Vancouver History

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

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 tricks. For instance,… 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

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

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History Bryan Adams has collected a ton of hardware over the years, but the one I find the most interesting is the City of Vancouver Heritage Award he was given in 1998 for transforming a derelict Gastown warehouse into a world class recording studio. The building restoration… Continue reading From Vancouver City Hall to Bryan Adams’ Recording Studio: repurposing old buildings

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get in on a tour exploring several DTES buildings with Judy Graves, Tom Carter and John Atkin. Judy spent decades advocating for the homeless, and this is her stamping ground. Tom lives and paints from his downtown loft, and John lives in Strathcona, so I’m… Continue reading Exploring the DTES – Main Street Barber Shop

“Straight as a plummet the steak of red below the long streak of white dropped for fully 100 feet. Then with a couple of preliminary flutters, the rushing air entered the distending ring of the parachute and it opened like a huge umbrella. A great sigh of relief went up from the 6,000 and some… Continue reading Canada’s First Parachute Jump was at North Vancouver’s mudflats

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History In February 2014, Canada Post came out with two stamps in recognition of Black History Month. One shows Hogan’s Alley, the unofficial name for an area near Union and Main Streets and home to much of Vancouver’s early black community. The other is of Nora Hendrix… Continue reading Recognizing Black History: The Canada Post Stamps

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… Continue reading An Accidental Postcard

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… Continue reading Meet Tom Carter Artist

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. Taylor had it built over a century… Continue reading The Sun Tower: On Top of the World

Steveston’s Finn Slough. Shanty slum or quaint fishing village? Finn Slough: We biked to Finn Slough last Thursday. It’s located at the end of No. 4 Road about six clicks from Steveston. Depending on what you read or who you talk to, it’s either a quaint little fishing village or a bunch of degenerates squatting… Continue reading Steveston’s Finn Slough

The story of the Alexander Street brothels is featured in Sensational Vancouver.  Janice Abbott, CEO of Atira Women’s Resource Society, took me on a tour of some new real estate Friday—a dozen brightly coloured orange and blue recycled shipping containers piled on top of each other like giant lego blocks. This housing—the first social housing… Continue reading From Brothel to Teen Housing

Almost 40 years ago, Rosemary Eng and her husband Alan Merridew moved to Vancouver from Chicago to take up a job at the Province.  They bought the 100-year-old North Vancouver house, raised their son Peter now 38, and as Rosemary prepares to pack up and leave, she has written the story of her house.  … Continue reading The Story of 323 East 24th Street