Eve Lazarus
Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Wakeland novels, a detective series set in Vancouver that includes Invisible Dead and Hell and Gone.
“When poet-turned-screenwriter Paul Ling goes missing, his teenage daughter hires Vancouver P.I. Dave Wakeland to track him down. To the shock of his family and colleagues, Ling’s body is found within days in the home of a stranger, killed by a drug overdose—and Wakeland suspects foul play.
In this week’s blog, we’re doing some myth busting while telling the real story behind the Lost Lagoon Fountain in Stanley Park.
A couple of weeks ago, Chris Stiles sent me a photo of Vancouver that her husband’s grandparents had purchased from Frank Gowen in 1913. I wanted to see other photos by Gowen, who specialized in postcards, and found one he took of the fountain in Lost Lagoon.
Frank Gowen was born in England in 1877. He moved to Vancouver in 1913 and worked as a photographer until his death in 1946.
Chris Stiles kindly sent me this fabulous panoramic photo that she and husband Alan found when they were going through some personal effects of Alan’s father recently.
Firehall #2 was designed by William Blackmore in 1888 at 724 Seymour but it would be another decade before the VFD started paying its firemen.
I’ve been having a lot of fun putting together my new book Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History over the last year or so.
Margaret Cadwaladr has written a memoir Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, a nostalgic walk through the area, filled with black and white and colour photos.
When I first came to Canada in the mid-1980s the Woodward’s Food Floor saved my life. It was literally the only place in Vancouver that sold jars of vegemite.
My friend Richard Berrow designed this quiz for his colleagues in the legal profession, and kindly sent me a copy. I thought that my friends and colleagues in the local history community would also enjoy it, and give these esteemed lawyers a run for their retainers. If you’ve read Sensational Vancouver, you’ll easily answer three of these questions.
George Norris was born in Victoria in 1928. He studied at the Vancouver School of Art. His sculptures are spread around Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary, but his most famous is probably The Crab (1967) that sits outside the Museum of Vancouver.
Last week I had the pleasure of writing about Svend-Erik Eriksen and showcasing some of his fabulous photos of early Vancouver.
I’m a big fan of Svend-Erik Eriksen’s photography of Vancouver in the ’70s. Last week I called him up and asked how he got started.
Erik, is an animator by trade, but his interest in photography goes back to the 1950s when he was a kid in Namu, BC. His parents had immigrated from Denmark and sponsored a Hungarian refugee family who lived with them for a year.
