When Lani Russwurm jumped online in 2008 he was one of the first to write about history in his blog Past Tense. The blog morphed into a weekly writing gig with Bob Kronbauer’s Vancouver is Awesome and last year he published Vancouver was Awesome: a curious pictorial history, a hugely popular local history book which has sat on the best seller list for the past several weeks.
Marsha Fuller was cleaning out a client’s attic in Western Maryland a couple of weeks ago when she came across this postcard of a traffic accident featuring a Grandview street car in 1909. Marsha’s company, Your Mother’s Attic, helps the relatives of the newly dead sort out what is often a lifetime of possessions—she often comes across these types of historical treasures.
Tom Carter is a Vancouver-based artist known for exploring the city’s gritty urban environments.
Heritage Loft:
I visited Tom Carter in his heritage loft a couple of weeks ago. It was the same afternoon that we climbed up to the top of the Sun Tower, in what was in 1912, the tallest building in the British Empire.
And just because it’s the last day of the year, I thought I’d run a special post on my favourite Facebook local history pages of 2013. In no particular order and chosen because they offer real value for time expended–here is my top 10.
For a number of years Caroline Adderson wrote outraged letters to City Council about the large scale destruction of heritage houses in her neighbourhood.
A couple of weeks ago my friend Tom Carter and I climbed to the top of the Sun Tower, one of my favourite buildings in Vancouver.
It’s also one of our most familiar landmarks, and at one time the tallest building in the British Empire when mayor, L.D.
In 1913 Vancouver had a thriving theatre district that included eight movie theatres as well as stock theatres like the Pantages and the Empress——both completed in 1908.
Over the years we’ve managed to pretty well destroy all evidence of these theatres—the Capital, the Strand, two Orpheum theatres, and of course, most recently the Pantages Theatre at Main and Hastings that as Heritage Vancouver so succinctly put was “demolition by neglect.”
Theatre companies put on lavish productions at the Empress that called for sheep and horses on stage, as well as cars.
Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Ontario, but she lived in both North and West Vancouver, and wrote three of her most important books while living on Rockland Avenue in Victoria. She and Jim founded Munro’s Books in 1963. The following is an excerpt from Sensational Victoria.
I spent the afternoon with architect Peter Pratt at his home in the British Properties yesterday. Peter’s father Ned Pratt designed the house in the early 1950s and lived there for most of his life. You’ve likely never heard of Ned Pratt, I hadn’t until recently, and I find that really interesting because he may just be the most important architect to come out of Vancouver.