Vancouver History

Never heard of Manson’s Deep? You’re not alone. It’s one of the deepest points in Howe Sound just off Point Atkinson. It’s also been a burial ground for old sailors since 1941. Manson’s Deep gets its name from Captain Thomas Manson who came to Vancouver from Scotland in 1892. According to an article by Kellsie… Continue reading Vancouver Heritage House Tour and Manson’s Deep

Love this photo taken in 1921 from Howe Street looking down West Hastings. The big building closest to the photographer is the Metropolitan at 837 West Hastings. It was built in 1912 to house the Metropolitan Club which then became the Terminal City Club and the building lasted until 1998. It was replaced with a… Continue reading Our Missing Heritage: The original Vancouver Club and the Metropolitan Building

Charles Marega died on March 27, 1939. And, while you may not know his name you will know his work. Those are his two lion statues at the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge. And while the lions may be his most well known work, Charles (or Carlos as he was christened) was a… Continue reading The work of Charles Marega (1871-1939)

  I went to the District of North Vancouver offices to pick up some money owed and was promptly redirected to the City of North Vancouver offices five minutes down the road. It made me wonder yet again why we are running two completely separate bureaucracies for a relatively small population. It also made me… Continue reading A Tale of Two Vancouvers

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… Continue reading Making History with Facebook for 2015

  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… Continue reading Christmas at Roedde House

Angus McIntyre was a Vancouver bus driver for 40 years. He has a love for photography, street lighting and transportation systems. Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Angus for tea and a chat. Angus was given his first camera at age eight—an Argus with the little window and the roll through… Continue reading Angus McIntyre

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… Continue reading Hidden Pasts, Digital Futures: Vancouver Circa1948

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… Continue reading From Newspapers to Exotic Escorts: Repurposing old buildings

This story appears in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the city’s hidden history I wrote about the Garden family a couple of weeks back. William and Mary Garden arrived in Vancouver in 1889, opened up the Garden and Sons Wholesale Tea and Coffee on East Hastings, and lived for a time at a house at Thurlow… Continue reading The Garden Family and the Lester Court Connection

If you are like me and have a couple of Michael Kluckner’s books at home, you might be surprised to learn that his latest effort is a graphic novel. In his latest book, Toshiko, Michael has replaced his paint brush with a pencil, and he’s taken a leap into fiction. Turns out, Michael kicked off… Continue reading Michael Kluckner’s Toshiko: a graphic novel

This story appears in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History. Anders Falk is a Vancouver realtor with deep roots in the city. His great, great grandparents William and Mary Henderson Garden arrived in Vancouver from Helensburgh, Scotland, via Liverpool and a cross Canada train trip in April 1889. William opened up Garden and… Continue reading Thurlow and Alberni Streets: then and now

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. Binning, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Gordon Smith,… Continue reading West Coast Modern on Display

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History This photo of a bombed out car in 1932 has been bugging me ever since a reader posted it on my FB page a few weeks ago. So this week I made a trip to the Vancouver Public Library to find out its back story. It… Continue reading Movie projectionist escapes death when bomb wrecks car

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History I was spending a typical Friday afternoon yesterday poking around the digital files at Vancouver Archives when I found this photo of the Alhambra Theatre. The photo was taken in 1899, the year the theatre first appears in the city directories and it stood at the… Continue reading What the Alhambra Theatre and the Vancouver Stock Exchange have in common

  It may not be the grandest house on the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s tour, but I bet 446 Union Street house is one of the most interesting, at least when it comes to its social history. From: Sensational Vancouver   Adamo Piovesan built the brick house in 1930 for his wife Maria and their four… Continue reading 446 Union Street

The Vancouver Police Museum has put together Red Light Rendezvous—a new tour for those of us who can’t get enough of the gritty history of downtown Vancouver. Cat Rose, who is a crime analyst by day, is also the person behind the Police Museum’s other popular Sins of the City tour: Vice, Dice and Opium… Continue reading Red Light Rendezvous at the Vancouver Police Museum

Here are five of my favourite eccentric BC houses that still stand (or did at the time of research). 1. The Hobbit House(s) There are two in Vancouver and one in West Van designed by Ross Lort in the early 40s, and against all odds, all survive. Hobbit house at King Edward and Cambie is now… Continue reading Five Eccentric B.C. Houses

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History Cemeteries are really interesting places, and I’ve wandered through Vancouver’s Mountain View several times over the years, but I never noticed the Infant Garden before. Pamela Post* told me about it a few months ago, so I dropped by the cemetery when I was over that… Continue reading The Infant Garden

On March 20, 1917 Police Chief Malcolm MacLennan, 44, was killed in a shootout with a drug addict. This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver: Robert Tait, 32, a drug addict, police informant and pimp from Detroit lived in a rundown apartment over a grocery store at 522 East Georgia with his girlfriend Frankie Russell.… Continue reading The murder of Chief Malcolm MacLennan and nine year old George Robb