Eve Lazarus
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Cemeteries are really interesting places, and I’ve wandered through Vancouver’s Mountain View several times over the years, but I never noticed the Infant Garden before.
Pamela Post* told me about it a few months ago, so I dropped by the cemetery when I was over that way the other week.
On March 20, 1917 Police Chief Malcolm MacLennan, 44, was killed in a shootout with a drug addict. This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver:
Robert Tait, 32, a drug addict, police informant and pimp from Detroit lived in a rundown apartment over a grocery store at 522 East Georgia with his girlfriend Frankie Russell.
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 from the 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.
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 Street near the Commodore.
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 hung up on legal niceties such as warrants or evidence, but would take to the doors of opium dens and gambling joints with axes, fists swinging and shooting first, asking questions later.
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 the ghost herself, is not one to tempt fate.
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 is that BC Assessment also released the 500 most expensive properties in the province today, and it gives you a glimpse into how the rich get richer.
