I met with Will Woods for coffee last week. Will is a young Brit who moved to Vancouver six years ago with his wife and little boy, and like a lot of us transplants, fell deeply in love with the history of the city.
You may have seen him hunched over the card files at the Vancouver Public Library’s special collections, checking out the journals at Vancouver Archives, or wandering the alleyways of the Downtown Eastside.
“I met historians, I scoured old newspapers, I walked every street in downtown. I had a mission to discover the history of the city that isn’t found in the guidebooks, that isn’t taught in the schools,” he says. “There were stories of corruption, rioting, gangsterism, smuggling and vice.”
He was hooked.
Will chucked in his job as a risk management consultant for Deloitte and founded Forbidden Vancouver, a company that leaves Grouse Mountain and the Suspension bridge to the tour buses, and looks at the speakeasies, opium dens, crooked cops and bootleggers of Vancouver’s shady past.
Customers for his 90 minute tours range from 22 to 75.
What I find interesting is that Will isn’t going after tourists for his tours, although he’s not knocking them back either, but he’s honing in on the locals.
It’s a smart move. I’m always surprised at how many Vancouverites have never heard of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen gardens, visited the Space Centre or taken the Stanley Park train (you don’t need kids for this).
Will hasn’t just researched the city though. He took six months of acting school, studied body language, and created a role for himself—an investigative newspaper reporter.
While most tours are educational based and led by university students, Will’s tours are themed. His current tour is built around prohibition—(1916 to 1920ish). Eventually he wants to run 10 to 12 themed tours a week, he’s currently developing one on crime, and fortunately for him, there was no shortage of it.
“The toughest thing is knowing what to leave out of the tour,” he says.
Will’s tours run every Friday and Saturday night and wind their way through Chinatown, Gastown and the downtown area. You can book online at www.forbiddenvancouver.ca
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