Vancouver history

Whose Chinatown?

by Eve Lazarus on March 20, 2021

I had the pleasure of visiting Griffin Art Projects with Tom Carter last Saturday. It’s a gallery of sorts hidden in an industrial building on Welch Street in North Vancouver. The exhibit features stories, photos, videos and paintings about Chinatowns in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, many from private collections.

Some of Tom’s personal collection is featured and includes everything from scrapbooks from the Marco Polo, to postcards from Ming’s and Bamboo Terrace in the late ‘50s to souvenir photos from Mandarin Gardens and Forbidden City.

View all 4 comments

Tags Bamboo Terrace, Elwin Xie, emily carr, Eugene Bond, Forbidden City, Fred Herzog, Gim Foon Wong, Griffin Art Projects, Jim Wong-Chu, Mandarin Gardens, Mings, Tom Carter, Vancouver School of Art, W.K. Gardens, Yitkon Ho, Yucho Chow

Would you buy a murder house?

by Eve Lazarus on February 27, 2021

You wouldn’t buy a house without having a building inspector check the foundation, so why wouldn’t you research your potential home’s history?

A heritage house at Fraser and East 10th went up for sale last week for $1.4 million. It wasn’t the price-tag though (low by Vancouver standards) that captured people’s attention, it was the house’s murder history.

View all 19 comments

Tags 2549 Fraser Street, At Home with History, Esther Castellani, Grant Stuart Gardiner, Janet Smith, Louise Wise, Marion Hamilton, Patricia Lowther, Thomas Kosberg, Wanda Watson

The Imperial Roller Skating Rink and Other Missing Structures of Beach Avenue

by Eve Lazarus on February 20, 2021

The Imperial Roller Skating Rink opened in 1907 at English Bay and boasted the largest skating floor in North America.

Morton Park:

In 1907, more than 100 years before the famous laughing statues appeared at English Bay, the Imperial Roller Skating Rink opened in Morton Park at Denman and Davie Streets.

View all 5 comments

Tags A-maze-ing Laughter, Englesea Lodge, English Bay Pier, Imperial Roller Skating Rink, Joe Forte. Yue Minjun, Morton Park

The Lost Cemetery of Stanley Park

by Eve Lazarus on February 13, 2021

Mountain View Cemetery may have been Vancouver’s first official cemetery when it opened in 1886, but Stanley Park was first.

Bodies had been buried on Deadman’s Island in Coal Harbour for thousands of years, and those who didn’t want their relatives interred alongside the socially undesirable, the diseased or unchristened, moved their burials further into Stanley Park.

View all 36 comments

Tags Deadman's Island, Maurice Guibord, Mountain View Cemetery, Pioneer Cemetery

A short history of the 2400 Motel

by Eve Lazarus on February 6, 2021

The 2400 Motel on Kingsway opened in 1946. It still has an old fashioned, retro feel and its huge red and blue neon sign.

I fell in love with the 2400 Motel on Kingsway 20 years ago when I was writing Frommer’s With Kids Vancouver. Loved the old fashioned, retro feel of the place and its huge red and blue neon sign.

View all 52 comments

Tags 2400 Kingsway, 2400 Motel

The Orillia (1903-1985)

by Eve Lazarus on January 30, 2021

The Orillia on Robson:

The Orillia on Robson and Seymour Streets, was just a memory by the time I moved to Vancouver in the mid-1980s, but from time to time I see a mention or a photo of this early mixed-use structure at Robson and Seymour. One particularly poignant photo was taken before its destruction in the 1980s and shows the Orillia boarded up, covered in music handbills, smeared with graffiti, and the words “Save Me!” scrawled across one of the plywood boardings.

View all 15 comments

Tags 752 Thurlow Street, Faces, Funland Arcade, Glen Brae, Michael Kluckner, Orillia, Sid Beech, Tamale Parlor, Twiggy's, William Tait

The First Vancouver Art Gallery

by Eve Lazarus on January 22, 2021

Before the Vancouver Art Gallery moved into the old courthouse on West Georgia, its home was a gorgeous art deco building a few blocks away.

If you live in Vancouver, you know that the Vancouver Art Gallery is housed in the old law courts, an imposing neo-classical building designed by celebrity architect Francis Rattenbury in 1906.

View all 12 comments

Tags 1145 West Georgia Street, Charles Marega, emily carr, Francis Rattenbury, George Sharp, Lawren Harris, Sharp and Thompson, Vancouver Art Gallery

Here & Gone: Vancouver’s Corner Stores

by Eve Lazarus on January 15, 2021

Michael Kluckner’s latest BC bestseller Here & Gone: Artwork of Vancouver & Beyond is gorgeous. One half is filled with his paintings of disappearing Vancouver (Here) and the other of his travels in countries such as Australia, Cuba, Mexico and Japan (Gone).

Missing Heritage:

In the introduction to Here, he writes: “I see myself as a witness, certainly not an activist anymore or a serious historian.” I served on the board of the Vancouver Historical Society with Michael for several years and I see him as all these things.

View all 23 comments

Tags buried houses, Here & Gone, laneway houses, Michael Kluckner

Support

Click to read posts about:

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Support

Click to read posts about:

Subscribe to Our Newsletter