One of the best things about messing with history is finding connections, and it’s always exciting when they’re right under your nose. When I found out that Group of Seven artist Fred Varley once lived in an old brown house on Rice Lake road, just minutes from my own, I started poking about in his life and how the few years that he spent teaching and working in Vancouver helped shape art and architecture.
Percy Williams was the world’s fastest human for a time. In these days of super-charged Olympic athletes, he was truly unique.
The following is story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
King Edward High School:
There’s a young, very thin Percy Williams in a picture of the King Edward High School track team of 1926.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
I came across this photo* of downtown Vancouver in 1924 while I was playing on Vancouver Archive’s site a few years ago. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was looking at. There’s the Vancouver Block sticking up in the background—you can see the familiar clock—but check out all those other amazing buildings: the Strand Theatre, the Birks Building and the Second Hotel Vancouver—all missing from our streetscape less than half-a-century later.
Happy Halloween. And, in honour of my favourite non-holiday, here’s a completely true ghost story from the pages of Sensational Vancouver. When Jennifer, Patrick, Graham, 6 and Angus, 3 moved into their home, they didn’t realize they’d be sharing it with strangers. But to Jennifer, an interior designer, it soon because obvious they were not alone.
Now a Cold Case Canada Podcast: Halloween Special – Three Ghost Stories and a Murder
For over six decades a large white house stood at the corner of Williams Street North and Portage Avenue in Chilliwack. The stately old manor had a three-storey tower with a turret topped off by a witch’s hat roof, and for a while, the house put the town on the tourist map.
This totally true ghost story took place in the West End’s Mole Hill. The full story, and those of other haunted houses appeared in Sensational Vancouver
Mole Hill:
In the 1960s, the City of Vancouver started buying up a mixture of Queen Anne and Edwardian houses along Comox Street in the West End, intending to bulldoze them and double the size of Nelson Park.
This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver.
Eleanor Lum
Wayne Avery knew nothing about the history of his house until one day he saw an elderly Chinese woman peering through his front room window.
He invited her inside and discovered that she was Eleanor (Yip) Lum, and that she had been born in one of the bedrooms of his Strathcona house in 1928 by Nellie Yip Quong who later adopted her.
The second Doors Open Vancouver is coming up this Saturday October 3, and will give you a behind-the-scenes look at 18 city-owned buildings. Since you won’t have time to see all of them – here’s my top six:
1. Vancouver Fire and Rescue Training Centre:
Go see the city’s only burn building (meaning one that’s lit on fire), find out about the heavy urban search and rescue team, and of course, check out the hot firefighters.