North Vancouver Museum & Archives

Bring Back the Streetcar!

by Eve Lazarus on April 29, 2017

Streetcars operated in Vancouver from 1891 to 1955

Shocked faces of people riding the streetcar as they get their first look at the new Vancouver Brill (trolley) bus in 1949. Photo courtesy Angus McIntyre.

This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Brakes fail:

On September 3, 1906 the first North Vancouver streetcar began its journey at the ferry dock, travelled up Lonsdale and stopped at 12^th Street. Jack Kelly was the conductor aboard that inaugural run. Everything went smoothly on the way up, but on the way back down, the brakes failed and Car 25 came crashing into another streetcar waiting at the bottom. Three years later, Kelly was at the controls of Car 62 when it headed down Lonsdale to meet the 4:00 p.m. ferry. Once again, the brakes failed. With 15 passengers screaming in fright, including the wife of the North Vancouver mayor, the car careened down the hill and off the end of the dock. Kelly leaped from the car, breaking his leg. The rest of the passengers were fished out of the harbour.

Streetcar #120 going south on Quebec Street into the car barn on Main Street. Photo courtesy Friends of the Olympic Line .

Dangers of early street cars aside, I’d love to see some return. At its height, there was a streetcar system that operated in Vancouver, New Westminster and North Vancouver where three lines operated up Lonsdale, Capilano and Grand Boulevard, later extending to Lynn Valley.

Car 153:

Car 153 was built by the J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia and motored up and down Lonsdale Avenue for 35 years. Designed as a “double-ender,” when she reached the Windsor Road terminus at the top of Lonsdale the motorman and the conductor switched places for the return trip.

When North Van’s streetcars were discontinued in 1947, most of their parts were sold off for scrap, while a few became summer cottages or farm buildings. Car 153 survived first as a motel cabin near Mission, then as a restaurant in Chilliwack, and, before she was rediscovered in 1982, a chicken coop on a Fraser Valley farm. Car 153 was restored by the North Vancouver Museum & Archives and is part of the display in the new Museum on Esplanade.

The interurban running southbound on Commercial at East 2nd in 1950. Photo courtesy Friends of the Olympic Line

Last June, councillor Don Bell’s appeal to bring back the streetcar got promptly flattened. One councillor called it: “pursuing a classic boondoggle,” telling the North Shore News: “Put yourself in Translink’s shoes: if they give this to us, how many municipalities in Metro Vancouver are going to be right at the door asking for exactly the same thing?”

Yes, god forbid Vancouver should have a transit system that makes sense. We called them trams in Melbourne where I grew up, and we took them everywhere. Now they are free in the city centre, and as well as being an amazing tourist attraction, they just make good sense from a transportation and clean energy point of view.

A group called Friends of the Olympic Line Vancouver Civic Railway is lobbying to bring back streetcars to Vancouver. Check out their Facebook page

Tags Don Bell, Friends of the Olympic Line, J.G. Brill Company, Jack Kelly, North Vancouver Museum & Archives, Philadelphia, Streetcar 153, Streetcar 25, Streetcar 62, Vancouver Civic Railway

Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders

by Eve Lazarus on October 9, 2015

Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders

Cold Case Vancouver

Jennie Eldon Conroy:

A few days after Cold Case Vancouver was finished and sent off for editing; I received an email from Daien Ide at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives. Daien had come into the possession of a family album with the owner’s name, Miss J. Conroy, inscribed in the inside front cover. Daien was intrigued and found out that 24-year-old Jennie Conroy was murdered in 1944, and that her murder remained unsolved.

I wrote up a blog post about Daien and the album, and got another email, this time from Jennie’s niece. She told me that Jennie had given birth to a daughter a few months before she was murdered, and that Mary was alive and well and living in New Zealand. Mary has spent years trying to fill in the details of her mother and of her adoption, of her father and of her mother’s murder, and she generously shared that information with me.

Thanks to my understanding editor, Susan Safyan, Jennie is now part of my book, and one of the hundreds of murders that remain unsolved in Metro Vancouver, some dating back several decades.

Jennie Conroy photo album — The photo album came via the West Vancouver Archives. Eve Lazarus photo

The Babes in the Woods:

I’ve included the story of the Babes in the Woods—the two small skeletons discovered in Stanley Park in 1953. The story has taken on almost mythical proportions, and the case offers a fascinating insight into how investigative techniques have evolved and how the development of DNA analysis changed the face of the investigation.

Province photo, March 20, 1998 - Babes in the Woods — Province photo, March 20, 1998 – Babes in the Woods

The other stories likely won’t be as familiar. The women, children and men that I’ve written about are essentially invisible, forgotten by everyone except their family and friends. I wanted to write a book that would help to change that, to tell the stories of their lives, not just of their murders, and I wanted to look at their murders through a historical filter.

Part history, part true crime:

I think of Cold Case Vancouver as part history book, part crime story, because the events that happened between 1944 and 1996 are often intertwined with the times. For instance, in the process of writing this book, a lot of people told me how much safer Vancouver was in the good old days. It’s not true. Vancouver had a violent streak and a string of sexual predators. The city could be a dangerous place, particularly for women, children, immigrants and gay men.

I picked up my first copies of Cold Case Vancouver from my publisher Arsenal Pulp Press on Wednesday, and copies are gradually make their way into bookstores over the next week or so.

I’ve also just launched a FB Page called Cold Case Canada. I’m hoping that it will be a place that people will drop by to discuss these and other cases, maybe add more detail, and perhaps even remember some piece of information that could help the police solve these murders.

Tags Babes in the Woods, book launch, Cold Case Vancouver: the city's most baffling unsolved murders, Daien Ide, Jennie Conroy, North Vancouver Museum & Archives, unsolved murder

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