Chuck Davis

The Introvert’s Guide to the Holiday Season

by Eve Lazarus on December 22, 2018

After you’ve spent most of December at Christmas Parties and work functions, the small talk can just dry up. Here are some conversational kickstarters to get you back on track over the holiday festivities and help you find your feet.

The Story of the Severed Feet

I was at a Christmas party last week when the conversation turned to severed feet. You remember all those ones that turned up wearing running shoes in spots like False Creek, Richmond and Gabriola Island? It wasn’t some twisted serial killer or gang sign, when the body decomposes the feet separate (disarticulate). Normally the feet would sink, but sneakers like Nike Air have air pockets, which turns them into little life jackets. Sadly, the found feet belonged to suicides.

The Ku Klux Klan’s Shaughnessy digs:

In 1925, the Ku Klux Klan moved into a Glen Brae, a Shaughnessy mansion on Matthews Street. While Vancouverites were a racist bunch back then, apparently living near a mob of men wearing white robes and hoods and carrying fiery crosses through the tree-lined streets, was over the top. The KKK lasted less than a year in Vancouver. The mansion is still there, it’s now Canuck’s Place Children’s Hospice.

Source: At Home With History: The Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Houses

KKK at Glen Brae in 1925. Courtesy CVA 99-1501

Hit and Run Over:

My favourite Chuck Davis story is from October 6, 1909. Vancouver’s first mechanized ambulance was out for a trial spin, dodged a couple of streetcars and then hit and killed a wealthy American tourist crossing Granville and Pender Street. The story ran in several North American newspapers and reported that C.F. Keiss, from Austin, Texas was in Vancouver “preparing to start on an extended hunting trip.”

Source: The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver

Lurancy Harris’s Beat

If you think it’s tough being a woman in the police, RCMP or military ranks today, imagine what it was like back in 1912 when Lurancy Harris became one of the first two women police officers in Canada. She was sworn in as a fourth-class constable, given full police powers and thrown into the job with no training, no uniform and no gun. Her big break came when she got the job of escorting Lorena Mathews on the train back to Oklahoma to stand trial for murder. Mathews had bolted to Vancouver with her two children and Jim Chapman, her 25-year-old black lover who were suspected of murdering her much older husband (you just can’t make this stuff up!) Chapman was convicted, Mathews was acquitted and Lurancy got a promotion. She ended her career as an inspector with the VPD, although she was kept at the pay scale of a sergeant.

Source: Sensational Vancouver

Shark Attack in False Creek:

On July 5, 1905 eight-year-old Harry Menzies was wading near the mouth of False Creek when he was nearly eaten by a 1,100 pound shark. “The boy ran; the shark followed,” reported the Vancouver Daily World. Ed Dusenberry saw the dorsal fin and attacked the shark with the hook of a pike pole and tried to pull it ashore. “Enraged by the pain, the shark opened its mouth and showed the most ferocious set of teeth he had ever seen, something like a man would expect in a horrible nightmare.” After it died, Dusenberry put a tent up around the shark and charged 10 cents admittance.

Source: This Day in Vancouver

The World Belly Flop and Cannonball Diving Championship

Yup, belly flops started here in Vancouver, or more accurately, were a way to publicize the (Westin) Bayshore’s new pool in 1974. The event quickly gained momentum and spread to the old Coach House Inn in North Vancouver, drawing between 3,000 and 4,000 spectators, entrants from Fiji and Japan, as well as US President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy as a judge. Tom Butler, the PR guy behind the stunt, told the Globe and Mail: “It’s something that is universally understood. I mean, there’s no subtlety to it. But what else can a 300-pound truck driver do and get to have NBC television declare that he’s champion of the USA?”

Source: Tom Butler, the Coach House Inn and the Belly Flop that Soared

Coach House Inn, 1979. Courtesy John Denniston

Loretta Lynn and the Chicken Coop

Country music singer Loretta Lynn was discovered in Vancouver. No, it wasn’t at the Cave or the Palomar or another club of those times, she was singing in a backyard chicken coop on East Kent Avenue in Fraserview. Executives from a local record company called Zero Records, and with financial backing from Art Phillips (who became mayor in 1973), heard her sing, signed her up, and Loretta’s first single “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” came out in 1960.

Source: Vancouver Was Awesome: A curious Pictorial History

Van-Tan

Have you hard the story about the nudist camp at the top of Mountain Highway in North Vancouver? Turns out it’s not an urban myth, Van Tan was founded in 1939 and now has about 60 members that get to hang out sans clothes on several acres of cleared forest. When you get to the car park, it’s behind a locked gate, and another two clicks up a curvy, unpaved road. Sure you can hike it, but why not wait and check it out at one of their open houses this summer?

Source: Van Tan Nudist Camp

Project 200

Gordon Price called it “the most important thing that never happened” to Vancouver, and certainly if Project 200 and the rest of the freeway plans had gone ahead, Vancouver would be unrecognizable today. The plan was to construct a freeway system that would connect Vancouver to the Trans-Canada Highway and to Highway 99. The freeway would run between Union and Prior Streets, and wipe out Strathcona, most of Chinatown, much of the West End, plop an ocean parkway along English Bay, and turn Vancouver into a mini Los Angeles. To get a sense of the magnitude of Project 200, check out the plaza and the tower at the foot of Granville Street. Then imagine a forest of office and residential towers, plazas, a major hotel, and parking for 7,000 cars that would take out Waterfront Station, most of the Sinclair Centre and the heritage buildings in Gastown.

Source: aborted plans

The Murder Factory

If you are driving up East Cordova Street these holidays, take a look at #629. It’s now a duplex, but back in 1931 it was a “private hospital” run by a Japanese man named Shinkichi Sakurada. Sick people would go in, they’d take out an insurance policy naming Sakurada as their beneficiary, and then they would die. According to the Globe and Mail, the “murder factory” was run by an “organized assassination ring” and was responsible for as many as 20 deaths.

Source: Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator

For more ideas: Eve Lazarus Books

Tags Chuck Davis, Glen Brae, Ku Klux Klan, Loretta Lynn, Lurancy Harris, Project 200, Van-Tan Club

City Reflections: The Epic

by Eve Lazarus on April 28, 2018

I am excited to tell you that City Reflections is now on YouTube. As you’ll read in John Atkin’s story, it was a massive volunteer undertaking by members of the Vancouver Historical Society. It has been, and will continue to be, a huge tool for researchers—I would never have got John Vance (Blood, Sweat, and Fear) to work on his first day in 1907 without it!

A huge thank you to Jason Vanderhill for getting me the stills from the film.

By John Atkin, civic historian

It was a silent, jerky and disjointed film shot from the front of a BC Electric streetcar in 1907 that captivated the Vancouver Historical Society’s audience members one September evening in 2004. Colin Preston, the former CBC Archivist had just introduced everyone to a recently restored version of the earliest known moving image of the city.

The film shot by American film maker William Harbeck was one of a series that played in specially designed theatres that replicated the experience of riding a streetcar. Long thought lost, the film was rediscovered in Australia and sent to the Library of Congress, eventually ending up with Library and Archives Canada.

As the evening ended someone in the audience suggested that it would be fun to create a modern version of the film. And with that, a project was born. It sounded simple enough, so a small group of volunteers got together to think about and begin planning how to tackle the job of recreating Harbeck’s film. The self-imposed deadline of 2007, the film’s hundredth anniversary seemed far enough away to be doable.

However, the project quickly shifted from just reshooting the route to developing a documentary about Harbeck, annotating the streetcar’s route and developing background information about Vancouver in 1907. Scripts were written and then rewritten and written again as the focus of the project shifted.

Wes Knapp chaired the project and helped secure sponsors. Colin Preston contributed the best possible copy of the film on DVD. John Atkin, Andrew Martin and Chuck Davis did much of the research. Mary-Lou Storey acted as production manager. Ernst Schneider and Jason Vanderhill contributed technical expertise and graphic design. John Atkin and Jim McGraw worked on the script. Jim did the final storyboard, directed and narrated. Paul Flucke oversaw the finances.

The project timeline was thrown for a loop with the announcement of the Canada Line construction which meant Granville Street would be off limits in 2007, so initial filming was moved up a year.

On shooting day, the team assembled at CBC on Hamilton Street to set up the camera car and get ready to hit the streets. CBC had generously supplied a camera man (Mike), camera and video stock to assist us in the shoot. Andy and Pacific Camera Car supplied the truck and Vancouver’s film office helped us out on the closure of Cordova Street—we had to drive the wrong way to match the 1907 route.

Another year of work to complete all of the pieces of the project and it was ready to be unveiled. In May of 2008, 101 years after the original film was shot, an audience of 400 people sat down to watch the first public showing of the VHS production of City Reflections.

Tags Andrew Martin, Chuck Davis, City Reflections, Colin Preston, Ernst Schneider, Jason Vanderhill, Jim McGraw, John Atkin, Mary-Lou Storey, Paul Flucke, Vancouver Historical Society, Wes Knapp, William Harbeck

Take a Walk on the Wild Side

by Eve Lazarus on August 16, 2013

History walk with James Johnstone — James Johnstone on tour in Strathcona

I first met James Johnstone about 12 years ago when I was writing a series of magazine articles that looked at the idea that a house has a social history or a genealogy much like a person. The idea eventually morphed into At Home with History and James gave me research tips, loaned me books, shared information, took me on a walking tour of Strathcona and gave me a ton of encouragement. Just for fun, I jumped on one of his tours last Saturday.

If Chuck Davis was Mr. Vancouver, then James Johnstone should be Mr. East End, because no one knows the area better.

James is a house researcher who lives in Strathcona. Over the last decade he has researched the history of 900 odd Vancouver houses, and now he leads walking tours of the East End, the West End and Mount Pleasant.

If you haven’t visited Strathcona, and I’m amazed at how many people haven’t, it’s a gem of an area nestled in between the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown. This puts a lot of people off, but it shouldn’t, the neighbourhood is an amazing stretch of 19^th and 20^th century architecture. Small cottages, brightly coloured Queen Annes with gingerbread trim, Arts and Crafts and Edwardians have gardens that spill out onto the sidewalk. Then there are the tall skinny houses squeezed onto 25-foot-lots, while others sit high above the street reached by steep stairs.

It’s a lesson in how density can work in a neighbourhood without resorting to high-rise towers.

827 East Georgia Street — Home of Nora Hendrix 1938-1952

We started at East Hastings and Heatley and took a look at a commercial block that the city wanted to pull down and make into a new library. The neighbourhood does want a new library thanks, but not at the expense of a heritage building. This is the neighbourhood that stopped destructive development in the 1960s and time and new recruits have just made them more passionate about their heritage—which is as colourful as the houses—a story of Japanese, Jewish, Russian, Italian and Chinese immigration.

Walking tour with James Johnstone — Keefer Street

James punctuates each story with archival pictures to give a kind of then and now flavour. But the best part of the tour for me were the home owners. Joy, a third generation Italian homeowner came out and told us about her Keefer Street house. Her grandmother was arrested for bootlegging in the ‘50s and Joy remembers stomping grapes in the basement in her rubber boots.

We walked past the East Georgia Street gun battle where in 1917, Malcolm Mclennan, the chief of police, died from a gunshot to the face by a drug dealer, and where a little boy was killed in the street. And, when we stopped outside a former bootlegging house on Union Street, the home owners invited the entire group inside for a tour.

You’ll learn about a bunch of fascinating people that rarely make the history books. There’s the houses of Nellie Yip Quong, Tosca Trasolini, a Vancouver version of Amelia Earhart, and Angelo Branca, a former supreme court judge. You’ll wind your way through what was once Hogan’s Alley as well as the fascinating back alleys of Strathcona.

Former Bootlegger's house on Union Street — 446 Union Street

For more information on the tours see History Walks in Vancouver

Tags Angelo Branca, Chuck Davis, James Johnstone, Malcolm Mclennan, Nellie Yip Quong, Strathcona, Tosca Trasolini

Mona Fertig’s Mother Tongue Publishing

by Eve Lazarus on March 13, 2012

Years ago when I first started freelancing, I sent off a story to a local magazine. The editor sent it back with a scribbled note saying: “Thanks Eve, no offence, but I’d rather die than publish this.”

Well, thanks Jim, I did take offence, but rejection is part of the job. It goes along with isolation, low paying gigs and a desperate craving for attention. It’s one of the reasons why awards are so important to writers. That and the cash.

BC Book Prizes

by Sheryl Salloum — The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton

Awards give us recognition, access to better paying jobs, and for authors, they sell books. And, that’s just a few of the reasons that I’m thrilled to see Sheryl Salloum’s, The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton by Mother Tongue Publishing, nominated for a BC Book Prize.

Mother Tongue Publishing is a small trade publisher run by the amazing Mona Fertig from her heritage house on Salt Spring Island. While other publishers turn their backs on books that lack mass market appeal, movie options or foreign rights potential, Mona actively seeks out poets, first-time writers and unrecognized artists.

Tags Andrew Nikiforuk, BC Book Prizes, Chuck Davis, David Marshall, Ethel Wilson Fiction prize, Everything was Good-Bye, Fred Herzog, George Fertig, Gurjinder Basran, History of Metropolitan Vancouver, Jack Hardman and LeRoy Jensen, Jack Hodgins, Mona Fertig, Mother Tongue Publishing, Scott Watson, Sheryl Salloum, The Life and Art of Frank Molnar, The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton, The Unheralded Artists of BC

The Clydes, the Butlers and the Empress Theatre

by Eve Lazarus on April 20, 2011

Martin and Jennifer Butler bought their East Vancouver house in 1993 and uncovered a connection to Hollywood and the Empress Theatre

Last week I wrote about the imminent destruction of the Pantages Theatre at Main and Hastings. The Pantages sat just two blocks east of the much larger Empress Theatre, which at one point had the biggest stage west of Chicago.

Both the Pantages and the Empress were completed in 1908, and by 1911 they were part of a thriving theatre district. In fact, there were nine theatres operating in Vancouver that year.

Empress Theatre built in 1908 — Empress Theatre 1921

Chuck Davis noted that when the Empress was torn down in 1940 one of the workmen noticed a flash of colour in the rubble. “He reached down and picked up a tiny powder-puff. Stitched on it, in faded golden letters, was a single word: Pavlova.” Anna Pavlova danced at the Empress in 1914 and 1925.

Martin and Jennifer Butler have uncovered a fascinating connection with their 1928 house, Hollywood and the old Empress.

The Butlers bought what they call their “unremarkable” house on East 51^st Avenue in 1993. The previous owners had lived in the house for half a century, and things were pretty much untouched. When the Butlers started to renovate their basement they found that the walls were insulated with about 50 hand-painted theatre posters featuring The British Guild Players—a professional repertory company that performed at the Empress during the ‘20s and ‘30s. “Their productions were usually light-hearted ‘forget the Depression’ comedies and pantomimes,” he says. “There were also advertising posters for the candies sold at intermission.”

Fay Holden and David Clyde

A title search revealed that Dorothy Hammerton Clyde bought the house in 1930. Her husband David Clyde co-owned the Empress Theatre until 1933. The house became the business and artistic headquarters for the Clydes until they sold it in 1938 and moved to Hollywood. There they established quite a career for themselves. Dorothy became film star Fay Holden, best known for her role as Andy Hardy’s mother. David—the brother of Andy Clyde of Hop-along Cassidy fame—found steady acting work in a variety of movies.

The Butlers are at a loss to explain why these highly regarded actors landed in Vancouver instead of going straight to Hollywood, but they say, the good vibes of the Clydes have left their mark, because the house is directly across the road from Langara College’s Studio 58.

As well as discovering the Clydes, their ongoing renovation has turned up live ammunition, an old Rogers Golden Syrup can filled with “British Throughout” wartime condoms, and a 1928 postcard from a young girl studying at the University of Washington that says: “Seattle is a bum place, why didn’t you come and see me off? Love Fanny.”

The house, he says remains “an ongoing story.”

Tags 4 East 51st Avenue, Anna Pavlova, Chuck Davis, David Clyde, Dorothy Hammerton Clyde, Empress Theatre, Fay Holden, Jennifer Butler, Martin Butler, Pantages Theatre, The British Guild Players

Chuck Davis (1935-2010)

by Eve Lazarus on March 26, 2011

No one knew more about Vancouver than Chuck Davis — Chuck Davis

It’s too bad Chuck couldn’t be at his memorial service this afternoon. He would have loved it. For starters there were a couple of hundred people there—a totally eclectic crowd, pretty much like the guy himself. The only thing we had in common was that Chuck had touched us all in some way.

Local legends Dal Richards and Red Robinson were there. So was former mayor Sam Sullivan and Tourism Vancouver head Rick Antonson. I sat next to a guy who looked a bit familiar. Turned out to be George Bowering. There were people like John Mackie, John Atkin and Andrew Martin who shared Chuck’s love of history. There was at least one Vancouver tour guide and another acquaintance who worked with Chuck in Germany during World War 11. Mark Dwor, chair of the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars was there with Yosef Wosk. Norm Grohman was a perfect choice for MC. He was in tears at the end.

Michael Conway Baker composed the music for the film and dedicated “Vancouver Variations” to Chuck’s memory. According to Baker, Chuck loved the oboe.

“He was Major Matthews times one hundred,” said Alan Twigg. “The city should have given him a job.” Hopefully, along with naming a day in his honour, the city will kick in some funds to help finish his book. Local journo Allen Garr told us he’s working with Harbour Publishing and other writers who are donating their time to finish Chuck’s legacy. The massive History of Metropolitan Vancouver is scheduled to hit bookstores in the fall—in time for Vancouver’s 125^th birthday. Maybe then Chuck will really rest in peace.

See Daniel Wood’s excellent article on Chuck in the Tyee as well as Mr. Vancouver: A blog about Chuck Davis for updates on his book.

Tags Alan Twigg, Allen Garr, Andrew Martin, Chuck Davis, Dal Richards, George Bowering, Harbour Publishing, History of Metropolitan Vancouver, John Atkin, John Mackie, Major Matthews, Mark Dwor, Michael Conway Baker, Norm Grohman, Red Robinson, Rick Antonson, Sam Sullivan, Yosef Wosk

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