Hastings Park Archives

“Straight as a plummet the steak of red below the long streak of white dropped for fully 100 feet. Then with a couple of preliminary flutters, the rushing air entered the distending ring of the parachute and it opened like a huge umbrella. A great sigh of relief went up from the 6,000 and some odd pairs of eyes who were watching the daring feat.”
The World, May 25, 1912.

Hastings Park, May 24, 1912 Courtesy CVA Air P46.

“Professor” Charles Saunders made this jump from a Wright bi-plane in 1912 wearing red tights and a large leather helmet. It was the first parachute drop in Canada and only the fourth in the world.

According to the The British Columbia Historical Quarterly of October 1939, the folded parachute was put into a makeshift container made from a large empty can which was bound to one of the skids of the plane. Apparently “disaster was averted” on take-off as pilot, Phil Parmelee, just missed the tree-tops at Hastings Park. Parmelee circled around Burrard Inlet until he got to a height of around 1,000 feet and Saunders climbed down and hung from the machine.

There wasn’t any safety harnesses in those days, he had to just hang onto the parachute and hope to god it worked. Or as the Journal put it: “The method then in vogue was to trust to a strong pair of hands and arms, by which the courageous jumper grasped the bar attached to the parachute. His own strong muscles were all he relied upon to forestall a sudden trip to eternity.”

The “Professor” landed on the North Shore in the middle of a couple of hundred stunned picnickers. He calmly rolled up his parachute and waited for a power boat which he had charted to take him back to Hastings Park.

Parmelee died a week later in Washington State, when turbulence flipped the plane he was flying upside down. He was 25.

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

Designed in 1929 by McCarter Naine — The Livestock Building at Hastings Park. Eve Lazarus photo 2010

Hastings Park:

The Livestock Building at Hastings Park is a rundown old concrete warehouse full of peeling paint, boarded up and broken windows. The back is just as neglected, but painted red from a film shoot some years ago. Most of us know it from taking our kids to see the petting zoo, the pig races and Big Bob at the annual Pacific National Exhibition. And, while it’s in desperate need of a face lift, the building has got both architectural merit and a really interesting social history.

The Forum was the men’s building K. CVA photo 1942 180-3541

Internment:

The first part of the building went up in 1929, and then in the ‘40s architectural firm McCarter Nairne turned it into a much larger Streamline Moderne building—the same firm that designed the amazing art deco Marine Building on Burrard.

Most important though is the building serves as a reminder of the injustice suffered by 22,000 Japanese-Canadians during WW2. From March to September, 1942 you would have found more than 3,100 women and children at different times living in deplorable conditions in the animal stalls at the western end of this three-acre large building. The eastern section housed a hospital, kitchen and dining area. The men–mostly fishers and miners and merchants and foresters were housed in the Pure Food Building.

The Hastings Park buildings used to contain the Japanese during the war – 1942-1945. Photo CVA 180-3506

PNE buildings:

All told there were at least 10 of the PNE buildings used to house the Japanese Canadians in disgusting conditions. Most of the buildings are long gone, but as well as the Livestock building, Rollerland, the Forum, the Garden Auditorium and the race track were all used at some point to contain the Japanese before they were shipped off to internment camps.

These “enemy aliens”–many who were born in Canada–were wrenched from their homes and sent to live here before being forcibly relocated to internment camps in places like Slocan, BC.

Wander through the Momiji Gardens and you’ll find a faded plaque secured to a rock telling some of the story.

Muriel Fujiwara Kitagawa described the Japanese women’s dormitory: “The whole place is impregnated with the smell of ancient manure and maggots. Every other day it is swept with dichlorine of lime, or something, but you can’t disguise horse smell, cow smell, sheep, pigs, rabbits and goats…there are 10 showers for 1,500 women.”

Back in 1997 when it looked like the PNE and Playland would move somewhere else, the Garden Auditorium (1940), the PNE Forum (1933), the iconic wooden rollercoaster (early 1930s) and the Livestock Building were all under threat of demolition. A decision to keep the PNE where it is gave these structures a reprieve.

According to Dave Hutch, project manager, the City of Vancouver is currently assessing the Livestock Building before recommending that it be added to the Vancouver Heritage Register. Hutch, says based on the research so far, the building will likely qualify for an A Status, which at the very least should help the former marshalling facility get the maintenance it badly needs to prolong its life.

Canada’s First Parachute Jump was at North Vancouver’s mudflats

The Livestock Building at the PNE

Hastings Park:

Internment:

PNE buildings:

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Hastings Park:

Internment:

PNE buildings:

Support

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