Christ Church Cathedral Archives

When David Rowland heard that Woodward’s was closing in 1993, he phoned up the manager and put in an offer for the department store’s historic Christmas windows. They agreed on a price, and David became the proud owner of six semi-trailer loads of animated teddy bears, elves, geese, children, a horse and cart and various storefronts.

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Woodward’s ca.1907. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 677-611

Robsonstrasse:

In the late 1960s, 14-year-old David rode the bus into Vancouver carrying three samples of puppets and marionettes that he had made. He walked up and down what was then Robsonstrasse trying to interest toy store owners into buying his merchandise.

“They said ‘they are nice little toys, and you are a nice little boy, but come back when you have sold them somewhere else’,” says David. “I was about to give up and I thought well there’s always The Bay.”

David found the manager of Toyland and put his marionettes through their paces.

David Rowland putting together a former Woodward’s Christmas window in 2010 for Canada Place.

Orders from the Bay:

“A lot of people gathered and shoppers started picking up the boxes looking for prices.”

The manager ordered 50 and had David come in and demonstrate them every Saturday. Later he invented a coin-operated puppet theatre where you put 25 cents in and the lights turned on and music played and the puppets danced across the stage. He sold three dozen of them to shopping centres in B.C. As requests came in to build Santa’s castles and other seasonal structures, Rowland’s business took off.

Original figures made by David Rowland for Woodward’s in the ’70s. Courtesy David Rowland

Woodward’s started getting serious about their Christmas windows in the 1960s, and sent buyers off to New York to bring back different figures. The department store hired David in the ‘70s to create mechanical figures for their Toyland and display work for their windows.

Canada Place:

When David unpacked his newly acquired Christmas windows in the ‘90s, he found at least a dozen different scenes. He looked around for a venue big enough to display them and found himself at Canada Place. David wanted to rent them, but Canada Place offered to buy them outright. “That wasn’t my initial plan, but at the time I had a banker from hell and I needed some capital and so I sold a lot of it to them,” he says.

Christmas window display at the Grosvenor Building, 2018. Courtesy David Rowland

David couldn’t bear to part with all of them though, and every other year he sets up a few in buildings around Vancouver.

The nativity scene at Christ Church Cathedral was once part of Woodward’s Christmas windows. The Christmas Creche was carved in Italy from olive wood, hand-painted and sold to Woodward’s in 1955. The Hudson’s Bay bought the Creche when Woodward’s closed in 1993, and displayed it inside the Seymour Street entrance until 2013 when they donated it to the Cathedral. Eve Lazarus photo, 2018

It’s hard to imagine today, but when the Marine Building opened in 1930 it was the tallest building in Vancouver and stayed that way for more than a decade. If you look at the photo (below), you can see that when architects McCarter and Nairne, designed it, four of the 22 floors were built into the cliff above the CPR railway tracks. You can also see the second version of the Quadra Club and then what looks like an old shack perched on the edge of the cliff.

W.J. Moore’s 1935 photo of the Marine Building, the Quadra Club and Frank Holt’s cabin. CVA BU N7

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

I recently came across this war-time newspaper advertorial by Vancouver Breweries Limited. It shows the same 1935 photo, and circled is “the oldest building in Vancouver.”

Do you know Vancouver?

According to the story, part of a series called “Do you know Vancouver!” the tiny house was used by CPR land commissioner Lauchlan Hamilton when he was surveying Vancouver in 1885. “Using the old cottage as a mark, Hamilton set the lines of our present Hastings Street, on which the street system of Vancouver is based,” goes the story. “When John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir visited Vancouver for the last time as Governor General of Canada, his attention was called to this shabby little relic of our past. ‘I hope the people of Vancouver will preserve it!’ he exclaimed, fervently.”

Well, no sir, we did not.

Spratt’s Oilery:

The little house was built in 1875 as a mess hall for Spratt’s Oilery and originally had five rooms. It survived the Great Fire, and in 1894, Frank Holt moved in. When the cannery moved out, Holt stayed on. When Frank found out that four of the rooms were taxable because they were on city property, he tore them down, and stayed in the one-room shack. He was still living there in 1943 when the foundations started to give way and the front porch fell down the embankment. Frank, who was 90 at the time, helped workers install a new foundation.

Then in 1946 a fire broke out and trapped Frank in the house. Miraculously, firefighters found Frank in the debris and carried him to safety. The house was not so lucky.

Marine Building, photo courtesy Pricetags blog

Frank came to Vancouver on the first transcontinental train. He was one of the founders of Christ Church Cathedral, and lived as a squatter in the one-room house in the shadow of the Marine Building for over half a century.

He died in December 1946, less than two months after his home burned down.

The Marine Building: Built on Rum

The Woodward’s Christmas Windows

Robsonstrasse:

Orders from the Bay:

Canada Place:

Related:

The Marine Building and the Little House Next Door

Do you know Vancouver?

Spratt’s Oilery:

Related:

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Robsonstrasse:

Orders from the Bay:

Canada Place:

Related:

Do you know Vancouver?

Spratt’s Oilery:

Related:

Support

Click to read posts about:

Subscribe to Our Newsletter