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Margaret Trudeau and the Daddy Long Legs Disco

by Eve Lazarus on May 13, 2017
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When Tom Butler talked the prime minister’s wife, Margaret Trudeau, into turning up at the opening night of the Daddy Long Legs Disco at the International Plaza Hotel in North Vancouver on July 31, 1979, her appearance scored national attention for the nightclub.

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

North Vancouver Disco:

The only thing I could find out about the Daddy Long Legs disco was from a Globe and Mail article dated August 4, 1979 which focused on PR superstar Tom Butler rather than the venue he was promoting.

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They Paved Paradise and put up a Parking Lot: Larwill Park

by Eve Lazarus on May 6, 2017
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From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

My friend Angus McIntyre was a Vancouver bus driver for 40 years and often took photos of heritage buildings, neon signs, street lamps and everyday life on his various routes. His photos are always so vivid and interesting (see his posts on Birks and elevator operators) and when he sends me one, I stop whatever I’m doing and nag him for the back story.

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Bring Back the Streetcar!

by Eve Lazarus on April 29, 2017
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Streetcars operated in Vancouver from 1891 to 1955

This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Brakes fail:

On September 3, 1906 the first North Vancouver streetcar began its journey at the ferry dock, travelled up Lonsdale and stopped at 12th Street. Jack Kelly was the conductor aboard that inaugural run.

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The Life and Death of Seaton Street

by Eve Lazarus on April 22, 2017
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From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Last week I wrote about the oldest house in Vancouver—well at least that’s what they called it when it burned to the ground in 1946. It was built in 1875, and until 1915, its address was Seaton Street.

Unlike most of Vancouver’s streets that are named after old white men, Lauchlan Hamilton, the CPR surveyor, named this one in 1886 after pulling it at random from a map (the town of Seaton is long gone, but used to be near Hazelton in northern BC).

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The Marine Building and the Little House Next Door

by Eve Lazarus on April 15, 2017
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It’s hard to imagine today, but when the Marine Building opened in 1930 it was the tallest building in Vancouver and stayed that way for more than a decade. If you look at the photo (below), you can see that when architects McCarter and Nairne, designed it, four of the 22 floors were built into the cliff above the CPR railway tracks.

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Murder, Investigation, and a Dash of Forensics

by Eve Lazarus on April 8, 2017
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The first time I went to the Vancouver Police Museum was in the late 1980s. It was a breakfast meeting for a tourist organization called Vancouver AM, and we ate in the autopsy room. I fell in love with the place then in all its macabre glory, and nearly three decades later I still love going there.

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Heritage Streeters from Victoria (with Patrick Dunae, Tom Hawthorn and Eve Lazarus)

by Eve Lazarus on March 25, 2017
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This is an occasional series that asks people who love history and heritage to tell us their favourite existing building and the one that never should have been torn down.

Patrick A. Dunae is a Victoria-born historian. A past member of the City of Victoria Heritage Advisory Panel, he is currently president of the Friends of the BC Archives.

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Colouring History

by Eve Lazarus on March 11, 2017
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If you’re on social media you are likely already familiar with Canadian Colour–beautiful, eye-popping historical photographs of Vancouver’s people, buildings and events. The guy behind these colourized photos is Mark Truelove, a Brit who moved to B.C. 16 years ago, and now lives in Hope.

Mark’s day job is web designer/developer, but increasingly he’s doing colourization work for individuals and corporations.

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