Nanaimo Museum Archives

I’ve been working on a true crime/history podcast for the last couple of months based on my book Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator. My original thought was that it would be a great way to reuse some of the research I do for my books, and it is, but it’s become a bit of an obsession, and I plan to do a future series on Cold Case Vancouver, where I can weave in many of the interviews that I conducted with family, friends, and law enforcement over the years.

Vance in his lab, now the Vancouver Police Museum and Archives building on East Cordova Street.

The learning curve is huge and my podcasts are a work in progress. I’m learning to write for the ear, and I’ve spent dozens of hours watching YouTube videos to teach myself Audacity, the free audio software program, so I can produce the show myself.

12-episodes:

There will be 12 episodes in this first series, published every second Friday. Each one follows a major crime that Vance helped to solve using cutting-edge forensics during his 42-year-career.

Vance’s exploits frequently appeared in “true crime” detective magazines

I’ve tried to show how the social forces of the time impacted the crime. For instance, Vance’s work took him all around the province and up into the Yukon in what is one of the most interesting periods in British Columbia’s history. Vance started work for the city of Vancouver in 1907, four months before anti-Asian riots swept through the city. He worked through the crime-ridden Depression and two world wars, and he was employed by two of the most corrupt police chiefs in the history of the Vancouver Police Department.

Vance’s work turned him into a celebrity, and he became known as the Sherlock Holmes of Canada in the press.

Much of the information came from the Vancouver Sun, Province, Vancouver News Herald, and the World. Most of the quotes are from Coroner’s Inquests, but the bulk of the information (including the clippings shown in the post) came from the personal files of Inspector John F.C.B. Vance that were discovered in a garage on Gabriola Island by one of Vance’s grandchildren when I was doing the research for the book in 2016.

The first episode: The Mysterious Disappearance of Clara Millard, takes place in Vancouver in 1914.

With Aimee Greenaway, Nanaimo Mysteries curatorAimee Greenaway was reading Blood, Sweat, and Fear when she came across George Hannay, a safe cracker from Nanaimo. She’d heard a story about the former BC Provincial police officer turned criminal, but this was the first time she’d seen evidence of his crimes.

Aimee thought Hannay’s story would make a great inclusion in the museum’s new exhibit—Nanaimo Mysteries.

The exhibit opened February 16, and my friend (and book editor) Susan Safyan and I went over to check it out. It’s the first time I’ve been to the Nanaimo Museum, and it blew me away.

Inspector Vance, the subject of Blood, Sweat, and Fear and founder of the Vancouver Police Museum’s building on East Cordova Street, gets a starring role. Vance was known as the “Sherlock Holmes of Canada” in the media at the time, and in 1934 there were seven attempts against his life. The last and most brutal was an attempt to blind him with acid and stop him from testifying against Hannay in court. The attack was thought to be instigated by Hannay—at least the note left in Vance’s garage was signed “Hannay’s pals”— (apparently criminals weren’t too smart back then either). The attack on Vance delayed the trial, but went ahead a few weeks later with the Inspector under police guard.

Vance linked Hannay to the robbery through trace evidence. But even though fibres found at the scene were from Hannay’s clothing and a splinter in his coat matched a floor board, the jury was unable to reach a decision because the foreman—a friend of Hannay’s—refused to bring in a guilty verdict.

The material for this chapter and the archival material that Aimee has curated for the display, was found in the garage of one of Vance’s grandsons, in 2016 while I was researching the book. He found several cardboard boxes filled with photos, newspaper clippings, forensic materials and case notes predating 1950. After the book was finished, the Vance family donated everything to the Vancouver Police Museum.

This is the first time any of these documents have been displayed, and there’s some intriguing, material including a letter that Hannay wrote to Vance’s boss in an attempt to discredit him. Aimee has also uncovered Hannay’s connection to Albert Planta, a corrupt senator from Nanaimo.

Nanaimo, it turns out, is quite mysterious. The exhibit has a section on hauntings and ghosts, another on murders and missing children, the red-light district and the infamous Brother X11, who started a cult in 1927 until 1932, when he and Madame Zee skipped town with donations from their wealthy followers.

The exhibit runs through until September 2, and if it’s your first time, there’s plenty of other things there to keep you fascinated, including the mystery of a samurai sword dug up in downtown Nanaimo in the late 1800s.

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