Stanley Park Train Archives

The second Doors Open Vancouver is coming up this Saturday October 3, and will give you a behind-the-scenes look at 18 city-owned buildings. Since you won’t have time to see all of them – here’s my top six:

1. Vancouver Fire and Rescue Training Centre:

Go see the city’s only burn building (meaning one that’s lit on fire), find out about the heavy urban search and rescue team, and of course, check out the hot firefighters.

Tactical

2. Vancouver Police Department’s Tactical Training Centre:

Where cops go to fire guns and learn other skills (Waterboarding 101 anyone?)

Photo courtesy greenbuildingaudiotours.com

3. Stanley Park Train

The Stanley Park Miniature Train Yard—It has been around since 1947, and should be on the must-do list of any visit to Vancouver (with or without kids). It may even have its Halloween clothes on.

Stanley Park Train

4. Carnegie Community Centre:

Built in 1903 as the Carnegie Library, now operating as the Carnegie Community Centre at Main and Hastings. Right next door are some of the cleanest washrooms I’ve ever seen. You could eat off the floor.

CVA Bu P116.1

5. The Orpheum Theatre:

For all the different architectural influences, and because it wasn’t demolished

Dan Rickard photo. www.danrickard.ca

5. Vancouver City Hall

Go just to see our Mayor’s ceremonial office and council chambers. Who knows you may even have a strange encounter with the mayor himself.

Vancouver City Hall from Yukon, 1937, Leonard Frank photo CVA City P21

Sharp eyed-readers will notice that this post was written last year for the first Doors Open Vancouver. I’ve updated a little, but overall, I stand by my choices. If you got to these ones last year check out the other 12 on display at Doors Open Vancouver 2015

I met with Will Woods for coffee last week. Will is a young Brit who moved to Vancouver six years ago with his wife and little boy, and like a lot of us transplants, fell deeply in love with the history of the city.

You may have seen him hunched over the card files at the Vancouver Public Library’s special collections, checking out the journals at Vancouver Archives, or wandering the alleyways of the Downtown Eastside.

“I met historians, I scoured old newspapers, I walked every street in downtown. I had a mission to discover the history of the city that isn’t found in the guidebooks, that isn’t taught in the schools,” he says. “There were stories of corruption, rioting, gangsterism, smuggling and vice.”

He was hooked.

Will chucked in his job as a risk management consultant for Deloitte and founded Forbidden Vancouver, a company that leaves Grouse Mountain and the Suspension bridge to the tour buses, and looks at the speakeasies, opium dens, crooked cops and bootleggers of Vancouver’s shady past.

Customers for his 90 minute tours range from 22 to 75.

What I find interesting is that Will isn’t going after tourists for his tours, although he’s not knocking them back either, but he’s honing in on the locals.

It’s a smart move. I’m always surprised at how many Vancouverites have never heard of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen gardens, visited the Space Centre or taken the Stanley Park train (you don’t need kids for this).

Will hasn’t just researched the city though. He took six months of acting school, studied body language, and created a role for himself—an investigative newspaper reporter.

While most tours are educational based and led by university students, Will’s tours are themed. His current tour is built around prohibition—(1916 to 1920ish). Eventually he wants to run 10 to 12 themed tours a week, he’s currently developing one on crime, and fortunately for him, there was no shortage of it.

“The toughest thing is knowing what to leave out of the tour,” he says.

Will’s tours run every Friday and Saturday night and wind their way through Chinatown, Gastown and the downtown area. You can book online at www.forbiddenvancouver.ca

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