Every Place Has a Story

Where is Michael Smith?

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Michael Smith, 17 missing since December 30, 1967. Last seen at his North Vancouver home. Canada’s Missing website (National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains) RCMP case #2014003272

Canada’s Missing:

I came across this listing and a grainy photo of North Vancouver’s 17-year-old Michael Smith when I was researching missing person cases on Canada’s Missing website for Cold Case BC.

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The Alley Murders

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Webby Award nominee in the Crime and Justice category.

Between April 1988 and August 1990, a serial killer murdered six sex trade workers and dumped their bodies in the laneways of Vancouver. Officially, the murders are unsolved and two were added to the Vancouver Police Department’s cold case website just last year.

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Trans-Canada Air Lines

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I put up a post on April 28 to mark the day that Trans-Canada Air Lines flight 3 took off from Lethbridge on a routine flight to Vancouver. The Lockheed Lodestar never made it, and 47 years would pass until there would be any answers.

See: Remembering TCA Flight 3

Dale Brandon wrote to tell me that her mother Audrey (Tavender) Brandon was supposed to be one of three crew members on that flight.

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Lynn Valley’s Cedar V Theatre

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In March 1953, Steve Chizen was putting the final touches on the Cedar V Theatre on Lynn Valley Road. It would be North Vancouver’s third theatre—the Odeon sat at the corner of Lonsdale and 14th Avenue, and the Lonsdale Theatre that went up in 1911, would close forever in 1954.

Steve, who previously managed the Cameo Theatre in Whalley, chose the name Cedar V in deference to the several large cedar trees that were sacrificed for the building site.

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Queenie Albanuff & the Odeon Theatre on Lonsdale

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This art deco beauty sat near the corner of Lonsdale Avenue and 14th Street in North Vancouver from 1938 to 1986. The 734-seat Nova Theatre  opened in January 1938 and was owned by W.P. Dewees and managed by Agnes (Queenie) Albanuff. Mrs. Albanuff was clearly good at her job, because when Dewees sold the theatre to the Odeon chain in 1941, she went with it.

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Edgemont Village: Then and Now

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Edgemont Village, North Vancouver. Then and Now: 1949-2023

I came across this photo from the North Vancouver Museum and Archives a while back. It shows a fairly ordinary looking building on Edgemont Boulevard taken in 1949. I headed off to Edgemont Village last week to see what we’d replaced it. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the building is still there, surrounded by other buildings.

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