Eve Lazarus
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Last week, Michael Kluckner and I were over at Tom Carter’s studio looking out his seventh storey window onto the EasyPark—a cavernous concrete lot that fronts West Pender and takes up the entire city block from Cambie to Beatty Streets.
By Michael Kluckner
Michael Kluckner is a writer and artist with a list of books that includes Vanishing Vancouver and Toshiko. His most recent book is a graphic biography called Julia. He is the president of the Vancouver Historical Society and chair of the city’s Heritage Commission.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
I had the pleasure of visiting Neptoon Records on Main Street for the first time last week. The place was packed with browsers, most of them young. The second thing I noticed was the sheer number of records—thousands of them everywhere you look.
There’s a Facebook post going around about “pedestrian scrambles”—intersections where every car stops and pedestrians cross in all directions.
It’s a simple concept that saves you from being turned into road kill by a turning car.
The video goes onto tell us that “over 40% of pedestrian crashes happen at intersections,” and after scrambles are implemented “severe crashes have gone down by 63%.”
More cities are using them—they’re now in Los Angeles, Portland and Washington, DC.
I am excited to tell you that City Reflections is now on YouTube. As you’ll read in John Atkin’s story, it was a massive volunteer undertaking by members of the Vancouver Historical Society. It has been, and will continue to be, a huge tool for researchers—I would never have got John Vance (Blood, Sweat, and Fear) to work on his first day in 1907 without it!
By Lani Russwurm
Several years ago, I came across an art project by the Goodweather Collective that re-imagined a Vancouver in which the City had left select old growth trees in those roundabouts that dot the city’s residential neighbourhoods. Their photoshop work was convincing and it was jarring seeing our familiar urban landscape dotted with unfamiliar giant trees.
We probably have more monkey puzzle trees in BC than in all of their native Chile. The quirky trees started arriving in gardens in the 1920s.
In 2012, I wrote a book called Sensational Victoria and one of my favourite chapters was Heritage Gardens. I visited and then wrote about large rich-people’s gardens like Hatley Park, and smaller ones like the Abkhazi Garden on Fairfield road built on the back of a love story.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
I was driving along Hastings the other day when I saw a huge statue in the yard of Ital Decor in Burnaby. It looked suspiciously like one of the WW1 nurses that guarded the 10th floor of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building before it was imploded in 1989.
