Two of the streets in the development – Deer’s Leap Place and Carousel Court – were named for the track’s most challenging sections.
According to a write-up on the City of Coquitlam’s website, the course was named for Earle C. Westwood, then minister of recreation and conservation, who was instrumental in acquiring the land which included the 1.8 mile racetrack.
“The track was designed by the Sports Car Club of BC, and followed the natural features of the land. The famous Deer’s Leap came about because of the steep gradient of the land, which could not be easily flattened,” says the website.
Bruce Stewart tells me that Fred Herzog (shown chatting with a racer above in 1970) used to race at Westwood. “He had a variety of bikes, but preferred the English ones,” says Bruce. “He even wiped out once or twice around the hairpin!”
My favourite photo is the guy with the cigar who is helping to fuel up the motorcycle (above). It reminds me of that scene from Zoolander of the gas fight. If you don’t remember it—or were born after 1985—you can watch it here
Bruce took the photo (above) from the overhead walkway that went across the track in 1970. You can see the old Port Mann bridge in the background.
Fun fact: a 1988 episode of MacGyver called “Collision Course” was mostly filmed at Westwood. In the show it was called the “Westwood Springs Racecourse.”
The first race was held in the summer of 1959 and the last race was October 8, 1990.
The friendship between Bruce Stewart and Fred Herzog began because of a mutual love of photography and went onto span half-a-century.
Fred Herzog in a back Alley off Commercial Drive. Bruce Stewart photo
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 at UBC working with legendary photographer Fred Herzog. He already had a love of photography, Fred just helped it along. Their friendship spanned half-a-century and much of it involved photos.
Fred Herzog at the PNE midway, ca.1970s. Bruce Stewart photo
Capturing Everyday life:
Bruce has thousands—photos of Easter Be-ins, the PNE midway, Kits Beach, the canneries of Steveston, Vancouver Island and Washington State. The ones I love the most are of everyday life—what Herzog called “pristine squalor.”
Fred Herzog chatting with Mrs. Fung outside her Strathcona grocery store. Bruce Stewart photo, ca.1970s
“Fred got me very interested in the sociological side of photography and things that never occurred to me to be photographed,” says Bruce. “I guess you might say Fred opened my eyes to the world through photography.”
Fred Herzog. Bruce Stewart photo, ca.1970s
While Bruce would pack a couple of cameras and several lenses, Fred often arrived with one camera and one lens. “Fred would say I’m just going to look at everything through a 55 mm lens today or an 85 portrait lens or a 24 mm wide angle lens. I want to see the world in a certain way today,” says Bruce. “And that taught me something as well. Prepare to see things in a certain way through a certain trajectory and a certain lens.”
Fred Herzog in a back alley near McLean Park. Bruce Stewart photo, 1970s
Perspective:
I asked Bruce to explain what he meant through one of his photos and he told me about a day back in the early ‘70s when he and Fred were wandering around the DTES. Bruce came across a rundown storefront with a man’s arm pulling back a curtain, his hand resting on a beat-up sofa. He took a black and white picture and then went in closer until he was about three feet from the man’s elbow. Fred saw what Bruce was doing and took a similar shot in colour. It became one of Fred’s best-selling photos.
An iconic Fred Herzog photo, early 1970s and Bruce Stewart’s taken in black and white from a different angle.
“Many times, Fred’s ideas would inform mine and sometimes my ideas would inform his.”
Fred Herzog posing with a US mail plane at Paine Field in Everett, ca.1975. Bruce Stewart photo
Bruce sent me several photos he’d taken of Fred while they were out on their walks.
Fred Herzog, West End. Bruce Stewart photo, 1972
One is a fabulous shot of Fred taking a photo of a gas pump at an abandoned garage in the West End. Bruce says he didn’t notice the Jesus Saved sign until he was developing the photo.
Bruce Stewart photo of Fred Herzog, 1970s
Unconscious art:
There’s the photo of Fred taking a photo of the soft drink labels on Powell Street.
“This was an amazing display of unconscious art,” says Bruce. “It’s also a dandy exploration of Fred’s shooting stances because it gives you a sense of how Fred took pictures, how he braced himself, the angle that he used, the kind of lens that he used, and it gave a sense of lighting.”
Fred Herzog in this Bruce Stewart photo, 1970s.
Often, they would take very different photos of the same person, place or event.
One is an antique store on East Hastings.
Tom Carter has identified the heritage building as the Boulder Hotel at Carrall and Cordova Streets. The building is still there (note Fred Herzog bottom left of frame. Bruce Stewart photo, 1970s
“Fred was always looking at antiques and the way people place things in store windows. He had a whole series on store windows and the whimsy and the innocent art that was created through the juxtaposition of odds and sods in a display window. And that’s where we both tried to outdo each other trying to get the whackiest combination of things.”
Fred Herzog at Hawks and East Georgia Street. Bruce Stewart photo, 1969
Unfinished business:
There’s a wonderful photo of Bruce taking a photo of Fred taking a photo of a group of laughing Asian kids at Hawks Grocery at East Georgia in 1969. Bruce’s photo sans Herzog was featured in an exhibit called Unfinished Business: Vancouver Street Photographers 1955 to 1985 at Presentation House Gallery in 2003. Karen Stanley recognized herself in the photo and wrote to Bruce to tell him she now has a teenage daughter.
Bruce Stewart photo, 1969
The photo of Fred pointing to a boat on a mosaic was taken outside the Admiral Hotel on Hastings Street in Burnaby.
Fred Herzog outside the Admiral Hotel. Bruce Stewart photo, 1970s
My hope is that more of Bruce’s wonderful photos of a long-gone Vancouver and some of his 400 canvasses will make their way out of his Vancouver Island basement and into a book or books, or at the very least a website.
Bruce Stewart. Fred Herzog photo, 1970sFred Herzog, Bruce Stewart photo 1970sFred Herzog and Bruce Stewart, 2007
Howard Fry spent three decades as a commercial photographer in Vancouver. In 1998 he retired to Salt Spring and became embroiled in a battle to save part of the island from development.
From the Salt Spring Island Women Preserve and Protect Calendar, 2001. Howard Fry photo
Salt Spring Island:
In 1999, Salt Spring Island was under threat. A German millionaire sold his holdings—roughly a tenth of the island—to Texada Land Corp. The company planned to log second-growth forest for development.
From the Salt Spring Island Women Preserve and Protect Calendar, 2001. Howard Fry photo.
Salt Spring Island residents may be laid back, but they are dead serious about their trees. They organized a fundraising campaign to buy close to 2,000 acres and turn it into a park.
Inspired by the Women’s Institute in Rylstone, Yorkshire whose members appeared nude in a 1999 calendar to raise money for leukemia research (think Helen Mirren in the 2003 movie Calendar Girls) the Islanders produced their own version.
Howard Fry photo, from the Salt Spring Island Women Preserve and Protect Calendar 2001. The calendar sold 10,000 copies. To put that into perspective, a book is considered a bestseller in Canada if it sells more than 5,000 copies.
The photos were taken by Howard Fry, a professional photographer who had retired to Salt Spring Island the year before.
Hastings and Carrall Streets, 1976 Howard Fry photo
The Calendar:
I had never heard of the calendar and originally called Fry to chat about a series of 1970s photos of Vancouver that have been circulating on Facebook over the last few weeks. It turns out that they were photos that never made it into The City of Vancouver, a book produced by Hopping/Kovac/Grinnell to coincide with Habitat 1976. Fry was one of the photographers joining Fred Herzog, Robert Keziere, Allan Harvey and Herbert Gilbert. He took photos of people in Stanley Park, Granville Island, Greek Days and the PNE.
Beach Avenue, West End, 1976. Howard Fry photo
Fry’s best photos though, sat in a cardboard box until they found new life on the Nostalgic/Sentimental site this year.
Stanley Park, 1976. Howard Fry photo
Fry studied graphic design in his native England. He was offered his dream job shooting racing cars for a UK-based magazine, but the pay didn’t cover his rent. So when the opportunity came up to join a photography studio in Vancouver, he packed his bags and became part of John Howard Wallis in 1967. The partners worked for local ad agencies shooting booze and producing annual reports and moved onto fashion, working for companies such as Eaton’s, Woodwards, Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer.
Granville Street at the Birk’s clock, 1976. Howard Fry photo
The Salt Spring Calendar was a huge success.
Howard Fry photo, 1976
The Women of Salt Spring:
Thirty-five women aged between 18 and 74, including high-profile residents such as Andrea Collins, ex-wife of rock star Phil Collins, Birgit Bateman, photographer and wife of Robert Bateman, author and environmentalist Briony Penn (who also rode Lady Godiva-style through downtown Vancouver) appear tastefully naked in the calendar.
Taken at the dry dock at the bottom of Lonsdale Avenue behind the former Erection Shop, now the Shipyards. Howard Fry photo, 1976
Fry shot all the beautiful black and white photos and retains copyright. Calendar sales of $19.95 a unit raised over $200,000 in 2001 and received widespread media attention.
Vanier Park, 1976. Howard Fry photo
The price tag for the land was $15.9 million. The islanders raised $1.5 million and the provincial, regional and federal governments kicked in the rest.
Vancouver from Cyprus Mountain. Howard Fry photo, 1976
Sources:
The City of Vancouver Book. J.J. Douglas Ltd., 1976
Michael Arnold’s Nostalgic/Sentimental Vancouver Facebook page
Globe & Mail, August 17, 2000, August 26, 2000, December 17, 2001
Times Colonist, October 27, 2000, December 14, 2003
The Wong Wing family on Keefer Street. Yucho Chow photo, 1914. Yucho Chow Community Archive
I had the pleasure of visiting Griffin Art Projects with Tom Carter last Saturday. It’s a gallery of sorts hidden in an industrial building on Welch Street in North Vancouver. The exhibit features stories, photos, videos and paintings about Chinatowns in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, many from private collections.
The Band at the W.K. Gardens, ca.1950. Tom Carter collection
Some of Tom’s personal collection is featured and includes everything from scrapbooks from the Marco Polo, to postcards from Ming’s and Bamboo Terrace in the late ‘50s to souvenir photos from Mandarin Gardens and Forbidden City. These Chinatown nightclubs offered revues, dance bands and floor shows.
Tom Carter with some of his collection from the Marco Polo. Eve Lazarus photo.
Emily Carr’s sketch of a Chinese boy in 1908 is included as is a terrific display from the Vancouver School of Art. Yitkon Ho was in the first graduating class in 1929 along with Beatrice Lennie, Vera Weatherbie (Fred Varley’s young mistress), Fred Amess and Irene Hoffar. There are also some sketches and information about Eugene Bond, a Chinese student and one of two Asian models at the art school.
There are also some fabulous photos by Fred Herzog and Jim Wong-Chu, several of which I was seeing for the first time. And, Yucho Chow also has photos ranging from the Dominion Produce Company in the 1930s and the Ming Wo store in the early 1920s to the wonderful portraits of Chinese families that Catherine Clement drew attention to in her book: Chinatown Through a Wide Lens.
A banner tells the story of Gim Foon Wong. In 2005 when he was 82 he rode his motorcycle to Ottawa with a dozen other bikers in what became known as Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress so he could have a chat with the PM about the Chinese head tax. The banner, which Tom tells me was created by our friend Elwin Xie, was auctioned off at a Montreal dinner to raise enough money so Wong could get home. He received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
The exhibition runs until May 1. You can book online—Tom and I were the only visitors in our half hour slot which made the whole visit quite magical.
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 and sponsored a Hungarian refugee family who lived with them for a year. “Mr. Frank had a dark room and when I saw pictures emerging in the developer tray, I was just gob smacked. I thought this was incredible.” When Erik was about 12 he moved to the Lower Mainland and saved up and bought a Nikon camera.
Erik’s studio was above Frank’s Cabaret on East Hastings in the 1970s. Photo: Svend-Erik Eriksen
Vancouver School of Art:
In 1969, Erik was a first-year student focusing on photography, painting and animation at the Vancouver School of Art. “In those days animation was very laborious and required a lot of technical skill, the technical end of photography came naturally,” he says.
East Hastings and Columbia from Erik’s studio. Svend-Erik Eriksen photo
After he graduated, an animation project he was working on needed backgrounds of city streets. Erik got up one early Sunday morning in July 1973 and walked from Main to Columbia taking photos.
Svend-Erik Eriksen
“I walked all the way down to Woodwards turned and walked all the way back taking photos every ten feet or so,” he says. The NFB film was never aired and the negatives languished in Erik’s drawer for the next couple of decades until he found that someone was doing an analysis of the deterioration of Hastings Street and was looking for photos.
“I had to dig for them. They were all scratched up and full of dust and mildew because they were never meant to be art, they were meant to be utilitarian.”
East Hastings Street, 1973. Svend-Erik Eriksen photo
Unfinished Business:
Erik scanned the negatives, cleaned them up and started stitching them together. When Bill Jeffries, curator at Presentation House in North Vancouver heard about them he asked if he could include them in his upcoming group show: Unfinished Business: Vancouver Street Photographers 1955 to 1985.
East Hastings Street, 1973. Svend-Erik Eriksen photo
Unfortunately, I missed the show in 2003, but I do have the book and it’s filled with some of my favourite photographers: Michael de Courcy, Greg Girard, Curt Lang, Jeff Wall, Paul Wong, Bruce Stewart, Tony Westman and Henri Robideau. Erik’s beautiful panoramas are prominently placed between Fred Herzog and Ian Wallace.
Woolworths on Hastings Street. Svend-Erik Eriksen photo
I asked Erik if he thought of himself as a street photographer.
“No, not really, I consider myself a very eclectic photographer. I work mostly by intuition, I walk around and I take pictures. I don’t actually analyze it too much. It’s very organic, I don’t try and make art.”
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 were the women?)
These days everybody has a cell phone, and while you might think that makes street photographers irrelevant, there’s a group called Vancouver Street Photography Collective that are doing some really interesting things.
I’d been following some of their work on Instagram and went to their first exhibition last September.
Trevor Wide, Chris McCann and Stuart Weir are the co-founders behind a Facebook and Instagram page that features the Collective’s works. In his day job, Trevor is a visual effects artist for the movies, and photography he says, is a nice way to get outside his room and work outside the lines.
Street photographers hashtag vanspc in their post and the best photos of the week are highlighted on the Instagram account. “We started getting more followers and we noticed that people were connecting with each other on Instagram chat and giving critique and something was happening,” he says. “The Exhibition was our catalyst to get us out there and get known and bring together a whole world of street photographers from Vancouver and beyond.”
The members are a multi-cultural group that range from a 14-year-old to people in their 70s and they are all in different stages of their photography.
“We’ve got junior amateur photographers to professional photographers, everybody is helping each other out,” says Trevor. “We’re just good friends, sharing our art and our love for Vancouver.”
“There are a lot of different interpretations, but in general it’s being able to capture a decisive moment—capturing humanity or what humanity has touched or left behind. It could be anything from architecture to people in public spaces to candid street portraits,” says Trevor. “Camera gear doesn’t matter—you could have an iPhone. You’ve got no lights, no tripod, you are just using the world around you to get your shot and there’s something exhilarating about going out there and not knowing what you are going to take and just trying to capture that moment or that mood.”
To step it up to the next level, Trevor says the Collective plans to publish a magazine this year. “There are a lot of people interested. It’s a good way to get people to physically look and touch our work because it’s a lot different when you see a print rather than a photo through the small screen on your phone.”
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, the strange and the ordinary.
At the same time, newspaper photography was coming of age. Cameras were more flexible, film was faster, and money was flowing.
An old home on Pacific Street near Thurlow with high-rise apartment building behind. December 28, 1979. George Diack/Vancouver Sun (79-2149)
Kate Bird, a recently retired photo librarian for the Vancouver Sun, has pulled together 149 black and white pictures, shot by Vancouver Sun photogs during that decade.
“We were trying to make it feel like a newspaper collection and show the access that photo journalists had in covering the news, whether that was accidents, crime, politics, business, entertainment or sports,” she says.
Kate moved to Vancouver from Montreal in the ‘70s, studied photography, and knows the city intimately. Many of the photos that she curated for Vancouver in the Seventies, reflect the Vancouver’s dark side.
Vancouver-born Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten at the Bayshore Inn. July 12, 1979. Bill Keay/Vancouver Sun
There’s the heartbreaking photo of 20-year-old Playboy bunny Dorothy Stratten, taken just months before her murder. Poet Pat Lowther is shown sitting on a desk top shortly before having her head smashed in by her husband. And, there’s the picture of the underground Port Moody bunker that held 12-year-old Abby Drover for 181 days.
The underground bunker in Port Moody where twelve-year-old Abby Drover was held for 181 days after being abducted by her neighbour Donald Alexander Hay. September 7, 1976. Rob Straight/Vancouver Sun (76-2979)
It’s not all dark though. There are some wonderful photos that range from a line of airport telephone booths, to a five-year-old Justin Trudeau, Rod Stewart in his prime, and Muhammad Ali.
With electric trolley buses and neon signs as a backdrop, Granville Street glows at night. January 3, 1975. Ralph Bower/Vancouver Sun (75-0026)
“The city changed so much in the ‘70s,” says Kate. “There was so much building and an unbelievable level of infrastructure with the Pacific Centre, Granville Mall, Harbour Centre, the Bentall Centre, the Museum of Anthropology, and the CBC building. The numbers of new buildings radically changed the skyline by the end of the decade.”
Broadway Street, between Trafalgar Street and Blenheim. The Grin Bin posters and prints, Chris’ Billiards, The Hamburger Joint. October 5, 1972. Steve Bosch/Vancouver Sun (72-3291)
It’s both fascinating and frightening that four decades later, we’re still revisiting a lot of those same themes: demolition of heritage buildings and places (Birks, the Strand Theatre Hogan’s Alley—wiped out during the ‘70s), housing affordability, legalizing marijuana, worker’s rights, gender equity…
Students at Sir William Dawson elementary school in the West End. The 1913 school was demolished at the end of the school year. May 11, 1972. Peter Hulbert/Vancouver Sun (72-1526)
Kate’s currently working on a second photojournalism book called City on Edge: A rebellious century of Vancouver protests, riots and strikes. It will come out this September.
The grand opening of Eaton’s department store at Georgia and Granville, anchoring the new Pacific Centre mall. February 8, 1973. Vladimir Keremidschieff/Vancouver Sun (73-0422)
Foncie was a street photographer who opened Foncie’s Fotos in 1946 and shot millions of photos of people as they strolled Vancouver’s streets. Vancouver-born Selwyn Pullan, served in the Canadian Navy during the war, worked as a news photographer for the Halifax Chronicle, returned to Vancouver in 1950 and reinvented architectural photography. Fred Herzog immigrated from Germany in 1953 and some of my favourite photos are ones he shot of vacant lots, backyards in Strathcona and ordinary people on ordinary streets.
They didn’t know it at the time, but all three photographers were creating a historical record of Vancouver and revealing intimate details of our changing city.
Alcazar Hotel, Jan de Haas photo, ca.1955. The Alcazar opened in 1913 at 337 Dunsmuir and demolished in 1982 and replaced with the BC Hydro building
Last week, Wiebe de Haas sent me some photos that his father Jan de Haas shot during that period. I liked how he’d captured different parts of Vancouver and the neon signs of the day and I wanted to know more about him.
Jan de Haas brought his wife and three children to Canada from the Netherlands in 1952.
“Colour photography was on the rise and he thought coming to North America would give him the opportunity to advance in his field as a photographer,” says Wiebe.
Shores Jewelers opened in 1948 in the Dominion Building, 207 W. Hastings. Jan de Haas photo ca.1955
Jan was hired at Photo Arts on Hornby Street, and within a few years had opened a store front business with his wife Ilse on 10th Avenue in West Point Grey. The de Haas’s built up a solid business shooting passport photos, portraits, weddings, grad photos at UBC and some commercial photography.
Jan de Haas
Jan was a member of the Professional Photographers of Canada, and before he died in 1967, he created a trophy to be awarded to the photographer who shot that year’s most creative image. The trophy was designed by his friend George Norris, a prolific sculptor best known for the giant metal crab that sits in the fountain outside the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vanier Park.
The trophy is a work of art.
“My father wanted to give something to the organization of his peers, whom he respected and relied on,” says Wiebe. “He liked the idea that the trophy was symbolic of birth, the creation of life. It is as much a remembrance of George Norris as it is of my father.”
A globe with five lens windows is mounted on a chrome stem and dome base and held in place by small bolts. The globe represents the womb, and inside is a chrome fetus. “Except for the pin-hole camera, all cameras use a lens to focus the light onto a focal plane,” says Wiebe. “The bolts seem to me to symbolize camera construction. The fetus is a symbol of new creation, of new expression and ideas.”
In 2011 Wiebe had the honour of presenting his father’s trophy to Langara photography student Christoph Prevost. It was the first time a student had won in the history of the memorial trophy.
