Every Place Has a Story

Halloween Special 2023

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In this last episode of season 4, Cold Case Canada, I’ve asked four BC-based storytellers to tell us their favourite murder and haunted building stories.

Francis Rattenbury (1867-1935)

Will Woods

Will Woods, founder of Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours tells us the story of Francis Rattenbury’s murder, an architect responsible for buildings that include the Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria and the Law Courts in Vancouver.

Three ghost stories and a murder
Francis Rattenbury and Alma Pakenham
Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck by Eve Lazarus, coming April 2025. Preorder through Arsenal Pulp Press, or your favourite indie bookstore
Vancouver Fire Hall no. 19
Three ghost stories and a murder
Is this who’s haunting No. 19 Firehall?

Vancouver Fire Hall No. 19 has been haunted for as long as anyone can remember. Captain Ryan Cameron, who has served 27 years with Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, believes that the ghost is none other than Bill Wootton, a fire fighter who worked out of the original fire hall in 1943 when he was killed on the way to a call. Bill likes to slide down the fire station pole, slam doors in the middle of the night, play ping pong and leave a chill in the stairwell.

Three Ghost Stories and a Murder
The original West Point Grey Firehall in 1925, now no. 19. Courtesy Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society
1329 East 12th Avenue, Vancouver

Amanda Quill

Amanda Quill is a Vancouver-based paranormal investigator who welcomes abnormal activity and has happily lived in several haunted houses over the years. In 2001, she and her son Nathan moved into this East Vancouver house along with a ghost cat, a male in his 30s, and a little girl who appeared to Nathan in a frilly dress.

Three ghost stories and a murder
1329 East 12th Avenue, courtesy Amanda Quill
Irving House, New Westminster

Jim Wolf

In 1990, Jim Wolf was fresh out of university and got his dream job as curatorial assistant at Irving House. Soon after starting at the museum, he met his first ghost. Most recently, Jim was the heritage planner with the City of Burnaby and he has authored several books including The Royal City: A Photographic History of New Westminster, 1858-1960. 

Irving House
Irving House, ca. 1880. NWPL #254
Show Notes:

Intro Music:   Andreas Schuld ‘Waiting for You’

Breaks: Nico Vettese, We Talk of Dreams

Intro:  Mark Dunn

Buy me a coffee promo: McBride Communications and Media

Related:

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Burnaby’s Top Secret Submarine Base

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At the Barnet Marine Park you can check out the  remnants of a once thriving village, sawmills, and Burnaby’s top secret submarine base.

For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Barnet Marine Park, 2020. Eve Lazarus photo

Took the dog for a walk at the Barnet Marine Park in Burnaby last week and found a whole bunch of fascinating history. There are remnants of a once thriving village built around a saw-mill, and most intriguing, rumours of a secret submarine base.

Burnaby Archives, Planning Department
Submarines come to Burnaby:

In 1914, Russia needed submarines to defend itself against the Germany Navy in the Black Sea. James Venn Paterson headed up a dry dock company in Seattle and had already built H-class subs—he’d sold two of them to the BC government. Problem was, the US was neutral and couldn’t be seen building subs for warring nations, so Paterson started the British Pacific Construction and Engineering Company and smuggled the parts across the border.

Barnet submarine plant, ca.1915. Courtesy Burnaby Archives
Top Secret Plant:

The yard at Barnet was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and search lights. There was a guard of nine men on loan from the military, and after four weeks the subs were well under way. The top-secret plant soon had 460 employees working day and night, under the ruse that they were constructing oil barges.

Submarine on scaffolding, ca 1915. Burnaby Archives Planning Department

In December 1916, three subs were knocked down and shipped from Vancouver to Vladivostock where they would travel to the Baltic and Black Seas by rail. The Barnet plant closed down soon after that over a land dispute.

Barnet submarine yard, ca.1915. Burnaby Archives Planning Department

Jim Wolf, Burnaby City Planner and historian has written about the submarines in his book In the Shadow by the Sea: Recollections of Burnaby’s Barnet Village. He tells me that the submarine assembly plant was on the old Western Steel Company plant. That’s right beside the current Chemtrade Solutions building, which ironically is also behind barbed wire and no trespassing signs.

“The operation was short-lived and they used the existing wharf and plant,” says Jim. “Most of the old steel plant was obliterated with later developments. What you are seeing on site today is the old Bestwood Lumber Plant remains.”

Source: W. Kaye Lamb: Building Submarines for Russia in Burrard Inlet, BC Studies, No. 71, Autumn, 1986.

And, with thanks to Jim Wolf.

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.