Eve Lazarus
The Standard Life Insurance building has been at the corner of Howe and Dunsmuir in Vancouver since 1975. It was the third building on the site. In 1889, it was occupied by a hotel.
For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
As 14-storey office blocks go, there’s really nothing wrong with the Standard Life Insurance building at the southwest corner of Howe and Dunsmuir Streets.
At the Barnet Marine Park you can check out the remnants of a once thriving village, sawmills, and Burnaby’s top secret submarine base.
For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Took the dog for a walk at the Barnet Marine Park in Burnaby last week and found a whole bunch of fascinating history.
Most people are surprised to learn that from 1907 to 1939 there was a pier at English Bay, but it was only recently that I found out that English Bay actually had two piers. Local historian and collector Neil Whaley has kindly provided a guest blog about the second pier at English Bay, the one where all the music and dancing took place.
On May 23, 1934, Constables Gisbourne and Carr were called out to investigate a stabbing at the Canford Indian Reserve in Merritt. The next day, Gisbourne’s Model B Ford was found crashed into a tree and the policemen had vanished
When I was writing Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, I experienced the researcher’s equivalent of winning the lottery, when I found seven boxes of files that were thought to have been destroyed when he retired in 1947.
The Vancouver Aquarium opened on June 15, 1976. Before that there were two other locations at English Bay and Hastings Park.
Hastings Park:
The first Vancouver Aquarium opened in Hastings Park around 1913. I stumbled over this while on Murray Maisey’s excellent blog Vancouver as it Was.
Donna recently sent me this photo of a house on Harwood Street in the West End. She said: “I came across this picture in some old family photos. I live in Calgary and as far as I know, there is no family connection to the building. There is no date on my photo, and I could not find any reference as to when this building was used for a school.
10 ways to research your home – or someone’ else’s through online sources
Writer, librarian and podcaster Megan Cole sent me an email this week asking for some tips on researching the house where she used to live at 2856 West 5th in Kitsilano. It was such a great question, that it’s my topic for this week’s blog post.
This interesting looking house on Yale Street at the corner of North Kamloops in Hastings/Sunrise was built by a bootlegger in 1931.
The Alvaros:
Turns out the house was built in 1931 at a cost of $8,000—a lot of money smack in the middle of the Depression. Its owners were Joseph and Rosa Alvaro, who kept the house they had at 421 East Georgia in Strathcona as a warehouse, and moved their family (they had four boys and four girls) into the new digs.
