevators. The full story is in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s… Continue reading The Grain Elevators, a Fire and a Ghost Story:

This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver: A reporter once asked Phyllis Munday if she’d ever been really frightened during all her years of climbing mountains. “Thunderstorms,” she told him. “I hated thunderstorms.” What she didn’t mention was the time she saved husband Don Munday’s life from a grizzly bear by charging at it with… Continue reading Phyllis Munday (1894-1990)

Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders Jennie Eldon Conroy: A few days after Cold Case Vancouver was finished and sent off for editing; I received an email from Daien Ide at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives. Daien had come into the possession of a family album with the owner’s name, Miss… Continue reading Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders

Last Saturday I time-travelled to Hogan’s Alley and landed smack in 1948. Geographically, I wasn’t really that far away. I was standing inside a large box in Vancouver’s Woodward’s building using my body as a joy-stick to move through the streets of an area that’s been buried under the Georgia Viaduct since 1972. The National… Continue reading Hidden Pasts, Digital Futures: Vancouver Circa1948

Continuing on with a series I started earlier this year, I’ve asked a few friends to tell me their favourite Vancouver building and the one they miss the most. Michael Kluckner      Michael is the author of a dozen books. His most recent is Toshiko, a graphic novel set in BC in 1944. He… Continue reading Heritage Streeters with Michael Kluckner, Jess Quan, Lani Russwurm and Lisa Anne Smith

Wandering down Haro Street in Vancouver’s West End, it’s a welcome surprise to come across the West End Guest House, a gorgeous Edwardian nestled in a sea of ugly, non-descript apartment buildings. It’s one of the few houses that managed to survive the apartment blitz of the 1950s when the City of Vancouver removed the… Continue reading West End Guest House: one of the last ones standing

Occasionally it’s nice to celebrate heritage buildings that have survived the bulldozers and are being used in interesting ways. One of my favourites is the eccentric Accommodations by Pillow Suites. Accommodations by Pillow Suites: This eccentric former corner grocery store was built in 1910 near Vancouver City Hall and is a short-term rental suite.  I… Continue reading Vancouver’s top five heritage inns

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History I’m not a huge fan of facadism—the practice of keeping the front of the building and tearing everything else down behind it—but in the case of Skwachays Lodge, it made sense. In 1913, W.T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower, created a three-storey… Continue reading Skwachays Lodge, Cultural Tourism and Vancouver’s “Gentrifying DTES”

It’s hard to imagine today, but from the 1930s until the mid 1950s there were three daily newspapers—the Vancouver Sun, the Province and the Vancouver News-Herald operating in Vancouver—all independents fighting for market share in a population of less than 350,000. The Vancouver News-Herald called itself “Western Canada’s Largest Morning Herald.” When it was founded… Continue reading From Newspapers to Exotic Escorts: Repurposing old buildings