Every Place Has a Story

The Capilano Air Park

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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 its housing stock—a collection of modest-sized, tidy mid-century ranchers with big gardens.

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Heritage Streeters with Anne Banner, Tom Carter, Kerry Gold and Anthony Norfolk

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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 is the proprietress of Salmagundi, an antiques, oddities and novelties shop located in the J.W.Horne Block. 

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Aborted Plans: A Third Crossing for the North Shore

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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.

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The Life and Art of Frank Molnar

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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 as part of the Unheralded Artists of B.C.

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Making History with Facebook for 2015

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Since this is my last blog for the year, I thought I’d put together a list of my top 10 favourite FB pages. My criteria is pretty simple: the page has to have a strong Greater Vancouver flavour, there has to be a historical element, and the page has to post reasonably often and with original postings.

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Christmas at Roedde House

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War for the Holidays opens tonight and runs until December 19

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.

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Vancouver Vanishes with Caroline Adderson

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For a number of years Caroline Adderson wrote outraged letters to City Council about the large scale destruction of heritage houses in her Vancouver neighbourhood. When her letters went unanswered, Caroline sent pictures—she still didn’t get a response.

In January 2013, the award-winning author took her fight to social media and started posting pictures of beautiful character houses and short descriptions of their social history, including the address, when it was built, the first owner and occupation.

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