The Orillia on Robson Street in the early 1970s. Angus McIntyre photo
The Orillia on Robson:
The Orillia on Robson and Seymour Streets, was just a memory by the time I moved to Vancouver in the mid-1980s, but from time to time I see a mention or a photo of this early mixed-use structure at Robson and Seymour. One particularly poignant photo was taken before its destruction in the 1980s and shows the Orillia boarded up, covered in music handbills, smeared with graffiti, and the words “Save Me!” scrawled across one of the plywood boardings.
Author and historian Michael Kluckner tells me he used to play pool there in the 1960s and that it was well known for Sid Beech’s Vancouver Tamale Parlor, which operated there for decades as a popular dining and late-night hangout. Beech’s eclectic menu ranged from tamales and enchiladas to Chinese noodles, spaghetti, soup and sandwiches.
Michael Kluckner painting of the Orillia, set in the 1930s.
Over the years there were rumours of a brothel that had set up shop in the Orillia. It was Funland Arcade, for a time, and Twiggy’s, a gay disco. Twiggy’s morphed into Faces in the 1970s.
The Orillia (1903-1985). Bob Cain photo, 1980
Built for William Tait:
The Orillia was built in 1903 for retired lumber baron and real estate tycoon Owner William Tait who owned several rental properties and his house at 752 Thurlow Street. Originally a two-storey wooden rooming house comprising six row houses, the Orillia first appears with tenants in the 1905 city directory. Residents listed include a nurse, a painter, a cutter, a saddler and a clerk. In 1909, Tait added another floor for retail businesses.
Real estate was good to Tait, and in 1911 he built his Shaughnessy dream home. Glen Brae was dubbed “the Mae West” by locals because of its two outlandish turrets. Tait died in 1919, and Glen Brae changed hands several times, becoming the headquarters for the Kanadian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1925, and eventually the home of Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.
Robson and Seymour. Just look what we did with the space!
Fate was less kind to the Orillia. After years of neglect the building was demolished in 1985 and replaced four years later by the 16-storey Vancouver Tower.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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?
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.
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.
Anders Falk is a Vancouver realtor with deep roots in the city. His great, great grandparents William and Mary Henderson Garden arrived in Vancouver from Helensburgh, Scotland, via Liverpool and a cross Canada train trip in April 1889. William opened up Garden and Sons Wholesale Tea and Coffee on East Hastings. By 1894, Murchies has broken their monopoly on the tea business, and William and Mary and their two sons William and John have moved into a new house at the corner of Thurlow and Alberni Street.
Garden and Sons Wholesale Teas, 222 East Hastings Street, ca.1890s. Photo courtesy Anders Falk
William died in 1897, and the following year, the business has disappeared from the directory. John became a lumber broker and William Junior played in a band and worked at the Bay for his day job. The Gardens remain at 752 Thurlow until 1903. Fortunately one of the Garden family was an avid photographer and was able to capture the family’s various activities—at the house, a boat at the rowing club, and biking in Stanley Park.
William and Mary Garden family in Stanley Park mid-1890s. Photo courtesy Anders Falk
Anders says Joe Fortes taught the Garden kids to swim at nearby English Bay.
William Lamont Tait, a wealthy retired lumber and real estate tycoon, is the next resident at 752 Thurlow. Tait must have spent much of the next few years planning and supervising the building of Glen Brae, his Shaughnessy mansion on Matthews. Completed in 1911, Glen Brae, named for Tait’s Scottish homeland, was dubbed “the Mae West” by locals because of its two outlandish turrets. Tait died in 1919, and in 1925, his former house became the headquarters of the KKK. More recently it has found a nicer use as Canuck Place.
752 Thurlow Street with Wesley Methodist Church in the background ca1900 VPL 7153
The house on Thurlow Street and Alberni, like most large places in the West End, went through a number of uses—at one point it was a YWCA, a nursery, and during the First World War, it was occupied by the Canadian Medical Army Corps.
Rear of 754 Thurlow Street in 1956 CVA Bu P508-19
Between 1924 and 1940, 752 Thurlow showed up as the Vancouver Women’s Building in the directories, and in 1941 it was taken over by the Salvation Army. Surprisingly, it looks like it survived until at least 1956, and at some point went through a street change to #754.
752 Thurlow Street, 1974. CVA 778-432
In 1966, 752 Thurlow was a three-storey building next to the Manhattan Apartments and occupied by Oil Can Harry’s. The club stayed there for the next 11 years.
752 Thurlow Street, 1974. CVA778-433
The Carlyle, a 21-storey tower replaced the Thurlow Street building in 1989. Its address is now on Alberni.
I was trekking around the West End with artist and historian Tom Carter on Tuesday. I found some pictures of gorgeous old West End houses at the archives and I wanted to see what replaced them.
Tom had some aerial photos of the West End taken in the ‘50s that showed masses of houses, low rise apartment buildings and lots of trees, built in the late 1880s and early 20th century, before Shaughnessy opened up and the West End was still a desirable place to live.
Many of the old mansions became apartment buildings and rooming houses, and when the six-storey height limit was removed in the late 1950s, most of these old houses and their beautiful gardens disappeared in a frenzy of demolition.
1201 Pendrell
The Pillars, CVA Bu P508.82
The house first shows up in the directories in 1906, built for Duncan Rowan who is listed simply as “cannery man.” Duncan died a few years later and the house sold to the Buttimer family where it stayed until1930. When this photo was taken in 1956 it was an apartment building called The Pillars.
Here’s what we’ve done with the lot:
1201 Pendrell, 2015
1221 Burnaby
Wootton Manor, CVA Bu.P.508.64
Built for George Coleman in 1901, directories show that at one time it was the Convent of the Sacred Heart and later a school called the Vancouver Academy. The house became an apartment building called Wootton Manor in the 1940s.
This is Wootton Manor’s replacement:
1185 Harwood
1185 Harwood Street, CVA Bu.508.27
Well, at least the stone fence is still there. The house was once surrounded by other old mansions and built for Alex Morrison, a contractor. It stayed in the family until 1930 and became the Margaret Convalescent and Nursing home during the war years.
1185 Harwood, 2015
1025 Gilford
1025 Gilford, VPL 16134, ca.1910
Architect Thomas Fee designed this house for his family in 1907 because Mrs. Fee wanted a house in the country. Fee was part of Parr and Fee a prolific architectural firm that designed numerous buildings such as Glen Brae in Shaughnessy, The Manhattan apartments on Robson, the Hotel Europe in Gastown and the Vancouver Block. The house became the Park Gilford Hotel in the late 1940s. It came down in 1961.
Most municipalities have a heritage inventory that includes houses built before 1940. Makes sense doesn’t it? When you think heritage you think old. But actually heritage can be 20 years old, and that can surprise a new home owner wanting to renovate or demolish who is suddenly hauled in front of a heritage commission.
When the City of Vancouver introduced the Heritage Register in 1986, the foremost concern was saving buildings deemed architecturally important. The register identified prominent Shaughnessy houses such as Glen Brae and Hycroft, Roedde House in the West End, as well as various churches, schools, and public buildings. Recently, the city added 22 modern buildings to the register. Five of these are protected through designation: the former BC Hydro building, the former Vancouver Public Library, the Gardner House in Southlands, the Dodek House in Oakridge and the Evergreen Building.
In 1997, the District of North Vancouver published a modern inventory for houses built between 1930 and 1965. Many are modest looking post and beams designed by local legends Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Fred T. Hollingsworth and Ned Pratt.
BC Binning House
The Binning Residence at 2968 Mathers Crescent, in West Vancouver and built by Ned Pratt, is maintained by The Land Conservancy and it’s well worth checking out on one of the public tours.
Built in 1941 for $5,000, the house is credited with launching the West Coast modernism movement. Unlike the massive multi-million dollar mansions that surround it, Binning responded to the social and economic condition of the time by using local materials and efficient construction materials to create an affordable house that harmonizes art and architecture, form and function.
A prominent artist who studied under Frederick Varley and Henry Moore, Binning founded the University of B.C.’s department of fine arts. His interest in architecture led him to design large mosaic murals for public buildings such as the B.C. Electric Substation and the series of murals which he painted directly onto the walls of his house.
