Bruce Stewart

North Vancouver’s Maplewood Flats is a wildlife sanctuary about one-third the size of Stanley Park. In the 1970s, it was home to a group of artists and environmentalists, and for a couple of weeks, it hosted the Dollarton Pleasure Faire.
Warning: some of Bruce Stewart’s photos contain nudity (and maybe your grandparents)

In the mid-1970s Bruce Stewart took his camera down to North Vancouver’s Cates Park and captured these fabulous images of the annual Canoe Festival hosted by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. The Whey-ah-Wichen (Cates Park) Canoe Festival kicks off today (July 4) in North Vancouver and runs until Sunday. It’s a chance to see one of the… Continue reading Whey-ah-Wichen Canoe Festival

The Dewdney Trunk Road Pleasure Faire was held over three days in September 1971, on land that was designated to become a federal penitentiary in Mission, BC. All photos by Bruce Stewart The Deluxe group—Alan Clapp, Dan Clemens, Ian Ridgway and Ray Clark—applied for the permit, and Clemens and Ridgway spent the summer deconstructing barns… Continue reading The Mission Pleasure Faire of 1971

I went to the PNE last week, the first time in more than 15 years. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty underwhelming. For this post, I thought I’d draw from comments left on my August 17 blog and on my Facebook page Every Place has a Story. The general consensus from fairgoers seems… Continue reading The PNE: Then and Now

The Dollarton Pleasure Faire was held in the summer of ’72 at the Maplewood Mudflats in North Vancouver. It was a celebration of alternative living, an acknowledgement that its days were numbered, and it was timed to clash with the annual PNE.

The PNE kicks off today (Saturday August 17) and runs until September 2. In 1992, I worked at the Vancouver Sun and that year I spent most of my August shifts at the PNE. One day I’d write about the rodeo clown who had broken every bone in his body at least once. The next… Continue reading The PNE in the ’70s: A photo essay by Bruce Stewart

Last week’s blog on Kitsilano featuring Bruce Stewart’s photos, brought back memories and a healthy does of nostalgia from those of you who were lucky to have known Kits in the ‘70s. In this week’s blog I’m delighted to bring you photos from Angus McIntyre, Gord McCaw, Peter Dobo and a couple more from Bruce,… Continue reading More Photos of Kitsilano in the 1970s and ’80s

The Nanaimo to Vancouver bathtub race ran from 1967 to 1996  When I moved to Vancouver in the mid 1980s, I lived in an apartment at Third and Cypress in Kitsilano. Over the next 12 years, I moved two more times up Third Avenue, and one of my summer highlights was heading down to the… Continue reading The Nanaimo to Vancouver Bathtub Race

June is Italian heritage month, and this year Italian Days was held on Sunday June 9, 2024 I hate crowds, so I can’t give you a first-hand account of Italian Days this year. Having watched a couple of YouTube videos though, I can tell you that it was a gorgeous day that drew thousands of… Continue reading Italian Days 1977: a photo essay by Bruce Stewart

1967: It’s been 57 years since the first Stanley Park Easter Be-In. A local take on the be-in that had taken place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park two months before and set the tone for the Summer of Love. Vancouver’s event was much smaller, but about a thousand hippies, and three times as many… Continue reading The Stanley Park Be-Ins

The name of the 11-acre green space at the entrance to Stanley Park known as Devonian Harbour Park has nothing to do with its indigenous history, the land’s connection to the Kanakas, the buildings that once dotted its landscape or Vancouver. The park was named after the Calgary-based Devonian Group of Charitable Foundations which forked… Continue reading The Evolution of Devonian Harbour Park

The Ironworkers Memorial Bridge collapsed June 17, 1958 killing 18 men, and one diver the following day. It is the worst industrial accident in Vancouver’s history. Thanks to Bruce Stewart for sending photos that his father Angus shot of the tragedy. June 17, 2025: There is a memorial service today at 1:00 pm at New… Continue reading The Day the Bridge Fell Down

The friendship between Bruce Stewart and Fred Herzog began because of a mutual love of photography and went onto span half-a-century. Bruce Stewart has been documenting Vancouver ever since his father gave him a reflex camera for his eleventh birthday. A few years later, he started an after-school job at the Department of Biomedical Communications… Continue reading Walks with Fred Herzog

I’m a big fan of Svend-Erik Eriksen’s photography of Vancouver in the ’70s. Last week I called him up and asked how he got started. Erik, is an animator by trade, but his interest in photography goes back to the 1950s when he was a kid in Namu, BC. His parents had immigrated from Denmark… Continue reading The Photography of Svend-Erik Eriksen

When I think of street photographers, the first names that usually spring to mind are Fred Herzog, Foncie Pullice, Greg Girard, Michael de Courcy, Curt Lang and Bruce Stewart. But there were so many other great photographers shooting Vancouver in the 1950s to 1980s—names like Paul Wong, Tony Westman, Angus McIntyre and Svend-Erik Eriksen (Where… Continue reading Meet Vancouver’s Newest Street Photographers

Fred Herzog, Foncie, Selwyn Pullan, Michael de Courcy, Bruce Stewart, and Angus McIntyre were just a few who took up a camera in the Vancouver of the ‘70s, and were documenting images of everything from buildings to the changing skyline, and from neighborhoods to neon. They also put a spotlight on people—the famous, the quirky,… Continue reading Vancouver in the Seventies