Eve Lazarus
This interesting looking house on Yale Street at the corner of North Kamloops in Hastings/Sunrise was built by a bootlegger in 1931.
The Alvaros:
Turns out the house was built in 1931 at a cost of $8,000—a lot of money smack in the middle of the Depression. Its owners were Joseph and Rosa Alvaro, who kept the house they had at 421 East Georgia in Strathcona as a warehouse, and moved their family (they had four boys and four girls) into the new digs.
Hastings Sunrise:
At just shy of three acres, Burrard View is not a big park. It runs between North Slocan, North Penticton, Yale and Wall Street. The park slopes down to the water and is shaped like half a house.
The building on the west side of the park has been the Cottage Hospice since 1999.
A few months back, I spent a frustrating hour searching for a plaque at the corner of West Hastings and Hamilton Streets. It was unveiled in 1953, as evidenced in a Vancouver Sun article and photo.
It wasn’t there.
Graeme Menzies, co-author of 111 Places in Vancouver that you Must Not Miss, tells me he did the same thing while researching his book and it’s entry #41: “Hamilton’s Missing Plaque.” Turns out it was taken down about five years ago when the CIBC building was demolished and it was never replaced.
Aaron Chapman’s latest book Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife is a delightful romp through the ghosts of nightclubs past. Aaron’s behind-the-scenes stories are told in such a way, it’s like sitting down and having a beer with him. There are too many clubs to list here—everything from Chinatown’s Marco Polo to Oil Can Harry’s, The Smilin’ Buddha, to the Cave.
It wasn’t easy getting a seat at the West Vancouver Library last Wednesday night. The West Van Historical Society presented Local Voices: Shooting the North Shore with Ralph Bower, retired Vancouver Sun photographer and Mike Wakefield, who also recently retired from a 35-year photography career with the North Shore News.
The place was packed.
For the last year or so I’ve been receiving emails from a realtor named Trent Rodney at West Coast Modern. They come with an invitation to drop by one of the dwindling stock of West Coast Modern houses on the North Shore, sip a cocktail, eat catered food and listen to jazz.
The Flying Seven formed in 1935 and were Vancouver’s all-female aviators’ club
Vancouver’s aviatrices:
This is one of my favourite photos. It ran with a story in Sensational Vancouver and shows six members of the Flying Seven posed in front of the rocket ship at Vancouver International Airport. The Flying Seven were Vancouver’s all-female aviators’ club.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done a roundup of my favourite history blogs. To make the list, the blog had to be written by an individual, come out fairly regularly and have a strong Vancouver flavour.
In alphabetical order:
John Atkin and Andy Coupland started the blog just after their book of the same name was published in 2010.
