Jack Cash, Photographer

Jack Cash (1918-2005) started as a Vancouver Sun photographer in the 1930s. He spent most of his life in North Vancouver and went on to have an amazing career. 

I first heard about Jack Cash when I was researching his mother Gwen Cash, who when she went to work for Walter Nichol at the Vancouver Daily Province in 1917, became one of the first female news reporter in the country. With the formidable Gwen as his mother, it’s not surprising that Jack also went into the newspaper business. He got his start as a staff photographer for the Vancouver Sun in the 1930s.

Lived in North Vancouver:

Jack, was born in 1918 and spent much of his life in North Vancouver, which makes him a great subject for the North Vancouver Museum and Archives latest exhibit. Through the Lens of Jack Cash, 1939-1970 opened this week at the Community History Centre in Lynn Valley, and comes on the heels of  Women and Wartime, which is fitting because Jack started work for Burrard Dry Docks in 1939, first as an assistant pipefitter, and then as shipbuilding increased during the war years, as the official staff photographer.

Commercial photographer:

Sam Frederick, the Archives & Community Engagement Intern, has put together a display that covers his work as a commercial photographer for the logging, shipping and building industries, as a landscape photographer and as an architectural photographer for Western Homes and Living. The photos of a farmer holding a chicken and a phone operator from 1956 are from the period he worked as a photographer for James Lovick Advertising Agency. There are photos of his Marine Drive studio, which he opened that year. It was a former butcher’s shop with a walk-in freezer that Jack used as his darkroom. He had a portrait shooting studio in the centre, and sold cameras and photography equipment up front.

The Columbian:

In 1967, Jack and his wife Elva bought a 70-foot mission ship from the Anglican Church. They called it the Columbian and outfitted it with four passenger staterooms and two lounges and chartered trips to coastal resorts between Victoria and Alaska. “When I heard the Columbian was for sale, I mortgaged everything I had to buy it,” Jack told a Times Colonist reporter in November 1968.

Jack died in 2005. His obituary says: “Jack most recently celebrated his 87^th birthday in his unique style by riding a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle.”

Related:

• Gwen Cash and the Trend House

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