Eve Lazarus
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
If you read my blog regularly, you know that I’m a huge fan of West Coast Modern, and especially of Fred Hollingsworth, an amazing North Vancouver architect who died this year at age 98 after changing the face of architecture.
A little before 10:00 am on October 3, 1975, David Samson, an inspector with the Canadian Grain Commission, was walking down the tracks to the Burrard Terminals when he saw a few of the workers he knew moving quickly away from the grain elevators.
The full story is in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History.
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.
Look for the full story of Jennie Eldon Conroy in Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders
A couple of weeks ago, Daien Ide, reference historian at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives came into the possession of a photo album. At first she thought it was just a nice family photo album once owned by a Miss J.
There is a chapter on West Coast Modern Artists and Architects in Sensational Vancouver.
If you love West Coast modern like I do, check out the art and architecture exhibit at the West Vancouver Museum this summer.
Work from all the greats is there—Fred Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson, B.C.
Back in September 2013 I blogged about a Fred Hollingsworth designed house in North Vancouver that was sold, torn down and soon after flipped for land value that was more than the original house. Chris left a comment asking me if I could find a photo of another North Shore landmark, a futuristic-looking house that was painted a “shocking pink” and looked like a spaceship.
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.
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.
