Tom Carter

The Dupont Street Train Station and the Marco Polo Restaurant

by Eve Lazarus on May 14, 2022

Long before the Vancouver Film School occupied the building at East Pender and Columbia Streets, there was a railway station that was later repurposed into the legendary Marco Polo restaurant.

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Sign from the Vancouver, Westminster and Yukon Railway depot, 1979 — The sign stayed on the building until it was demolished in 1983. Angus McIntyre photo, 1979

Train Station:

If you’re walking around Chinatown, you’ll likely notice the four-storey brick building at the corner of East Pender and Columbia Streets, now home to the Vancouver Film School. But if you were to take a stroll down the 100 block of East Pender in the early years of the 20^th Century, you would actually be on busy Dupont Street and you’d find visitors from the U.S. disembarking at the Vancouver, Westminster and Yukon Rail depot.

The VW&YR depot on Dupont street in 1915 — VWYR depot on Dupont Street (now east Pender Street) in 1915. Vancouver Archives

Several hundred people came to see the first fast train leave for Seattle on March 20, 1905 and cross the new trestle bridge that connected the north and south sides of False Creek. The last train left on May 31, 1917 and the building turned into the Hu Ye Restaurant and later the Forbidden City. The last and most famous tenant was the Marco Polo Restaurant.

The Ghost Sign:

Before the building could be destroyed in 1983, heritage advocate Arthur Irving made a deal with the demolition crew and pried 88 bricks off the wall that still had the original railway sign VW&Y To Trains printed in black letters. He had the bricks mounted in a box to preserve them, and in doing so, saved one of the few pieces that remain of the Vancouver Westminster and Yukon Railway that operated between 1904 and 1908.

Tom Carter and Arthur Irving with the vintage railway sign in 2012. Andrew Martin photo

After Arthur died in 2018, Tom was helping to clear out his house when he came across the sign and the blueprints for the Great Northern Station built in 1919. “We found them in Arthur’s basement, in a bathtub salvaged from the 1916 Hotel Vancouver,” says Tom.

Marco Polo restaurant, 90 East Pender Street, Vancouver — The Marco Polo occupied 90 East Pender Street for decades before moving to North Van in 1982. Tom Carter collection

The brick sign and the blueprints are with the West Coast Railway Association in Squamish. The bathtub is in Arthur’s next-door neighbour’s garden.

Goad's map — Goad’s Map of 1912 showing the train depot. With thanks to Tom Carter

Tags Angus McIntyre, Arthur Irving, Forbidden City, Hu Ye Restaurant, Marco Polo restaurant, Tom Carter, Vancouver Westminster and Yukon Rail

Halloween Special 2021

by Eve Lazarus on October 15, 2021

Halloween is my favourite unofficial holiday of the year, so it was especially rewarding to end Season 2 of Cold Case Canada with a Halloween Special. I reached out to five fabulous story tellers to tell me their favourite ghost stories—stories that take place in some of Metro Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhoods.

Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck by Eve Lazarus, coming April 2025. Preorder through Arsenal Pulp Press, or your favourite indie bookstore

Will Woods, courtesy Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours

The Chinatown Ghost:

Will Woods, founder and chief storyteller at Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours tells us about his encounter with the Chinatown ghost. He also tell us what to expect on the Lost Souls of Gastown Tour including the unsolved murder of John Bray.

Bill Allman is the former theatre manager at the Vogue, one of Vancouver’s most haunted venues. Tom Carter photo.

East Georgia Street Murder:

Bill Allman is president of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, owner of Famous Artist Limited and a recovering Vancouver lawyer. He tells us about the ghost that haunted an East Georgia Street house after a violent shooting and murder of Vancouver police chief in 1917.

Michael Kluckner’s 1984 painting from his book *Vancouver: The Way it Was* depicts the shooting and murder of Police Chief Malcolm MacLennan and George Robb, 9 in 1917.

Haunted Piano:

Tom Carter is a Vancouver artist, historian and musician who shares his Vancouver loft with a haunted piano.

Tom Carter with his haunted 1865 Steinway piano. Dan Chambers photo.

Chinatown Nightclub:

When Tom was researching the Mandarin Garden (1936-1952) for his gorgeous painting, he found that the Chinatown nightclub was once owned by Chan See Wong Fong. After he died on the premises, staff began experiencing strange things. They heard voices, taps turned on by themselves, electrical devices became unplugged and there was a disembodied hand.

Mandarin Garden ca.1950s, Tom Carter painting 2021

Fort Langley Cemetery:

Aman Johal is a heritage interpreter at Fort Langley National Historic Site and he’s a storyteller for Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours. You can catch Aman live guiding the Grave Tale Walking tour between October 15 and November 7 and visit William Henry Emptage’s and his wife Louisa’s gravesites.

Aman Johan, courtesy Langley Advance Times

Riverview Hospital for the criminally insane:

Greg Mansfield is the author of Ghosts of Vancouver, the website and book. He takes us to Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, a now abandoned former asylum for the criminally insane.

CTV’s St. John Alexander and Greg Mansfield, October 2021. Eve Lazarus photo

For more ghostly stories check out these podcast episodes:

S1 E9 Three Ghost Stories and a Murder

Victoria’s Ghost

SHOW NOTES

Sponsored by Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours.

Music: October 31st by Myuu darkpiano.com (shortened version)

Buy me a coffee promo: McBride Communications and Media

Tags Aman Johal, Bill Allman, Chinatown Vancouver, Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours, Fort Langley National Historic Site, Ghosts of Vancouver, Greg Mansfield, Mandarin Gardens, Riverview Hospital, Tom Carter, Vancouver Police Museum and Archives, Will Woods

Whose Chinatown?

by Eve Lazarus on March 20, 2021

The Wong Wing family on Keefer Street. Yucho Chow photo, 1914. Yucho Chow Community Archive

I had the pleasure of visiting Griffin Art Projects with Tom Carter last Saturday. It’s a gallery of sorts hidden in an industrial building on Welch Street in North Vancouver. The exhibit features stories, photos, videos and paintings about Chinatowns in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, many from private collections.

The Band at the W.K. Gardens, ca.1950. Tom Carter collection

Some of Tom’s personal collection is featured and includes everything from scrapbooks from the Marco Polo, to postcards from Ming’s and Bamboo Terrace in the late ‘50s to souvenir photos from Mandarin Gardens and Forbidden City. These Chinatown nightclubs offered revues, dance bands and floor shows.

Tom Carter with some of his collection from the Marco Polo. Eve Lazarus photo.

Emily Carr’s sketch of a Chinese boy in 1908 is included as is a terrific display from the Vancouver School of Art. Yitkon Ho was in the first graduating class in 1929 along with Beatrice Lennie, Vera Weatherbie (Fred Varley’s young mistress), Fred Amess and Irene Hoffar. There are also some sketches and information about Eugene Bond, a Chinese student and one of two Asian models at the art school.

There are also some fabulous photos by Fred Herzog and Jim Wong-Chu, several of which I was seeing for the first time. And, Yucho Chow also has photos ranging from the Dominion Produce Company in the 1930s and the Ming Wo store in the early 1920s to the wonderful portraits of Chinese families that Catherine Clement drew attention to in her book: Chinatown Through a Wide Lens.

A banner tells the story of Gim Foon Wong. In 2005 when he was 82 he rode his motorcycle to Ottawa with a dozen other bikers in what became known as Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress so he could have a chat with the PM about the Chinese head tax. The banner, which Tom tells me was created by our friend Elwin Xie, was auctioned off at a Montreal dinner to raise enough money so Wong could get home. He received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.

The exhibition runs until May 1. You can book online—Tom and I were the only visitors in our half hour slot which made the whole visit quite magical.

Tags Bamboo Terrace, Elwin Xie, emily carr, Eugene Bond, Forbidden City, Fred Herzog, Gim Foon Wong, Griffin Art Projects, Jim Wong-Chu, Mandarin Gardens, Mings, Tom Carter, Vancouver School of Art, W.K. Gardens, Yitkon Ho, Yucho Chow

Our Missing Heritage: Vancouver’s First Hospital

by Eve Lazarus on June 30, 2018

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

Last week, Michael Kluckner and I were over at Tom Carter’s studio looking out his seventh storey window onto the EasyPark—a cavernous concrete lot that fronts West Pender and takes up the entire city block from Cambie to Beatty Streets.

In 2013, Michael had the dubious honour (my words) of presenting the parking lot with a heritage plaque on behalf of Places That Matter.

He wasn’t recognizing the parking lot of course, but the buildings that were once Vancouver’s first city hospital and included a men’s surgical ward, a maternity ward, a tuberculosis ward, and the city morgue which faced Beatty Street.

Pender and Beatty Street in 1939. Note the Sun Tower left of frame and former Hospital buildings behind. Courtesy Tom Carter

If we’d been looking out Tom’s window back in 1912, we would have had a great view of the courthouse in what’s now Victory Square, the shiny new Dominion Building, and the former city hospital, built in 1888, which according to Michael’s Vancouver: The Way it Was consisted of a compound of brick buildings with wooden balconies set back from the street, flower gardens and a picket fence.

Aerial view of Larwill Park construction, the Sun Tower and the Vancouver hospital buildings. Note the Central School bottom right of frame demolished in 1946. Courtesy Tom Carter

By the turn of the century, the 50-bed hospital was too small for Vancouver’s growing population and a new hospital was built in Fairview in 1906 which became the Vancouver General Hospital as we know it now.

The first city hospital was repurposed into the headquarters for McGill University College (BC). And that’s another interesting story.

A former hospital building in 1949, shortly before it was turned into a parking lot. Courtesy CVA 447.61

In 1899, Vancouver High School joined forces with McGill to offer first year arts courses. Six years later the school moved to fancy new digs at Oak and 12^th Avenue (later renamed King Edward High School), and McGill moved into the former hospital buildings. McGill stayed in the old hospital until 1911 and faded from the landscape after UBC opened in 1915.

The tuberculosis ward, courtesy Tom Carter

JFCB Vance from Blood, Sweat, and Fear had a lab in there from around 1912 when the police station on East Cordova was demolished until the new station opened in 1914. According to City Directories, a former hospital building became the “old people’s home” until 1915 when Social Services (the City Relief and Employment Department) moved in and stayed until the late ’40s.

And just like that it’s a parking lot. 1951 photo courtesy Tom Carter

The city hospital buildings were gone by 1950 and now all that’s left is a plaque affixed to a parking lot.

Top photo: The first Vancouver Hospital in 1902. Courtesy CVA Bu P369

With thanks to Tom Carter for finding all these great photos and to Places That Matter for all the work that they do.

Tags Blood Sweat and Fear, Dominion Building, King Edward High School, Larwill Park, McGill University College BC, Michael Kluckner, Tom Carter, Vancouver City Hospital, Vancouver High School, Vancouver the Way it Was

Saving History: the autographed lights from the Orpheum Theatre

by Eve Lazarus on January 27, 2018

A couple of weeks ago Bill Allman, Tom Carter and I were sipping martinis and discussing bits of history that have been saved from the dumpster. The subject of the rescued lights from the Orpheum Theatre came up, and next thing he knew, Bill had agreed to write this blog.

By Bill Allman

Deep in a haunted basement on West Cordova, below Vancouver curio shop, Salmagundi West, lay a collection of vintage stage lights. I blew the dust off one marked TUTS (for

Theatre Under the Stars) and marveled at the antique design. “There are more.” said my friend – theatre historian and painter extraordinaire, Tom Carter. “Where?” I asked. “The Orpheum. A whole collection. All signed by different stars.”

I let out a low whistle. We emerged from the cavernous cellar, went to the Sylvia Hotel for a drink (or three), and decided that we HAD to see the Orpheum’s treasure trove.

Tom and I were organizing a gala fundraiser and auction for the Friends of the Vancouver Archives to benefit the Hugh Pickett Collection. But that’s another story. This one is about lights – stage lights that had illuminated shows for hundreds of thousands of people.

I am fascinated by objects from great performances by famous people. “Screen used” props, and dog-eared shooting scripts are the only ones I care about; likewise, any piece of stage memorabilia with a genuine connection to a gifted artist. So, when we got access to the Orpheum’s cache of autographed lights, AND a very generous donation from the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame of three of those lights for our auction, we were in seventh heaven.

Three lights went up for auction at the Hugh Pickett Gala in November 2017. Courtesy Christina Potter

There we were, crouched in a room in the Orpheum hidden from public view and illuminated only by a flickering Radio Shack strobe light bouncing off the walls and the tinsel curtain that covered the racks of antique Leko lights. As quickly as we could read the names, we’d call them out with schoolyard excitement. “Tina Turner!”, “Michael Buble!”, “Ray Charles!”. Then we found the three we wanted for the auction – artists that Hugh had presented at one time or another: “Tony Bennett!”, “Victor Borge!”, “And here’s a friend of mine – Jeff Hyslop!”

A light signed by Tony Bennett after a performance at the Orpheum. Courtesy Jason Vanderhill

The lights had almost been lost to time and the dumpster. Another near-tragedy of Vancouver’s urge to purge its past. But eyes that were keen and hearts that long to preserve and celebrate our city’s culture had intervened. The three lights that sold went to homes where their rich history would be appreciated. And the remainder? They rest in a secret room in a famous theatre. And the day will come when they are displayed and perhaps even researched by top people.

Who?

Top people.

Bill Allman is a “recovering lawyer” and instructor of Entertainment Law at UBC. Bill has been a theatre manager (the Vogue), president of Theatre Under the Stars, and a concert promoter and theatre producer through his company, Famous Artists Limited. He is no longer willing to move your piano.

Tags Bill Allman, Hugh Pickett, Orpheum Theatre, Salmagundi West, Sylvia Hotel, Tom Carter, Tony Bennett

Saving History: The Rec Room and the Player Piano

by Eve Lazarus on January 6, 2018

By Michael Kluckner

Michael Kluckner is a writer and artist with a list of books that includes Vanishing Vancouver and Toshiko. His most recent book is a graphic novel called 2050: A Post-Apocalyptic Murder Mystery. He is the president of the Vancouver Historical Society and a member of the city’s Heritage Commission.

We inherited a player piano when we bought our house in 2010. It’s a long story, but in the back of my mind I thought I might want to play it. As it turned out I didn’t, but try to find a new home for an old piano nowadays!

Entertaining in a Western-themed rec room. Published by Canadian Forest Products, 1961. Courtesy Michael Kluckner

Our hundred-year-old Grandview house also contained a postwar classic—a panelled “rec room” in the basement where the piano lived. They were so popular that Canadian Forest Products’ New Westminster plywood division published a plan book in 1961, offering homeowners six themes to choose from—Contemporary, Western, Polynesian, Tavern, (Artist’s) Salon, and Marine. This was an era of casual entertaining at home, dancing to LPs on the hi-fi or watching TV and drinking. Three of the six plans include a bar.

The player piano’s temporary home at Salmagundi West

Our player piano came with dozens of music rolls—popular arrangements of classics and some show tunes like The Sound of Music. As most readers will know, the piano “plays itself,” powered by a “pianist” who pumped on foot pedals, causing the perforated roll to pass over a drum and triggering an ingenious multitude of cogs and arms that made the hammers hit the strings in the correct order.

Musicians Adam Farnsworth and Tom Carter take the player piano for a spin at
Salmagundi. Photo Diane Farnsworth, December 2017.

Player pianos are classic Victoriana, a great example of that era’s fascination with complex gizmos like steam engines. A skilled pianist could actually play accompaniment to the piano-roll tune; more likely, most people pedalled away, watched the keys go up and down, and sang along. It probably made its way to our house in the ’50s.

After years of trying, we had all but given up finding the piano a new home, but then Tom Carter joined the board of the Vancouver Historical Society. Tom is a musician and artist with a keen interest in entertainment history. He came over and saw it, got it playing, hired a rebuilder to fix it up, and said he would love to have it—the only problem being that he already has a grand piano in his home.

No problem, he said, he’d find it a home.

Along the way, Tom researched its history. It’s an Angelus, probably from 1915–20. New, it was worth about $950, or double the price of a Model T Ford and about equivalent to the annual income of a skilled tradesman.

Watch and listen here: tomhighres

Player pianos were the home-entertainment centre of the day, a kind of transition between the skilled pianist (usually a woman) of 19th-century family gatherings to the hi-fi and, in this era, the TV that has now become the home theatre.

At the time of writing, the player piano was living at Salmagundi on West Cordova in Gastown. But last month, after 45 years in business, proprietor Anne Banner had the lease terminated and will be vacating the premises at the end of this month. The piano will be going to another temporary home in White Rock where it will be restored and rebuilt. EL

Tags Angelus player piano, Michael Kluckner, Salmagundi, Tom Carter

The Lost Scrapbooks from the Marco Polo

by Eve Lazarus on July 15, 2017

In 2017, Tom Carter bought scrapbooks from the Marco Polo that were found in a Chinatown dumpster. The club closed in 1983. From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

By Tom Carter

Tom Carter is an artist, a musician, a historian, and a private collector. He has kindly agreed to write a guest blog about one of his most exciting finds.

There are some “holy grails” out there in Vancouver entertainment history—stuff we fantasize about that still exists somewhere. I still can’t believe I landed one of the biggest of them—the owner’s scrapbooks from the Marco Polo!

The Marco Polo, a club deep within Chinatown, was one of Vancouver’s legendary nightclubs. In the ‘60s it was considered one of the “big three” along with The Cave on Hornby and Isy’s Supper Club on Georgia. While posters, cards and ephemera are pretty common from The Cave and Isy’s, the Marco Polo has long been shrouded in mystery.

Over the years there have been rumours of scrapbooks kept by Victor Louie, manager and one of the Louie brothers who owned the club. They had become a legend among collectors like Jason Vanderhill and Jim Wong-Chu who have been hunting them for years.

What we knew was that Victor Louie had loaned the scrapbooks to Jason Karman when he was researching a film about Harvey Lowe in the early 1990s. Lowe was a yo-yo champion, owner of the Smilin’ Buddha and a staple of the Chinatown entertainment scene with connections to the Marco Polo.

After Karman returned the scrapbooks they vanished!

Then, last year, they miraculously resurfaced when a dealer I know bought the scrapbooks from a picker who had pulled them out of the garbage behind a warehouse in Chinatown. (A “picker” is someone who combs through junk in alleys, dumpsters, etc. looking for things of value to sell to antique dealers).

The dealer told me he planned to dismantle the books and sell off the bits—effectively destroying their historical value.

Instead, I bought everything.

When I got the scrapbooks home, I discovered photos of musicians on stage and chorus girls. There were menus and handbills and all sorts of letters from clients. Harvey Lowe had produced and emceed the opening show, and I found his script. There was even a handwritten listing of every act that played the club from 1964 to 1968!

These scrapbooks form a more-or-less complete history of the Marco Polo from 1960 when the Louie’s took over the Forbidden City and renamed it, through to 1982 when the original Chinatown club closed and moved to North Vancouver.

Everything is now photographed, and with the assistance of BC PAMA and the UBC School of Library Archival and Information Studies, the entire contents of the scrapbooks will eventually be online.

Tom Carter has been painting historical views of Vancouver for many years with artwork in prominent private and corporate collections. Tom serves on the boards of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, Friends of the Vancouver Archives and the Vancouver Historical Society. You can read more about his work in Vancouver Confidential “Nightclub Czars of Vancouver and the Death of Vaudeville.”

Tags Forbidden City, Harvey Lowe, Isy's, Jason Karman, Marco Polo, the Cave, Tom Carter, Victor Louie

The train that ran down Hastings Street

by Eve Lazarus on September 3, 2016

Tom Carter painting

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

Did you know that a commuter train used to run right through downtown Vancouver? I found out about it when I was over at Tom Carter’s studio checking out one of his amazing paintings. There it was, a train chugging across Hastings Street.

Train on Hastings and Carrall Street. Photo courtesy Tom Carter

The train came up again when I was writing a blog post a couple of weeks ago about getting the star of Blood, Sweat, and Fear—Inspector Vance—from his home in Yaletown to his lab at Hastings and Main Street. The 1907 map that I downloaded from Vancouver Archives showed four large blocks from Hastings to Water Street and from Cambie to Carrall Street were occupied by the BC Electric Railway Company.

BCER terminal, 1912. Photo courtesy CVA M-14-71

The streetcars were already in place by then, in fact had been since 1891, but the interurban train came later, in 1911 after the BCER opened its spiffy new terminal, and a car full of officials made the first trip from Vancouver to New Westminster on March 1.

It’s hard to imagine now, but over five kilometres of track ran through city streets.

Tom, who seems to have a bottomless well of ephemera when it comes to anything to do with Vancouver history—particularly buildings, theatres and transportation—sent along this map (above) of the BCER in downtown Vancouver from the 1920s.

Photo ca.1920s courtesy Vancouver Archives Can 17

At its height, BC Electric operated 457 streetcars and 84 interurbans.

And, some good news. The BCER’s formal terminal is still there on the corner of Carrall and West Hastings Street.

Train BCER terminal now

For an upcoming blog I’m going to try and put together a list of the top 10 worst decisions when it comes to destroying Vancouver’s history and heritage. But I’ve got to think that the “from rails to rubber” should be right up there with the demolition of Birks and the second Hotel Vancouver.

1932 photo courtesy Vancouver Archives Can N32

Essentially, rails to rubber meant the end of the streetcars and interurban system. It was a nod to the power of the car and a desire not to spend the money to upgrade the transit system. If you’ve tried to drive across Vancouver lately, you’ll likely agree that it was the dumbest decision ever.

Nevertheless, the last streetcar made its final run in Vancouver in 1955, and three years later, the last of the interurbans finished up service in Steveston.

Sources for this story:

Tom Carter
Canadian Rail, Jan-Feb, 2010
Canada’s Historic Places: BCER Terminal
The Buzzer Blog: A short history of interurbans in the Lower Mainland, 2009
For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Tags 425 Carrall Street, BC Electric Rail Company, Birks, Inspector Vance, interurban, rails to rubber, the second Hotel Vancouver, Tom Carter

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