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 Fear) to work on his first day in 1907 without it!
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.
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.
In his down-time, Biesinger is drawing his way through nine of Canada’s largest cities. He’s just finished Vancouver, the sixth city in his Lost Buildings series, and his print depicts 18 important heritage buildings that we’ve either bulldozed, burned down or neglected out of existence.
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 a huge mill at the bottom of what’s now Dollar Road.
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 unfamiliar giant trees.
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 Park, and smaller ones like the Abkhazi Garden on Fairfield road built on the back of a love story.
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 1989.
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.