Lurancy Harris

The Introvert’s Guide to the Holiday Season

by Eve Lazarus on December 22, 2018

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.

Source: At Home With History: The Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Houses

KKK at Glen Brae in 1925. Courtesy CVA 99-1501

Hit and Run Over:

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.

Source: Sensational Vancouver

Shark Attack in False Creek:

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.

Source: This Day in Vancouver

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?”

Source: Tom Butler, the Coach House Inn and the Belly Flop that Soared

Coach House Inn, 1979. Courtesy John Denniston

Loretta Lynn and the Chicken Coop

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.

Source: Vancouver Was Awesome: A curious Pictorial History

Van-Tan

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?

Source: Van Tan Nudist Camp

Project 200

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.

Source: aborted plans

The Murder Factory

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.

Source: Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator

For more ideas: Eve Lazarus Books

Tags Chuck Davis, Glen Brae, Ku Klux Klan, Loretta Lynn, Lurancy Harris, Project 200, Van-Tan Club

Vancouver’s Monkey Puzzle Tree Obsession

by Eve Lazarus on March 24, 2018

We probably have more monkey puzzle trees in BC than in all of their native Chile. The quirky trees started arriving in gardens in the 1920s.

In 2012, I wrote a book called Sensational Victoria and one of my favourite chapters was Heritage Gardens. I visited and then wrote about large rich-people’s gardens like Hatley Park, and smaller ones like the Abkhazi Garden on Fairfield road built on the back of a love story. There was Carole Sabiston’s beautiful garden on Rockland Avenue anchored by a 100-year-old purple lilac tree, and the garden Brian and Jennifer Rogers created around their century-old Samuel Maclure designed horse stable. (Brian is the grandson of BT Rogers, the Vancouver sugar king, and another ardent gardener).

Nellie McClung at her Ferndale Road home in 1949. Courtesy Saanich Archives

On the back cover of the book, there’s a photo of Nellie McClung standing in front of a giant monkey puzzle tree at the house she retired to at Gordon Head in 1935.

Lurancy Harris, the first female police officer in Canada, built her house on Venables in 1916. When I went to photograph it, the now two-storey house was dwarfed by a monkey puzzle tree that she’d planted in her front garden.

Lurancy Harris built 1836 Venables in 1916 and planted herself a monkey tree.

I’ve always had a thing for monkey puzzle trees—they seem to go particularly well with turrets, old houses and great stories. But I’ve never given them much thought until I was chatting with Christine Allen this morning about her upcoming talk for the Vancouver Historical Society next month. Christine—another Australian transplant—is a master gardener. She tells me that there was a huge craze for monkey puzzles trees here in the 1920s and 1930s.

“People were very proud of their monkey puzzle trees. It was so Victorian, they loved that kind of odd ball stuff,” she says. “There is a tiny post-war bungalow in my neighbourhood (Grandview) where somebody planted two massive ones on the south side of the house. That house gets no sun ever.”

Christine says the trees got their name because even a monkey would find it a puzzle to climb.

Bowen Island Inn in the 1930s with a massive monkey puzzle tree. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Christine says that another reason why these Chilean pines were so popular is because of Vancouver’s mild climate that allows us to grow anything from arctic tundra plants to palm trees.

But it’s not just people, towns are proud of them to. The tiny town of Holberg on Vancouver Island boasts the world’s tallest monkey puzzle tree. I have no idea how tall it is now, but in 1995 it was measured at 77 feet—that’s higher than a seven-storey building.

Nellie McClung’s home was known as Lantern Lane after the books she wrote in her upstairs study. Courtesy Saanich Archives, 1960

Tags Abkhazi Garden, Brian Rogers, BT Rogers, Carole Sabiston, Christine Allen, Lurancy Harris, Nellie McClung, Samuel Maclure, Sensational Victoria

Women Police Officers on Patrol

by Eve Lazarus on August 13, 2016

The Vancouver Police Museum’s Kristin Hardie solved the mystery of this ca.1940 photo. The women police officers on patrol are Bessie Say and Jeanette Heathorn.

This great Foncie photo of two women police officers ran in Sensational Vancouver, in a chapter called “Lurancy Harris’s Beat.” Lurancy was the first female police officer in Canada when she was hired along with Minnie Millar by the Vancouver Police Department in 1912, and one of my favourite historical characters.

Jeanette Heathorn and Bessie Say patrol the 400 block West Hastings ca.1940. Photo courtesy Vancouver Police Museum — Bessie Say and Jeanette Heathorn patrol the 400 block West Hastings ca.1940. Photo courtesy Vancouver Police Museum

Naming the mystery women:

The photo and much of the information about early women police officers came from the Vancouver Police Museum. At the time, the women in the photo were not identified, and the photo was thought to be 1940s.

Kristin Hardie at the Police Museum has now solved the mystery and tells me that the woman on the left is Bessie Say, VPD constable 193 and employed between 1921 and 1941. On the right is Jeanette Heathorn who worked as a police matron in 1938 and 1939. That also narrows down the date of the Foncie photo to between 1938 and 1941.

Bessie is intriguing.

According to a 1970 newspaper article that Kristin sent, Bessie who died at 90, was a retired Vancouver city police matron and former first-class constable in charge of the women’s section of the jail.

Before Bessie arrived in Vancouver she had been a prison guard in England and in Australia.

“In her early days she was keen on horse racing and kept up her interest in hockey, going out to games until a year before her death,” notes the reporter. “She was believed the first fully trained policewoman to be employed by any force in Canada when she was sworn in as matron at the city jail in September 1921.”

I don’t doubt it. Poor Lurancy and Minnie were thrown into the job with no training, no uniform and no gun.

And, three decades later when this photo was taken, things weren’t much better. Women didn’t get uniforms until 1947, they weren’t allowed to drive police cars until 1948 (they went to calls on foot or took the street car), and it wasn’t until the 1970s that women had the right to carry firearms and were assigned the same duties as their male counterparts.

Apparently Bessie didn’t slow down after retirement. She was active in the Red Cross during the Second World War, and according to the article, travelled extensively. “She was camping at 84. She took a daily walk, even through last December’s snow.”

Jeanette also lived a long life. She died in 1992 aged 86.

For more about Vancouver’s first woman police officer see Lurancy Harris

For another photo mystery that was solved see: The Story Behind this 1924 photo

joe ricci et al

Tags Bessie Say, Jeanette Heathorn, Lurancy Harris, Minnie Millar, Vancouvr Police Museum

Meet Lurancy Harris: Canada’s First Woman Police Officer

by Eve Lazarus on March 7, 2015

Lurancy Harris and Minnie Millar became the first two women police officers in Canada when they were hired by the VPD in 1912

The following is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver.

Lurancy Harris and the Vancouver Police Department — Lurancy Harris ca.1915. Vancouver Archives

Joins VPD:

Lurancy Harris was a 48-year-old seamstress from Nova Scotia had moved to Vancouver in 1911 and rented a small apartment on Robson at Howe. One day she was flipping through a newspaper when an ad caught her eye. The Vancouver Police Department was looking for “two good reliable women” to form the nucleus of a women’s protective division centred around issues of morality and protecting the safety of wayward women and children.

She and Millar were sworn in as fourth class constables, the lowest rank in the department with a salary of $80 a month. The women were given full police powers and thrown into the job with no training, no uniform and no gun.

First Arrest:

Lurancy made her first arrest five months after she was hired. In the Prisoner Record book of 1912 at the Vancouver Police Museum, Annie Smith, 38, alias Mrs. Stanfield, a bigamist from England told police that she believed that her husband was dead and had answered a personal ad in a Spokane newspaper, met and then married a Mr. Stanfield. On account of his “cruelty” she fled to Vancouver with her two small children. Stanfield found her, found the original Mr. Smith and the two men went to police. While Annie was found “technically guilty” she was given a suspended sentence “on account of the troubles and suffering she had endured.”

Arrest of Lorena Mathews:

Lurancy’s big break came a month later when she was given the task of escorting Lorena Mathews on the train back to Oklahoma after she was arrested in Vancouver. Mathews had bolted across the continent with her two children and Jim Chapman, her 25-year-old black lover who was suspected of helping her murder her much older husband. Chapman was convicted, Mathews was acquitted, and Lurancy got a promotion.

In 1916, Lurancy bought a lot on Venables Street in East Vancouver. She had a small craftsman house built and planted a monkey tree. The house is still there, a second floor was added in 1983, and the monkey tree towers over it all.

By all accounts, Lurancy had an amazing career. In 1924 she was promoted to inspector, although she was kept at the pay scale of a sergeant. She retired in 1928 aged 65.

While more women gradually joined the police force, things were slow to change. Women did not get uniforms until 1947, they were not allowed to drive police cars until 1948 (they went to calls on foot or took the street car), and it wasn’t until the 1970s that women had the right to carry firearms and were assigned to the same duties as their male counterparts.

Tags 1836 Venables, International Women's Day, Jim Chapman, Lorena Mathews, Lurancy Harris, Minnie Millar, Sensational Vancouver, Vancouver Police Department, Vancouver Police Museum

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