Museum of Vancouver

The Art of George Norris

by Eve Lazarus on June 27, 2020

George Norris was born in Victoria in 1928. He studied at the Vancouver School of Art. His sculptures are spread around Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary, but his most famous is probably The Crab (1967) that sits outside the Museum of Vancouver.

Last week I had the pleasure of writing about Svend-Erik Eriksen and showcasing some of his fabulous photos of early Vancouver. I’ve been running a different photo on my Facebook page each day this week, and this one of the people lined up to catch a bus outside Eatons at Granville and Georgia really caught my eye.

Outside Pacific Centre at Granville and Georgia. Svend-Erik Eriksen photo

There’s so much going on from the clothes of those waiting for the Brill trolley bus to the Clark Kent-style telephone booth. But I was curious about the sculpture shown right of frame.

It was created by George Norris, and if you haven’t heard of him, I’m sure you know his work.

The Crab (1967)

His famous crab sculpture sits outside the Museum of Vancouver and if you spend any time on the North Shore, you’ll recognize his 1971 fountain sculpture at the corner of Capilano Road and Ridgewood Drive.

George Norris sculpture in North Vancouver

He created the concrete frieze outside Postal Station D on Pine Street (1967), Mother and Child at UBC’s East Mall (1955) and a terracotta and brick sculpture outside UBC’s Metallurgy building (1968).

Pacific Centre:

In 1973, he was commissioned to design a sculpture for the newly created plaza outside the TD Bank building at Granville and Georgia.

The polished steel sculpture took him a year to create and was 13.5 metres high–roughly the height of a four-storey building. “It’s an abstract piece and I’ve attempted to give a sense of release to the space that is free and open. I wanted people to see it their own way, so it has no name,” he said at the time.

George Norris’s sculpture outside Pacific Centre, 1986. CVA 784-190

At the time of its conception, Norris had fought for a plaza that also included trees and shrubs. “But they weren’t interested because they wanted to get everybody down into the underground mall like moles,” he told a Sun reporter in 1987.

Scrapped:

George was understandably upset because Pacific Centre had decided his work was “no longer appropriate” for a planned redesign of the plaza. And, the piece which cost more than $30,000 and by then valued at $50,000, was shipped off to Surrey.

Surrey couldn’t figure out what to do with it, so the city took it apart and put it into storage. A few years later, a worker came across it and thinking it was scrap metal sent it off for recycling. When city manager Doug Lychak was called out on it, he told a reporter: “It was an honest mistake.” Or in other words, shit happens.

“The sculpture to me was like a silent song,” said Norris who died in 2013.

For more on George Norris’s work see:

Murray Maisey’s Vancouver as it Was blog
Public Art in Vancouver

Tags George Norris, Museum of Vancouver, Pacific Centre, Postal Station D, Svend-Erik Eriksen

The Collectors

by Eve Lazarus on June 25, 2016

If you think that museums are full of old fossils and boring exhibits, it’s time to get yourself down to All Together Now: Vancouver Collectors and their Worlds.

I went on opening night this week when 20 collectors were hanging out with their obsessions and it’s one of the craziest nights I’ve had in a long time. There were collections of movie posters, pocket watches, pinball machines and action figures mixed in with artificial eye balls, toasters and corsets.

We’re not talking stamp collectors here.

Rob Frith's history of music through posters. Eve Lazarus photo — Rob Frith’s history of music through posters. Eve Lazarus photo

Exhibit curator, Viviane Gosselin came up with the idea. She told me she sent out a call to various collectors about 18 months ago. “I wanted to be blown away,” she says. And she was.

When you walk into the exhibit you hit Angus Bungay, the action figure collector. Viviane recreated his own room.

“We know that collections are conversation pieces,” she says. “I wanted conversations about the history of disability, conversations about food security–that’s why we have a seed collector.”

Harold Steeves, a descendant from the pioneer Steveston family, collects heirloom vegetable seeds.

Harold Steeves (left) collects seeds. Eve Lazarus photo

“The history of disability is something that fascinates me and I wanted to work with David Moe who collects vintage artificial limbs,” she says. “We are trained not to look and stare at people wearing prostheses and this is the exhibition that says stare all you want.”

David Moe's vintage prosthetic collection. Eve Lazarus photo — David Moe’s vintage prosthetic collection. Eve Lazarus photo

Maurice Guibord has close to 5,000 pieces in his Expo 67 collection. He was 13 when the fair was staged in Montreal and he says it opened up the world for him. “It truly changed my life,” he says.

Maurice Guibord and Melanie Talkington. Jason Vanderhill photo

Maurice is placed between Melanie Talkington, a woman who collects corsets and Willow Yamauchi, a journalist with the CBC, who collects Drag Queen outfits, particularly those that relate to her father’s group the Bovines. Willow’s dad “Hydrangea Bovine,” performed in Vancouver in the ‘80s. She says she was too young to see them perform, but the Queens used to take her sister shopping. “My sister had really big feet so they took her shoe shopping so they could buy stilettos.”

Willow Yamauchi. Rebecca Blissett photo.

Neil Whaley tells me he still remembers the first time he collected, it was 16 years ago and it was a vintage glass Christmas parasol wrapped in wire that cost about $40.

“I was sitting on a bus in San Francisco, my heart was pounding with excitement,” he says. “it was a real adrenaline rush.” The buzz didn’t last though. Neil has since swapped Christmas ornaments for Vancouver items like the 1920s beach umbrella that says “Read the Daily Province,” pictured below.

“Yesterday I met this guy who collects bras,” Viviane tells me. “It took me back a little bit, but now I’m thinking how would I display a hundred bras? We could do the history of fashion through bras.”

I can’t wait for the next one.

Tags All together now: Vancouver collectors and their worlds; Rob Frith, Angus Bungay, David Moe, Harold Steeves, Maurice Guibord, Melanie Talkington, Museum of Vancouver, Neil Whaley, the Bovines, Viviane Gosselin, Willow Yamauchi

Foncie’s North Vancouver Connection

by Eve Lazarus on May 28, 2016

When Foncie Pulice was 21 in 1934, he quit house painting and went to work for Joe Iaci and his street photography company Kandid Kamera.

Foncie, to my knowledge, never crossed the bridge or took the ferry to North Vancouver—at least not for his work. He did capture many of our most colourful citizens. A street photographer who worked mostly on Hastings and Granville Streets, he photographed people out shopping, going to a show, or on their way to work.

He created over 15 million images with his home made camera.

Janet Turner has curated a small exhibition at the Community History Centre in Lynn Valley from photos from the collection.

Foncie photos aren’t dated unless the recipient writes on the back, so the time period is mostly a good guess, but that’s part of the fun.

Gertie Wepsala:

Gertie Wepsala was a Canadian Olympic Ski Champion. She married Al Beaton, a Sports Hall of Famer for the Canadian Olympic Basketball team in 1940 and 1941. Al helped develop Grouse Mountain Resorts and built the world’s first double chairlift from the top of Skyline Drive. He later managed Grouse Mountain. Both he and Gertie qualified for the Olympics, but the games were cancelled during the war years.

The Fromme Sisters:

There’s a photo of the three Fromme sisters—Vera, Julia and Margaret—spending a day on the town; one of a young Walter Draycott, and another of his friend Tom Menzies, the curator at the Museum of Vancouver in the ‘40s.

Like the Fromme family, Draycott was a North Vancouver pioneer, he has a street named after him, and his statue sits in the little square at the corner of Lynn Valley Road and Mountain Highway.

Walter Draycott. Eve Lazarus photo, 2016

Marie Desimone:

Marie Desimone, a shipyard worker is captured on the way to catch the ferry to work at the Burrard Dry Dock.

Bette and Bob Booth:

Bette Booth is photographed with her husband Bob, an architect who built his own West Coast modern home near Capilano River. Bob worked on both the Burrard Dry Dock and Westminster Abbey in Mission.

Jack Cash, a prolific photographer himself, and son of the formidable Gwen Cash, who appears in Sensational Victoria, is shown in a photo with his oldest son and wife Aileen (Binns).

Jennie and Eva Conroy:

Eva and her sister Jennie Conroy are photographed shortly before Jennie’s murder in 1944.

When Foncie retired in November of 1979 he told a Province reporter that when he started as a 20-year-old back in 1934 there were six companies in Vancouver. Street photography, he said, really started to take off during the war. “At one time, I was taking 4,000 to 5,000 pictures every day,” he told the reporter.

Millions of photos were thrown out. “I’d keep them for a year, then throw them out. I realize now I should have saved them but it’s too late.”

Foncie Pulice died in 2003 at the age of 88.

Repurposing Vancouver’s Icons–The Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret

by Eve Lazarus on April 19, 2014

You would think that if a couple of young entrepreneurs wanted to bring business to the Downtown east side, one that offered a safe haven from the streets, served healthy, affordable food, and breathed life back into an old icon, the City and the myriad of agencies that have made an industry out of the poor and troubled would be there to help.

Well no, they’re not.

109 East Hastings Street — John Atkin and Malcolm Hassin outside the former Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret

Andrew Turner, 33, and Malcolm Hassin, 30, opened SBC Restaurant last December on East Hastings, near Main Street. They tell me it’s the only indoor skateboard park in Vancouver.

The building has great vibes. As the Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret, the outside of the building used to have an 800-pound neon sign featuring a Buddha with a jiggling belly. The plan, says Malcolm is to get the restaurant back up and running, and grow fruit and vegetables on the roof of the building. They want to bring live music back to the venue.

The Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret was an integral part of Vancouver’s music scene from 1952 until the early 1990s.

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation named the building one of Vancouver’s 125 places that matter last year, and according to the heritage plaque, in the ‘50s it was the Smilin’ Buddha Dine & Dance. In the ‘60s it was part of the touring soul and rock music circuit, and in the late ‘70s it became part of the punk and alternative music scene.

Jimi Hendrix played there, so did Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, DOA and Jefferson Airplane. 54-40 named their 1994 release after the place, bought the sign and restored it.

The building has sat derelict for the last 20-odd years, another blight on the DTES. It’s still no beauty queen, but give the current business owners a break and that will also change.

When I was there on Thursday there was a steady stream of mainly young male customers. Malcolm says that customers range from eight to 56, and there’s a bunch of “older skater dudes” in their 50s that come once a week, plus a lot of people from the film industry.

Like everything in the building, the skateboard ramp is completely salvaged and repurposed. The ramp is part Expo 86, part donation from skateboarding rock star Kevin Harris, and partly built from several ramps scavenged from various eastside backyards.

BC Hydro wants $30,000 from the guys for an immediate upgrade.

The City is jerking them around about a business licence and stopped them serving food. It’s bureaucracy at its stupidest and I bet the Buddha’s smilin’.

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