Percy Williams

Fire takes out King Edward High School

by Eve Lazarus on June 18, 2022

On June 19, 1973, a three-alarm fire broke out at the old King Edward High School at West 12th and Oak Street. The building was destroyed, but remnants remain on the old site, now part of Vancouver General Hospital.

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Designed by William T. Whiteway:

William T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower, designed the school in the neoclassical style and topped it off with a central cupola. It was the first secondary school built south of False Creek, opened in 1905 and was officially renamed King Edward five years later.

King Edward High — Courtesy Andrea Nicholson

Impressive Alumni:

The list of King Ed alumni includes an impressive array of Vancouver luminaries. There is philanthropist Cecil Green and broadcasters Jack Cullen and Red Robinson. Other notables to pass through the school’s corridors are Dal Grauer, president and chair of BC Power Corporation and BC Electric; Nathan Nemetz, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of BC; Grace McCarthy, politican; Yvonne De Carlo, actor; Jack Wasserman, newspaper reporter; Jamie Reid, poet; educator Dr Annie B. Jamieson and Olympic athlete Percy Williams.

The King Ed track team in 1926. Percy in the middle row, third from left. Courtesy Andrea Nicholson.

In 1962 King Ed became an adult education centre and the kids transitioned to Eric Hamber, says Andrea Nicholson, alumni coordinator. Vancouver City College took over the King Ed building in 1965. David Byrnes attended first-year university there in the late 1960s. “One day when we were goofing around my friend Malcolm told me he’d found a way into the attic,” says David. “I remember climbing up to look out the cupola and finding a rifle range.”

Taught Shooting:

Andrea confirms there was a rifle range and students from Cecil Rhodes and Henry Hudson elementary schools used to train there. Andrea’s mum Elizabeth (MacLaine) Lowe taught at the school and later became department head for business education. She was supposed to teach night school on the day the school burned down. “I remember as a child going up into the turret, and I remember when they pulled that school apart the dividers for the bathroom stalls were solid marble,” says Andrea, who could see the flames from the grounds of Cecil Rhodes Elementary at 14^th and Spruce.

Building Sold:

Vancouver General Hospital bought the King Edward building and land in 1970, though it remained an educational institution until the fire. Now, all that’s left is the stone wall at Oak and West 12^th Avenue, a stained-glass window installed in Vancouver Community College’s Broadway campus, and, in the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre that replaced the school, there is a plaque, a large photograph of the original school and a circle of yellow tile in the lobby outlining the original King Ed High School.

King Ed Plaque

The wall received a Places that Matter plaque in 2012. Former King Ed teacher, and vice-president Annie B. Jamieson (1907-1927) had an elementary school named after her.

Tags Andrea Nicholson, Annie B. Jamieson, Cecil Green, Dal Grauer, Elizabeth Lowe, Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre, Grace McCarthy, Jack Cullen, Jack Wasserman, King Edward High School, Nathan |Nemetz, Percy Williams, Red Robinson, Vancouver Community College, Vancouver General Hospital, William T. Whiteway, Yvonne de Carlo

When Harry met Percy

by Eve Lazarus on May 29, 2021

Percy Williams held onto his record for the 200-metre dash for 32 years—when Harry Jerome set a new record in 1959. Bill Cunningham photo, Province, May 30, 1959

Harry Jerome and Percy Williams were two of the most remarkable sprinters in Vancouver’s history.

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

Former Province sports reporter Brian Pound tells me that the first time the two officially met was at a photo shoot that he had set up at a clothing store near the insurance office where Percy worked. “Harry broke Percy’s long time 200 yard record and just missed his 100 yard mark,” says Brian. “The photo of the two of them was taken by famed Province photographer Bill Cunningham. They are holding my story of the meet.”

Harry breaks record:

Harry broke Percy’s 200-yard mark set three decades ago at the 1959 Vancouver and District Inter-High meet.

Harry is well known—his name adorns recreation centres and his statue is in Stanley Park. And at one time he was the fastest man alive, setting a total of seven world records, Percy, who before Harry came along was the fastest man alive, remains a bit of an enigma. In these days of super-charged Olympic athletes, he was truly unique.

Percy Williams was 18 when he was “discovered” while attending King Edward High School. Shown here in 1928 CVA-99-3638

Grew up in Mount Pleasant:

Percy Williams was born in 1908 and spent a good chunk of his life on West 12^th Avenue in Mount Pleasant. He was a scrawny kid, standing just 5’6” and weighing 110 pounds. He had a bad heart from childhood rheumatic fever

Percy’s coach, Bob Granger, told a reporter that he took Percy on after he tied a race with his sprint champion in 1926. “It violated every known principle of the running game,” he said. “He ran with his arms glued to his sides. It actually made me tired to watch him.” Granger had interesting training techniques. His idea of a warm-up was having Percy lie on the dressing table under a pile of blankets. Another was making him run flat out into a mattress propped up against a wall. Unorthodox maybe, but Percy kept winning.

Brings home Olympic medals:

By 1928, Percy had bulked up to 125 pounds. That was the year he brought home two gold medals for the 200 and 100 metre sprints at the Amsterdam Olympics. The newspapers dubbed him “Peerless Percy,” and he returned to Vancouver to a welcome from 40,000 people. Kids got the day off school and one firm brought out an “Our Percy” chocolate bar.

Percy was a reluctant star, and when a leg injury ended his track career in 1932, he seemed relieved. He told a reporter: “Oh, I was so glad to get out of it all.” By 1935, the public had forgotten all about him, and he soldered quietly on as an insurance salesman.

Percy held onto his record for the 200-metre dash for 32 years—when Harry Jerome set a new record in 1959. The tragedy was both men died in 1982. Harry, 42, from a brain aneurysm just eight days after Percy, suffering from arthritis, shot himself in the head in his West End bathtub.

In November 2012 friends and former students of Valerie Jerome dedicated a bench in her honour next to her brother Harry’s statue in Stanley Park. Photos courtesy Valerie Jerome

Tags harry jerome, Percy Williams, valerie jerome

Percy Williams: World’s Fastest Human

by Eve Lazarus on November 29, 2014

Percy Williams was the world’s fastest human for a time. In these days of super-charged Olympic athletes, he was truly unique.

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

Percy Williams, world's fastest human — 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games, CVA 99-3633

King Edward High School:

There’s a young, very thin Percy Williams in a picture of the King Edward High School track team of 1926. Williams had taken up running two years earlier when his gym teacher noticed how much faster he was than the other boys his age and bullied him into joining the track team. Two years later, he brought home two gold medals from the Olympics and became a local hero.

Percy was born in 1908 and spent a good chunk of his life on West 12th Avenue in Mount Pleasant. He was a scrawny kid, standing just five foot six and weighing 110 pounds. He had a bad heart from childhood rheumatic fever.

He was 18 when he was “discovered” while attending King Edward High School.

Coach Bob Granger:

His coach, Bob Granger, later told a reporter that he took Percy on after he tied a race with his sprint champion in 1926. “It violated every known principle of the running game,” he said. “He ran with his arms glued to his sides. It actually made me tired to watch him.”

Granger had interesting training techniques. His idea of a warm up was having Percy lie on the dressing table under a pile of blankets. Another was making him run flat out into a mattress propped up against a wall.

Unorthodox maybe, but Percy kept winning.

By 1928, he’d bulked up to 125 pounds. That was the year he brought home two gold medals for the 200 and 100 metre sprints at the Amsterdam Olympics.

Olympic Hero:

The newspapers dubbed him “Peerless Percy,” and he returned to Vancouver to a welcome from 40,000 people. Kids got the day off school and one firm came out with an “Our Percy” chocolate bar.

He was a reluctant star, and when a leg injury ended his track career in 1932, he seemed relieved. He told a reporter: “Oh, I was so glad to get out of it all.”

By 1935, the public had forgotten all about him, and city directories show him working as a salesman for Armstrong and Laing. Later he ran an insurance business.

Percy held onto his record for the 200-metre dash for 32 years—when another Vancouver boy, Harry Jerome set a new record in 1959.

In 1982, suffering from arthritis, he shot himself in the head in his West End bathtub. He was 74.

Tags 196 West 12th Avenue, Bob Granger, harry jerome, Percy Williams

Lani Russwurm’s Awesome Vancouver

by Eve Lazarus on January 25, 2014

When Lani Russwurm jumped online in 2008 he was one of the first to write about history in his blog Past Tense. The blog morphed into a weekly writing gig with Bob Kronbauer’s Vancouver is Awesome and last year he published Vancouver was Awesome: a curious pictorial history, a hugely popular local history book which has sat on the best seller list for the past several weeks.

“I did my Masters degree at SFU on a local subject,” he says. “I’d find out all these interesting things that were not directly related to my thesis, but I collected them anyway and after I was done I had all this material that I wanted to share, so I started blogging.”

There are a lot of great stories in Vancouver was Awesome, but one that caught my attention was a photo of 500 Alexander Street, a one-time brothel built and owned by Dolly Darlington in 1912. For years it was the headquarters for the British Seaman’s Mission and today it’s run by the Atira Women’s Resource Society as housing for at-risk teens.

What I learned from Lani is that back in the 1950s, the building also played a role in Vancouver’s drug history as the mailing address for Al Hubbard, an eccentric American millionaire with a penchant for LSD. Hubbard, writes Lani, became the biggest North American supplier of LSD through his Uranium Corporation. Hubbard apparently turned a number of people onto LSD including Aldous Huxley, the head of Vancouver’s Holy Rosary Cathedral, and then partnered up with Ross MacLean, a high profile psychiatrist who for a time owned Casa Mia and ran the Hollywood Hospital in New Westminster.

There’s a great picture of Harry Gardiner “The Human Fly” climbing the Sun Tower in 1918, and a photo of a 17-year-old Yvonne de Carlo with a boxing kangaroo. Lani tells the story of Percy Williams, a skinny little guy, who for 11 years, was the fastest man alive; and the story of George Paris, a one-time heavyweight boxing champion of Western Canada, personal trainer to Jack Johnson, boxing trainer for the Vancouver Police Department and a jazz musician at the Patricia Hotel.

When he’s not blogging or writing books, Lani lives on the edge of Chinatown with his daughter Sophia and works at a DTES hotel for Atira.

Tree Stump House 1900s, now 4230 Prince Edward Street in Mount Pleasant

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