Blog | Eve Lazarus

Phyllis James Munday (1894-1990)

by Eve Lazarus on October 17, 2015

This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver:

A reporter once asked Phyllis Munday if she’d ever been really frightened during all her years of climbing mountains. “Thunderstorms,” she told him. “I hated thunderstorms.”

What she didn’t mention was the time she saved husband Don Munday’s life from a grizzly bear by charging at it with an ice axe; when she regularly carted 60 pounds of backpack over flood swollen creeks; the times she had to avoid quicksand and avalanches and plunges into hidden crevasses.

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Tags Don Munday, Mount Robson, Mount Waddington, Phyllis Munday

Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders

by Eve Lazarus on October 9, 2015

Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders

Jennie Eldon Conroy:

A few days after Cold Case Vancouver was finished and sent off for editing; I received an email from Daien Ide at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives. Daien had come into the possession of a family album with the owner’s name, Miss J.

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Tags Babes in the Woods, book launch, Cold Case Vancouver: the city's most baffling unsolved murders, Daien Ide, Jennie Conroy, North Vancouver Museum & Archives, unsolved murder

Hidden Pasts, Digital Futures: Vancouver Circa1948

by Eve Lazarus on October 3, 2015

Last Saturday I time-travelled to Hogan’s Alley and landed smack in 1948. Geographically, I wasn’t really that far away. I was standing inside a large box in Vancouver’s Woodward’s building using my body as a joy-stick to move through the streets of an area that’s been buried under the Georgia Viaduct since 1972.

The National Film Board teamed up with Vancouver artist Stan Douglas, and last year released an app that turned the second Hotel Vancouver and Hogan’s Alley into two digital worlds.

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Tags Hogan's Alley, Loc Dao, National Film Board, Stan Douglas

Heritage Streeters with Michael Kluckner, Jess Quan, Lani Russwurm and Lisa Anne Smith

by Eve Lazarus on September 26, 2015

Continuing on with a series I started earlier this year, I’ve asked a few friends to tell me their favourite Vancouver building and the one they miss the most.

Michael Kluckner

Michael is the author of a dozen books. His most recent is Toshiko, a graphic novel set in BC in 1944.

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Tags Challenger Relief Map, Jessica Quan, Kerrisdale Grocery, Lani Russwurm, Lisa Anne Smith, Marine Building, Michael Kluckner, Old Hastings Mill Store, Pantages Theatre, Past Tense Vancouver, Texas Guinan, Toshiko, Vancouver City Hospital, Yvonne de Carlo

West End Guest House: one of the last ones standing

by Eve Lazarus on September 18, 2015

Wandering down Haro Street in Vancouver’s West End, it’s a welcome surprise to come across the West End Guest House, a gorgeous Edwardian nestled in a sea of ugly, non-descript apartment buildings.

It’s one of the few houses that managed to survive the apartment blitz of the 1950s when the City of Vancouver removed the six-storey height limit, and instead of repairing and repurposing these character houses, the West End lost dozens of sturdy old places, built from first growth timber and stone and crafted by stonemasons.

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Tags 1362 Haro Street, 623 Granville Street, David Birch, Edgar Edwards, Edwards Brothers Photography, George Edwards, Melora Edwards, Paul Wylie, Pauline Johnson, Rosalind Webling, West End Guest House

Vancouver’s top five heritage inns

by Eve Lazarus on September 12, 2015

Occasionally it’s nice to celebrate heritage buildings that have survived the bulldozers and are being used in interesting ways. One of my favourites is the eccentric Accommodations by Pillow Suites.

Accommodations by Pillow Suites, Mount Pleasant

This eccentric former corner grocery store was built in 1910 near Vancouver City Hall and is a short-term rental suite.

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Tags Accommodations at Pillows Suites, Alexandre Ravkov, Buchan Hotel, City of Vancouver Heritage Award, Corkscrew Inn, Manor Guest House, Sal Robinson, Wayne Meadows, West End Guest House

Skwachays Lodge, Cultural Tourism and Vancouver’s “Gentrifying DTES”

by Eve Lazarus on August 22, 2015

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

I’m not a huge fan of facadism—the practice of keeping the front of the building and tearing everything else down behind it—but in the case of Skwachays Lodge, it made sense.

In 1913, W.T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower, created a three-storey brick residential building at 31 West Pender Street that was known as the Palmer Rooms.

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Tags 31 West Pender Street, Cultural Tourism, Palmer Rooms, Pender Hotell, Skwachays Lodge, Sun Tower, W.T. Whiteway, Wingate Hotel

From Newspapers to Exotic Escorts: Repurposing old buildings

by Eve Lazarus on August 15, 2015

It’s hard to imagine today, but from the 1930s until the mid 1950s there were three daily newspapers—the Vancouver Sun, the Province and the Vancouver News-Herald operating in Vancouver—all independents fighting for market share in a population of less than 350,000.

The Vancouver News-Herald called itself “Western Canada’s Largest Morning Herald.” When it was founded in 1933 the Herald had a circulation of 10,000.

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Tags 426 Homer Street, Barry Broadfoot, Berton, Himie Koshevoy, L.D. Taylor, Pierre, Richard Sharp, Samuel Maclure, the Platinum Club, The Province, The Vancouver News-Herald, The Vancouver Sun

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