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Michael Kluckner

Vancouver’s Peace House and the Grateful Dead

by Eve Lazarus on July 15, 2023
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I was riding my bike along Point Grey Road this week and snapped a few photos of the Peace House. It’s an interesting looking place, and as it turns out, has quite the past.

The Peace House
The Peace House. Eve Lazarus photo, July 2023
3148 Point Grey Road:

It was built in 1908 by R.D. Rorison who was an early real estate agent and developer. His company bought the English Bay Cannery in 1905, tore it down and used the wood to build part of the house.

Peace House
Vancouver Daily World, July 28, 1908

In 1965, the house attracted an anti-nuclear group who were protesting the storage of nuclear weapons at the Comox RCAF Base. The leader was a 22-year-old UBC student named Peter Light, who spent most of his time organizing a protest march from Victoria to Comox. The house became widely known as the Peace House and freaked out its more conservative neighbours.

Peace House
Peace House in 1908. Vancouver Archives photo

From a May 21, 1965 Province article: “The city has lost patience with the Peace House. The zoning appeal board has rejected a presentation that a group of bearded, sandal-wearing peace demonstrators who occupy the house at 3148 Point Grey Road should be classed as a philanthrophic organization.”

And on that same day in the Vancouver Sun: “The house is run down, dirty shirts hang in the window, fires have been started in the middle of the front room floor using chairs for fuel, and that newspaper reports of free love in upstairs rooms are true because they could look in and watch. They are degenerating the outlook and spirit of young Canadians.”

Peace House
1966. Courtesy Jerry Kruz
The Afterthought:

A couple of years back when I was chatting to Jerry Kruz about his exploits as a 17-year-old promoter, he told me he lived in a room at the Peace House while he was bringing acts to the Afterthought. He brought in Country Joe and the Fish, the Steve Miller Band, and in 1966, paid the Grateful Dead $500 to play there. The band also crashed at the Peace House. According to Heritage Vancouver Society, so did other cultural icons of the day such as Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass and Allen Ginsberg.

Peace House
The Peace House plaque which used to sit across the street, courtesy Phil Larsen. Phil says you can still see the paint from the English Bay Cannery on one edge of the house.

In 1968, the house played a role in Robert Altman’s thriller That Cold Day in the Park. Grant Lawrence has a great story about Ginger Baker, the legendary drummer from Cream staying there. “It was essentially a crash pad for local and wandering hippies and touring bands,” writes Grant.

The Peace House
The Peace House. Eve Lazarus photo, July 2023

Michael Kluckner tells me that Jeannette and her husband, renowned artist Jeff Wall, lived at the Peace House around 1970. “The house came up for sale then for $17,000, but had no takers partly because it had a huge sawdust-burning furnace that needed replacing,” says Michael. A woman from Toronto bought it, and according to rumour, hired architect Arthur Erickson to do some remodelling.”

The six-bedroom house is currently assessed at $4.4 million.

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

Further Reading:

Doug and the Slugs (1951-2004)

by Eve Lazarus on November 13, 2021
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Doug Bennett, lead singer of  Doug and the Slugs and his wife Nancy bought an old house on Semlin Drive in 1987. The house received heritage designation last month.

2146 Semlin Drive, Vancouver. Eve Lazarus Photo 2014

This story is from my book Sensational Vancouver

2146 Semlin Drive:

Current owners Adrienne Tanner and Mike Walker now have a Heritage Revitalization Agreement with the City of Vancouver. This means that the house cannot be demolished or substantially altered. In return, the owners can sub-divide the lot and build a second house with a rental suite.

Michael Kluckner, past chair of the Vancouver Heritage Commission tells me: “This is a great, unfortunately rare, example of a heritage project where the old house will be retained rather than stripped to its studs and rebuilt with new materials. It and its garden will survive much as it has for decades. The large lot and the fact the house stood on a corner made it easy to subdivide, and the new house will be a good addition to the neighbourhood.”

Built in 1911:

The seven-bedroom house in Grandview-Woodland, was built by Charles Kilpin, a carpenter and builder in 1911. He filled it with large art glass windows, fireplaces and lots of verandahs. The Kilpin’s lived there until 1920, when the house sold to Harry and Susie Wilson of Wilson’s Shoe Store. The house stayed in the family for the next 50 years, and other families followed including the Bennetts in the ’80s.

Doug was born in Toronto, moved to Vancouver in 1973 and became a graphic artist at the Georgia Straight. Four years later he formed Doug and the Slugs and notched up four gold albums. Doug emerged as a respected singer and songwriter, actor, producer, video maker and comedian. He designed his own album covers.

The band had several hits that he wrote including “Making it Work” and “Tomcat Prowl.” I love this quote by the Vancouver Sun’s John Mackie: “In an age of glamorous video-friendly performers, Bennett was an Everyman in a Sally Ann Suit, an independent spirit who succeeded through sheer determination and a unique talent.”

BC Assessment, 2021

Doug died in October 2004 just a few weeks shy of his 53rd birthday. At the time he was living at the Eldorado Motor Hotel on Kingsway and his cause of death was reported as a “long-standing illness.”

The house was on a Vancouver Heritage Foundation tour in 2011. According to the guidebook, the band painted a mural on the dining room wall that showed their perspective of the history of Canada. I desperately want this to be true. If you know anything about this—or even better have a photo—please get in touch eve@evelazarus.com or leave a comment.

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

The Orillia (1903-1985)

by Eve Lazarus on January 30, 2021
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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.

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History 

Menu from Sid Beech’s Vancouver Tamale Parlor, 1937. Tom Carter collection
Tamale Parlor:

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.

Orillia at Robson and Seymour
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.

Glen Brae, 1690 Matthews Avenue. Courtesy Vancouver Heritage Foundation

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.

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

Here & Gone: Vancouver’s Corner Stores

by Eve Lazarus on January 15, 2021
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Michael Kluckner’s latest BC bestseller Here & Gone: Artwork of Vancouver & Beyond is gorgeous. One half is filled with his paintings of disappearing Vancouver (Here) and the other of his travels in countries such as Australia, Cuba, Mexico and Japan (Gone).

“The Orange Fence of Death has become a familiar sight on almost every block in Vancouver,” writes Kluckner. “Intended to protect trees from the carelessness of builders as relatively affordable homes are demolished.”
Missing Heritage:

In the introduction to Here, he writes: “I see myself as a witness, certainly not an activist anymore or a serious historian.” I served on the board of the Vancouver Historical Society with Michael for several years and I see him as all these things. I asked him to explain.

“I didn’t have any sense or feeling that I could save anything by doing any of the paintings and I thought I’m just going to pick up these weird little buildings that will tell the story for me in one way or another,” he says. “This is not a city where influential people care.”

The Vernon Drive Grocery Store in Strathcona is over 100 years old and not looking nearly as spiffy now as it did in this Michael Kluckner painting from 2005.
Death of the corner store:

Michael’s Vancouver includes buried houses, legacy buildings, laneway houses and corner stores.

“People have memories of going to the corner store and a lot of them in Vancouver were right next door to schools,” he says.

In the 1970s and ‘80s corporate-owned chains like 7-Eleven and Macs popped up and killed off many of the corner stores right around the time when we needed them the most. Because as well as giving immigrants from China, Japan, Italy and elsewhere a foothold in the city, they were somewhere you could walk to, meet your neighhours and support local amid the growth of impersonal big box stores selling “Made in China” goods.

North Templeton market built in 1914 in Hastings/Sunrise is still going strong. Michael Kluckner, 2019
making a come back?

“There was a move by city planners to get rid of the corner stores—not get rid of them altogether—but to get them out of the neighbourhoods and onto main streets. Now when we find one in the neighbourhood we just go ‘wow is that ever fabulous’,” he says. “The remaining ones are practically on life support, but there is finally a move in the city to give them a little support.”

And it does seem that the corner store is making a comeback (I can think of four in North Vancouver), just not necessarily back to their grocery roots. Some have been repurposed into cafés, an antique store, a B&B, and some sell jewelry and art.

Corner store built in 1930 survives at 35th and Windsor Street near Mountain View Cemetery. Michael Kluckner.

The buildings that house these stores aren’t fancy, but many are over 100 years old, and are part of the disappearing fabric of Vancouver. In other words, the corner stores tell the story of displacement, immigration, how the city grew up around the streetcar lines and community.

Here is a list of places where you can buy Here & Gone

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

 

We held a funeral for the Birks Building

by Eve Lazarus on November 28, 2020
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At 2:00 pm on Sunday March 24, 1974, a group of about a 100 people, many of them students and professors from the UBC School of Architecture, came together in a mock funeral for the Birks Building, an eleven storey Edwardian masterpiece at Georgia and Granville with a terracotta façade and a curved front corner.

Angus McIntyre climbed up on the bed of a dump truck to capture this photo of protestors outside the Birks Building in 1974

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History (also the cover photo). Photos by Angus McIntyre

Program for the memorial service, courtesy Angus McIntyre
And the band played:

They marched from the old Vancouver Art Gallery at Georgia and Thurlow, led by a police escort and accompanied by a New Orleans funeral band playing a sombre dirge. The mourners assembled under the “meet me at the Birk’s clock,” an ornate iron timepiece that stood more than 20 feet tall and for decades had been a local landmark and familiar meeting place. For generations of Vancouverites, “Meet you at the Birks clock” was a common phrase.

The stunning Interior of the Birks Building. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974
An act of architectural vanalism:

On this day, it was too late to stop the demolition—it had already begun—but not too late to protest what author and artist Michael Kluckner and others have called an egregious act of architectural vandalism.

The crew working on the new building across the road shut off the air compressors and laid down their tools. Reverend Jack Kent, chaplain of the Vancouver Mariners Club officiated. He was accompanied by a choir.

“North Van bus on West Georgia Street is visible through the window. Conductor is standing on two Canada Dry wood boxes. It was the era of checks and flared pants,” Angus McIntyre, 1974

Angus McIntyre then 26, grabbed his Konica Autoreflex T2 35mm camera and rode his bike downtown to record the event.

Ceremony:

“There was a Gathering, a Sharing of Ideas, a Choir performance and a Laying of the Wreaths,” Angus told me. “A small group of people wearing recycled videotape clothing put hexes on new buildings nearby. As soon as it came time to return to the Art Gallery, the band switched to Dixieland jazz, and the mood became slightly more upbeat.”

Some protestors wore Video Armour crocheted out of used videotapes by Evelyn Roth. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974

And just like that, the beautiful old Birks Building—well not that old really—only 61 in 1974—was killed off to make way for the Scotia Tower and Vancouver Centre mall.

For a long time after the funeral, this R.I.P. banner hung in a second storey office window at the Sam Kee building on Pender Street. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974

The only positive thing to come out of the loss of this much-loved building was that it mobilized the heritage preservation community in Vancouver and saved many of our other fine old buildings such as the Orpheum Theatre, Hudson’s Bay, Waterfront Station, the Hotel Vancouver and the Marine Building—from a similar fate.

Inside Birks Building and the model of the Scotia Tower that will replace it. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974
Related:

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

The Kitsilano Laneway House

by Eve Lazarus on April 20, 2019
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There’s been a lot about laneway houses in the media over the last couple of years. Loosely defined, it’s a legal way of plonking down a small house in your backyard, and depending on your point of view, either exploiting or helping to ease the current rental squeeze.

Laneway houses have to be under 1,000 square feet. The fact that this seems small is ironic when you think about it. “In 1945, the average size of a Canadian home was 800 sq. ft. and typically housed a family of four or more. Today an average British Columbian home easily surpasses 2000 sq. ft and is providing shelter to 2.5 individuals.”[1]

What I didn’t know until recently, is that Vancouver has always had laneway houses, we just didn’t see the value in keeping them.

The Kitsilano laneway duplex and the back of the Suffolk apartments in 2011 by Michael Kluckner. From Vanishing Vancouver: the last 25 years

One laneway house has managed to survive at York and Yew in Kitsilano since 1908. It’s behind the Suffolk apartment building at 1540 Yew Street, which I must have walked by dozens of times and never noticed the duplex in the lane. Its continued existence is precarious, as the owner plans to either sell or develop the property. Currently, the eight rental apartments at the Suffolk are one-bedroom units, and the duplex at 2181 and 2183 York Street are two bedrooms. One tenant has lived there for over 40 years. Neither of the buildings are on the heritage register.

Looking north along Yew Street from 4th Avenue ca.1910. Courtesy CVA 1376.80.43

Looking at old aerial photos, there were three BC Mills prefab cottages along Yew Street, two more facing the lane, and three other laneway houses besides the existing laneway duplex.

“That Kits Beach lane block was unique,” says Michael Kluckner. “There were several little houses jammed in. I lived in an apartment at Cornwall and Arbutus in 1974 and used to walk the lane often.”

Paul Houle, age 5 in front of the laneway duplex on York Street in 1961.

Paul Houle was only four when he and his baby sister and parents moved into the laneway duplex in 1960. He says according to photos he has, little has changed since 1961.

Paul Houle outside the laneway duplex in 2019 and with a picture of his five-year-old self in 1961

“Both units have the original (1908) iron claw foot tubs in the bathrooms, and the original wainscoting,” he says. “Even the colour on the kitchen wall is the same yellow.”

Yew and Cornwall in the 1970s. There’s a Starbucks on the corner now, and you can see a portion of the BC Mills houses. Photo by Sajiw-Terriss

Amazingly, Paul remembers several other houses along the lane, and. And three little BC Mills houses along Yew Street likely demolished in the ‘70s. “I recall as a kid there would have been several houses facing the laneway because I used to play there . There was a grocery store where the Starbucks is now. My mother used to write a note and give me some money for a quart of milk. I would give him the quarter and take it back to my mother.”

Laneway house at 2910 Vine in Kitsilano. Courtesy Neville Hogsden

There are still a few of the old laneway houses around. Neville Hogsden found a 1951 aerial photo showing a number of lots with a small house at the rear of the property. Michael Kluckner knows of one at 1829 Parker Street in Grandview and another on 11th in Mount Pleasant. Do you know of any others still standing?

[1] from a BCIT thesis by Rosa Linn, September 2014

With thanks to Paul Houle, Michael Kluckner, Neville Hogden, Jessica Quan and Patrick Gunn for the research.

For more on early Kitsilano see Kits Point and the Summer of ’23

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

Our Missing Heritage: Vancouver’s First Hospital

by Eve Lazarus on June 30, 2018
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From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Last week, Michael Kluckner and I were over at Tom Carter’s studio looking out his seventh storey window onto the EasyPark—a cavernous concrete lot that fronts West Pender and takes up the entire city block from Cambie to Beatty Streets.

In 2013, Michael had the dubious honour (my words) of presenting the parking lot with a heritage plaque on behalf of Places That Matter.

He wasn’t recognizing the parking lot of course, but the buildings that were once Vancouver’s first city hospital and included a men’s surgical ward, a maternity ward, a tuberculosis ward, and the city morgue which faced Beatty Street.

Pender and Beatty Street in 1939. Note the Sun Tower left of frame and former Hospital buildings behind. Courtesy Tom Carter

If we’d been looking out Tom’s window back in 1912, we would have had a great view of the courthouse in what’s now Victory Square, the shiny new Dominion Building, and the former city hospital, built in 1888, which according to Michael’s Vancouver: The Way it Was consisted of a compound of brick buildings with wooden balconies set back from the street, flower gardens and a picket fence.

Aerial view of Larwill Park construction, the Sun Tower and the Vancouver hospital buildings. Note the Central School bottom right of frame demolished in 1946. Courtesy Tom Carter

By the turn of the century, the 50-bed hospital was too small for Vancouver’s growing population and a new hospital was built in Fairview in 1906 which became the Vancouver General Hospital as we know it now.

The first city hospital was repurposed into the headquarters for McGill University College (BC). And that’s another interesting story.

A former hospital building in 1949, shortly before it was turned into a parking lot. Courtesy CVA 447.61

In 1899, Vancouver High School joined forces with McGill to offer first year arts courses. Six years later the school moved to fancy new digs at Oak and 12th Avenue (later renamed King Edward High School), and McGill moved into the former hospital buildings. McGill stayed in the old hospital until 1911 and faded from the landscape after UBC opened in 1915.

The tuberculosis ward, courtesy Tom Carter

JFCB Vance from Blood, Sweat, and Fear had a lab in there from around 1912 when the police station on East Cordova was demolished until the new station  opened in 1914. According to City Directories, a former hospital building became the “old people’s home” until 1915 when Social Services (the City Relief and Employment Department)  moved in and stayed until the late ’40s.

And just like that it’s a parking lot. 1951 photo courtesy Tom Carter

The city hospital buildings were gone by 1950 and now all that’s left is a plaque affixed to a parking lot.

Top photo: The first Vancouver Hospital in 1902. Courtesy CVA Bu P369

With thanks to Tom Carter for finding all these great photos and to Places That Matter for all the work that they do.

For more stories on our missing heritage buildings

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

Kits Point and the Summer of ‘23

by Eve Lazarus on June 23, 2018
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By Michael Kluckner

Michael Kluckner is a writer and artist with a list of books that includes Vanishing Vancouver and Toshiko. His most recent book is a graphic biography called Julia. He is the president of the Vancouver Historical Society and chair of the city’s Heritage Commission.

Summertime, traffic jams, and the changing city are caught in a set of previously unpublished photos taken from the front porch of a Kits Point house in 1923.

In 1923, Ogden was a corduroy road. The parkland in the background at Ogden and Maple Street which had been popular as an informal camping area in the early 1900s, was bought for the City by retired jeweller Harvey Hadden in 1928. I was given this photograph (above) a dozen years ago by Anne Terriss, who lived with her architect husband Kenneth at 1970 Ogden Avenue, and published it in Vancouver Remembered in 2006.

I was intrigued by the number of families who arrived by car rather than by the streetcar that serviced the beach from a line a few blocks away near Cornwall Avenue. Also, I noted the number of cars parked in the sun with torn-up brush covering their tires to stop the rubber from cracking in the heat.

As it turned out, there were two other photographs taken in 1923 from the front porch of 1982 Ogden, probably by a member of the Bell family. (Photos courtesy of Shirley Wheatcroft, who lives there today.) The photo (below) shows the view northward of the West End and its English Bay waterfront with the Sylvia Hotel visible near the left edge.

Anne and Ken Terriss were long-time members of the Kitsilano community and were part of the generation of volunteers and patrons who created the theatre and arts scene in Vancouver in the 1950s and 1960s. Anne was one of the handful of people in Kitsilano in the 1960s and early 1970s with a good camera and an eye for photographing the passing parade, and freely gave her photographs for publication to the Around Kitsilano community newspaper and, later, to me.

Visible on the right-hand side of the above photo, are porch posts from a cottage, actually one of three BC Mills Model J prefab cottages that faced Yew Street. At the time, this corner was part of a dense little beach community—on a 100-foot-square lot, there stood the apartment building, the three BC Mills cottages facing Yew Street, plus two more that faced onto the lane! Anne recalled that a private lending library charging 10 cents a book operated from one of the cottages.

The strategic corner tenant of the apartment building has been a Starbucks for many recent years.

Courtesy Hal Kalman, Exploring Vancouver, 1978 (p. 198)

Ken Terriss was an architect with a deft touch who made most of his living working independently with small residential commissions. He designed his own house on Ogden in 1971 and fitted it into the vintage streetscape. In Exploring Vancouver, Hal Kalman described the house as “exuberantly imaginative” and noted that the “angle of the plan exploits the spectacular mountain views.” “Despite the house’s explicit modernity,” he wrote, “it respects the size and scale of its older neighbours.” The house next door in the photo was one of the five “show homes” built by the CPR in 1909 to entice settlers to the area.

Ken and Anne’s house was torn down and replaced by an even more modern house—the kind of glassy box that has become the current style du jour on Kits Point, which is apparently the most expensive “detached house” real estate per square foot in Vancouver.

For more on Kitsilano see: The Kitsilano Laneway House

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