When David Rowland heard that Woodward’s was closing in 1993, he phoned up the manager and put in an offer for the department store’s historic Christmas windows. They agreed on a price, and David became the proud owner of six semi-trailer loads of animated teddy bears, elves, geese, children, a horse and cart and various storefronts.
Irving House was built in 1865 in New Westminster by Captain John Irving. He died in 1872, but never really left.
This is an excerpt from my book At Home with History: The Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes.
Irving House is built in the Gothic Revival style and overlooks the Fraser River on what’s now busy Royal Avenue in New Westminster.
Walter Pavlukoff stepped out of his hotel room on August 25, 1947 and joined the PNE parade. Then he robbed a bank and murdered the manager.
PNE Parade
On August 25, 1947, 34-year-old Walter Pavlukoff stepped out of his hotel room on East Cordova Street in Vancouver with a luger automatic pistol in his pocket.
On March 9, 1947, Inspector Vance of the Vancouver Police Department was called to an apartment in Kitsilano, Vancouver to check out the suspicious death of Ruth Cooperman. The 17-year-old was found naked and lying dead across her husband’s unconscious body.
Jack Cooperman, Ruth’s 27-year-old husband, had been rushed to Vancouver General Hospital, and police were told that his condition was critical.
On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats.
This story is from Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
Fats Robertson:
On February 26, 1947, three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First Avenue in East Vancouver.
In the early hours of May 2, 1945, 23-year-old Olga Hawryluk was found beaten to death and dumped in the waters of English Bay. A soldier was charged with her murder and defended by scrappy East End lawyer Angelo Branca. Blood, Sweat, and Fear’s Inspector Vance handled the forensics.
Inspector Vance is called to a crime scene at Merritt, B.C. in 1934. Two police officers are missing, believed murdered and the investigation focuses in on an abandoned Model B Ford and members of the Canford Indian band.
The stories for this first series are from my book Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance (Eve Lazarus, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017).
Can’t let Asian Heritage Month go by without a nod to Mary and Walter Chan, the Strathcona activists who helped keep the bulldozers at bay and rallied the community to preserve not only Chinatown, but a big chunk of our city’s culture and heritage.
Chan family outside 658 Keefer ca.1968.