Vancouver History

Rena Del Pieve Gobbi came under fire last week for using discarded gravestones to hold up her garden. The garden is at Commercial and Powell, wedged in between the Maple Leaf Storage and the train tracks. Since 2001, Rena, an artist and documentary film-maker, has lived at the Artist Resource Centre which is just across… Continue reading Rena’s Gravestone Garden

  When I think of photographers working in Vancouver in the 50s and 60s, I think of Foncie Pulice, Selwyn Pullan and Fred Herzog. Foncie was a street photographer who opened Foncie’s Fotos in 1946 and shot millions of photos of people as they strolled Vancouver’s streets. Vancouver-born Selwyn Pullan, served in the Canadian Navy… Continue reading The photographs of Jan de Haas (1914-1967)

The Vogue Theatre opened in April 1941 and was designated as a national historic site in 1993. From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History Dal Richards opened: On April 15, 1941 the Dal Richards Big Band was the opening act for the Vogue Theatre, a combination vaudeville and movie house located on Granville… Continue reading In and out of Vogue: A Vancouver art deco story

The story behind this photo of VPD detectives that appeared in the Vancouver Daily World on January 25, 1924 Joe Ricci’s Vancouver: One of my favourite characters in Sensational Vancouver is Detective Joe Ricci who joined the Vancouver Police Department in 1912. Joe was a kick-arse cop from the old school who didn’t get too… Continue reading The story behind a 1924 Vancouver photograph

There’s a female ghost who haunts Salmagundi. She hangs out downstairs and begs the odd customer to look through old photos, find one of her and take it home. Once a customer told owner Anne Banner that a ghost wanted her to take an antique doll out of a birdcage. Anne, who has never experienced… Continue reading Vancouver’s Salmagundi West

If you’re a property owner in Metro Vancouver and looking for relief in this year’s property tax bill, well let’s just say it’s not going to happen. For property owners living in one of the priciest regions of the country—the West Coast real estate market keeps going up—and so does your bill. The good news… Continue reading The Top 10 Most Expensive Houses in BC: nine are in Vancouver

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… Continue reading Percy Williams: World’s Fastest Human

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… Continue reading Meet Nellie Yip Quong

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… Continue reading Doors Open Vancouver

The Georgia Viaduct knocked out a lot of buildings in 1971 including Hogan’s Alley and Vie’s Chicken and Steakhouse. Urban Renewal: The photo (above) was shot in 1971 and appears in Sensational Vancouver’s Walk on the Wild Side chapter to illustrate “urban renewal”—the City of Vancouver’s excuse for trying to demolish Strathcona and Chinatown. It’s… Continue reading The Georgia Viaduct

Dan Rickard photography A couple of weeks ago, Judy Graves, Tom Carter and I took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Orpheum Theatre. The “new” Orpheum was designed in 1927 by Marcus Priteca, a Seattle-based architect who fashioned the theatre in a Spanish renaissance style and gave it an opulent air with some sleight of hand… Continue reading The Orpheum Theatre and a conversation with Paul Merrick

I’ve been posting pictures of the BC Electric Building on Facebook this week, but I haven’t posted this one—it’s on the back of Sensational Vancouver and in the chapter on West Coast Modern. The photo was shot by Selwyn Pullan in 1957, the same year BC Electric completed this ground breaking piece of architecture. While… Continue reading The incredible photography of Selwyn Pullan

I am thrilled to have the book launch for Sensational Vancouver at the Vancouver Police Museum on Tuesday. The Museum is housed in the old coroner’s court and morgue on Cordova which makes an authentic backdrop for all the great displays. A large chunk of the material for my book came straight from the Museum’s… Continue reading Mug-Shot Books and the Vancouver Police Museum

Mayor Gerry McGeer lived at 4812 Belmont Avenue in Point Grey between 1927 and his death there in 1947. At around 10:00 pm on June 17, 2022 the house burned to the ground. It was unoccupied and apparently under renovation after not getting a demolition permit.  Sixth most expensive listing: As of August 2014, the… Continue reading Mayor Gerry McGeer’s $20 Million Tear-Down

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History Before Vancouver settled on its current City Hall on West 12th, it had been housed in a number of really interesting buildings. The first council started out in a tent shortly after the Great Fire wiped out most of the city in 1886. The tent was… Continue reading A brief history of Vancouver’s City Halls

The gorgeous woman pictured on the cover of Sensational Vancouver and featured in my chapter on Legendary Women is Tosca Trasolini. Tosca was a member of the Flying Seven, Canada’s first all-female aviators’ club. The club formed in 1935—the year she turned 24—after Margaret Fane—one of the Flying Seven flew to California to meet with… Continue reading Tosca Trasolini and the Flying Seven

When North Vancouver’s Dene Rossouw takes a photograph he’s not looking to capture the physical reality of the scene he wants to evoke a mood, an emotional experience or just draw our attention to a detail that we might not otherwise have noticed. His photo of the Dominion Building on West Hastings is shot from an unusual… Continue reading Blurring the line between reality and fantasy – the photographs of Dene Rossouw

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation is piloting a project with the Musqueam Indian Band to offer a tour of Vancouver from a slightly different perspective then the usual whip around Stanley Park, Spanish Banks and the Museum of Anthropology. Actually, we did all those things on a four hour bus ride, but we also got some… Continue reading Celebrating National Aboriginal Day with the Musqueam

Last week I wrote about Darren Bernaerdt who teaches Photoshop at Langara College. Each year Darren sends his students to the Vancouver Archives to look at old photographs, choose one that resonates with them, research it and then go out and photograph the same scene from the same angle and merge them together. The results… Continue reading Then and Now: Images of Vancouver

Four years ago Darren Bernaerdt decided to give photography students at Langara College a different kind of assignment. He sent them to Vancouver Archives to research 100-year-old photographs of the city, and then he put them on the streets to capture those same images, matching the exact perspective and angle of view. While it could… Continue reading Merging Time: A photographic essay of Vancouver