Vancouver Historical Society

Art, History and a Mission

by Eve Lazarus on September 15, 2018

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

In 2016, the Vancouver Historical Society, of which I was a board member, was contacted by the Port of Vancouver and asked what we’d like to do with a three metre-high sculpture made from BC granite that had been sitting on their land at the foot of Dunlevy Street since a previous board commissioned it 50 years before.

Since it was the first that any of us had heard of it, we did some research and found out that in 1966, the VHS had contributed funds towards a $4,500, three-piece sculpture created by Gerhard Class to mark the 100^th anniversary of Hastings Mill, which for a time, was the nucleus of Vancouver.

We took a field trip to check it out. It’s a beautiful piece of art, and a shame that no one really gets to see it.

The problem for the port was that the sculpture sat in a garden behind the Flying Angels Club, built in 1906 as the headquarters for the BC Mills Timber and Trading company and a fixture of Hastings Mills.

In 1966, the National Harbours Board occupied the house and did so until the 1970s when the Mission for Seafarers, which runs the Flying Angels Club, took possession.

Up until 9/11, the Mission was easily accessible and surrounded by gardens that led to the waterfront. Post 9/11 madness, the Port is wrapped in a chain link of security which has marooned the house in a kind of cul-de-sac.

Over the years, the garden shrank as the port expanded. When we were contacted in 2016, the Port was planning to install shore-power transformers where the sculpture sat. To give the Port of Vancouver’s Carol Macfarlane, a huge amount of credit, she went to enormous lengths to find the sculpture a new home.

“It reminded me of an iceberg,” she said. “The monument is 8.5 ft. tall, but the underground is over three feet high and seven feet wide.”

And, when we realized the sheer lunacy of having to work with three levels of government to make the sculpture more accessible somewhere else, we opted to move it to the front of the house.

It’s not easy, but please go visit this sculpture. Maybe drop in and visit the Mission to Seafarers while you are there. Perhaps even drop off some books or games or clothes that you no longer need. They’ll be most grateful.

Thanks to Carol Macfarlane, project manager, Port of Vancouver for the photos

For more on the Mission to Seafarers at the foot of Dunlevy Street, see Flying Angels Club House

Tags BC Mills Timber and Trading Company, Flying Angels Club, Hastings Mill, Vancouver Historical Society

City Reflections: The Epic

by Eve Lazarus on April 28, 2018

I am excited to tell you that City Reflections is now on YouTube. As you’ll read in John Atkin’s story, it was a massive volunteer undertaking by members of the Vancouver Historical Society. It has been, and will continue to be, a huge tool for researchers—I would never have got John Vance (Blood, Sweat, and Fear) to work on his first day in 1907 without it!

A huge thank you to Jason Vanderhill for getting me the stills from the film.

By John Atkin, civic historian

It was a silent, jerky and disjointed film shot from the front of a BC Electric streetcar in 1907 that captivated the Vancouver Historical Society’s audience members one September evening in 2004. Colin Preston, the former CBC Archivist had just introduced everyone to a recently restored version of the earliest known moving image of the city.

The film shot by American film maker William Harbeck was one of a series that played in specially designed theatres that replicated the experience of riding a streetcar. Long thought lost, the film was rediscovered in Australia and sent to the Library of Congress, eventually ending up with Library and Archives Canada.

As the evening ended someone in the audience suggested that it would be fun to create a modern version of the film. And with that, a project was born. It sounded simple enough, so a small group of volunteers got together to think about and begin planning how to tackle the job of recreating Harbeck’s film. The self-imposed deadline of 2007, the film’s hundredth anniversary seemed far enough away to be doable.

However, the project quickly shifted from just reshooting the route to developing a documentary about Harbeck, annotating the streetcar’s route and developing background information about Vancouver in 1907. Scripts were written and then rewritten and written again as the focus of the project shifted.

Wes Knapp chaired the project and helped secure sponsors. Colin Preston contributed the best possible copy of the film on DVD. John Atkin, Andrew Martin and Chuck Davis did much of the research. Mary-Lou Storey acted as production manager. Ernst Schneider and Jason Vanderhill contributed technical expertise and graphic design. John Atkin and Jim McGraw worked on the script. Jim did the final storyboard, directed and narrated. Paul Flucke oversaw the finances.

The project timeline was thrown for a loop with the announcement of the Canada Line construction which meant Granville Street would be off limits in 2007, so initial filming was moved up a year.

On shooting day, the team assembled at CBC on Hamilton Street to set up the camera car and get ready to hit the streets. CBC had generously supplied a camera man (Mike), camera and video stock to assist us in the shoot. Andy and Pacific Camera Car supplied the truck and Vancouver’s film office helped us out on the closure of Cordova Street—we had to drive the wrong way to match the 1907 route.

Another year of work to complete all of the pieces of the project and it was ready to be unveiled. In May of 2008, 101 years after the original film was shot, an audience of 400 people sat down to watch the first public showing of the VHS production of City Reflections.

Tags Andrew Martin, Chuck Davis, City Reflections, Colin Preston, Ernst Schneider, Jason Vanderhill, Jim McGraw, John Atkin, Mary-Lou Storey, Paul Flucke, Vancouver Historical Society, Wes Knapp, William Harbeck

An Accidental Postcard

by Eve Lazarus on January 18, 2014

Marsha Fuller was cleaning out a client’s attic in Western Maryland a couple of weeks ago when she came across this postcard of a traffic accident featuring a Grandview street car in 1909. Marsha’s company, Your Mother’s Attic, helps the relatives of the newly dead sort out what is often a lifetime of possessions—she often comes across these types of historical treasures.

Marsha, who is a certified genealogist, told me the client has no Canadian connections and has no idea why the family has possessed this Vancouver postcard for the last 100 years or so.

She says her most interesting find was an original 1762 land pattern of Pennsylvania. She makes a point of dispatching these artifacts back to where they originated.

Philip Timms (1874-1973) — Philip Timms and bicycle at Spanish Banks

According to Biographies of BC Postcard Photographers, there was a postcard craze between 1900 and the outbreak of war in 1914. One of the most prolific photographers, Philip Timms apparently did some of his best work on postcards. “I shot up everything in sight and turned them into postcards,” he was quoted as saying in the book. “Sold them to stationery and drugstores. They were an advertisement to the world about Vancouver.”

Philip Timms was born in 1874, lived at 653 Barnard Street in 1898 (Union Street back then) and died in 1973 at 98 years of age. He shot everything from street scenes to the Chinatown race riots to horse races and balloon flights. He left a legacy of more than 3,000 glass plate negatives at the Vancouver Public Library.

Want to know more about a postcard? Check out the Vancouver Postcard Club.

Tags 653 Union Street, Biographies of BC Postcard Photographers, Grandview, Marsha Fuller, Philip Timms, Vancouver Historical Society, Vancouver Postcard Club, Vancouver Public Library

On Film: Vancouver at Work and at Play

by Eve Lazarus on January 27, 2011

As the archivist for the CBC in Vancouver, Colin Preston looks after more than 250,000 items and programmes on film and videotape. And, as he’ll tell you, it’s the best historical archive of film footage west of Toronto.

Preston says that over the last decade staff has been shoveling all this archival material into a common database that’s searchable through the CBC’s Intranet. The hope is that one day it will eventually be publicly accessible through the Internet.

Still, it’s a wonderful source of information about a much older Vancouver and it’s another source for anyone looking for footage of an old house or neighbourhood.

Tags B.T. Rogers, CBC Vancouver, Colin Preston, Hycroft, Shannon Mews, University Women's Club, Vancouver Historical Society

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By John Atkin, civic historian

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