Victoria Heritage Foundation

Who lived in your house — in 10 (mostly easy) steps

by Eve Lazarus on March 15, 2014

In some ways, researching your home is like an archeological dig. But with a bit of patience you can find out who built your home, who lived there before you, who was murdered there, who died of a comfortable old age, perhaps, even, who’s haunting it now.

1. City Directories:

I always start with the city directories, and now thanks to the Vancouver Public Library, all of B.C. is online up from 1860 to 1955. After 1955 you can find actual copies at the Vancouver Archives, at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives in Lynn Valley or on microfilm at the VPL. The directories will tell you the name of past residents, owners as well as their occupation. The directories also give information about the population of the time, the business climate and advertisements for businesses—it’s a bit like a tourist brochure.

2. Census:

Once you’ve discovered the people who lived in your house you can find out all sorts of great information through the census records. If nothing else it will give you a whole new appreciation why you slog through the forms every five years.

3. Ownership Title:

If you’re flush with cash you can always visit the Land Titles Office in New Westminster. If you provide them with a legal description (District, Block, Lot), and payment, they will provide you with details on ownership history

4. Vital Events Records:

It gets better every year with birth, marriage and death certificates online. More often than not, you can even find copies of the actual death certificates. This death certificate, for example, tells you that Errol Flynn died in Vancouver in 1959, that he’d been here six days, that he lived in New York City, was a motion picture actor from Tasmania and that he was married to Patrice Wymore (and that’s just the top half)

5. Heritage Registers:

If your house has historical merit (and this includes mid-century homes) it may be listed on a Heritage Register. Most municipalities have them and they are almost all online now. Your local city hall will also have a file on your house, and don’t forget to check your local archives.

6. The Vancouver Building Register:

It’s worth checking to see if your house is on the Vancouver Building Register. This register lists tons of information and sources for residential and commercial buildings in Vancouver.

7. Building Permits

Heritage Vancouver took on the herculean task of transcribing the original handwritten registers from Vancouver Archives. As of the end of March 2015 they had just under 33,000 pre-1922 building permits online in a searchable database. Heritage Vancouver also says that if you dig through the water permits at Vancouver Archives you’ll find additional clues to your house’s completion date.

8. Heritage House Tours:

It’s worth a shot, if your house is old enough it may be on one of these tours. New Westminster has run an annual tour for the past 35 years. The Vancouver Heritage Foundation for the past 12 Vancouver Heritage Foundation. and if you’re in Victoria you’re really lucky because the Victoria Heritage Foundation has put out a comprehensive set of four books.

9. Google:

Sometimes the obvious is best. Simply google your address and see if anything interesting pops up. Often past sales will give you pictures and information on the owners.

10. Newspaper databases:

Taking Google one step further, most newspapers are accessible online through your public library. All you need is your library card. For archival newspapers, the British Colonist is online from 1858-1920.

For more information on researching your home’s history see At Home with History: the secrets of Vancouver’s heritage houses

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Tags British Colonist, city directories, Errol Flynn, Heritage House Tour, Heritage register, Heritage Vancouver, Land Titles Office, North Vancouver Museum and Archives, Patrice Wymore, Vancouver Building Register, Vancouver Heritage Foundation, Vancouver Public Library, Victoria Heritage Foundation

Deadlines–obits of memorable British Columbians

by Eve Lazarus on November 30, 2012

As a journalist it always fascinates me where my colleagues find their passions. For me it’s how people connect with their houses, for Tom Hawthorn it’s their deaths. And, while some of the people featured in Deadlines: obits of memorable British Columbians are well known, most often it’s the ordinary life that’s the quirkiest and most colourful.

In Deadlines, Tom, a veteran newspaper reporter and obituary writer (there really is a Society of Professional Obituary Writers) features 38 people who died between 1988 and 2011 divided into sections that run the gamut from “eccentrics” and “trailblazers” to “warriors” and “innovators.”

The stories are beautifully crafted and highly entertaining. Most appeared in the Globe and Mail between 1988 and 2011, and they share two traits–the subjects have some kind of connection to British Columbia, and they’re all dead.

“An obituary is a profile in which the subject cannot grant an interview, so we obituarists behave as newsroom jackals, rending bits of reportage and quotation from reporters who have come before,” he writes. “Perhaps it is for this reason the obituary desk is considered the lowest spot in the newsroom hierarchy. It is a job most typically assigned to cub reporters and burned-out veterans, recovering alcoholics and those who still seek inspiration in the bottom of a bottle.”

If that’s true, then Tom has elevated the profession–and those of us who write history are reaching for our next drink.

I first learned about Spoony Singh (Sundher) from a mention in the Victoria Heritage Foundation’s This Old House series. Tom read about him in a paid obituary notice in the classified section of his newspaper. Before founding the Hollywood Wax Museum in 1965 and a string of other businesses, Spoony, who leads the book, was wonderfully eccentric. He went to school in Victoria, worked in a variety of businesses, married there, and once rode an elephant down Hollywood Boulevard. There is Harvey Lowe from “Entertainers,” who was born in Victoria in 1918, and by age 13 was touring Europe as the world yo-yo champion wearing a white tie and tails. He met Amelia Earhart, the Prince of Wales and Julie Christie along the way.

Born in 1914, Margaret Fane Rutledge founded the Flying Seven, a legendary group of pioneer women from Vancouver, who as Tom writes: “showed a woman’s place was in the cockpit.” Under “athletes” there is Jimmy [baby face] McLarnin, born in Strathcona in 1907, and who twice won the world welterweight championship. Those are a few of my favourites, no doubt you’ll have your own.

You can read the stories chronologically, but I read the book as Tom suggested, as short stories from a newspaper, read in front of the fire and just before bed, chosen at random.

I wish I thought up the title–credit goes to Kit Krieger. Tom says the ‘also rans’ were “Last Writes” and “B.C. R.I.P.”—almost as clever, but deadlines really nailed it.

Deadlines: obits of memorable British Columbians, by Tom Hawthorn.

Tags Amelia Earhart, Deadlines, Flying Seven, Harvey Lowe, Hollywood Wax Museum, Kit Krieger, Margaret Fane Ruthledge, Society of Professional Obituary Writers, Spoony Sundher, This Old House, Tom Hawthorn, Victoria Heritage Foundation

The Ghosts of James Bay

by Eve Lazarus on November 4, 2010

If you’re wandering around Victoria, check out the ghosts of James Bay at the two Bent Mast and the James Bay Inn.

The James Bay Hotel is the oldest in Victoria — The James Bay Hotel

I was in Victoria recently researching my book Sensational Victoria and spent time in James Bay. 150 years ago the area housed huge mansions with large tracts of land owned by people who live on in street names like James Douglas, J.S. Helmcken and Robert Dunsmuir. Even though a lot of these heritage houses became ugly apartment buildings in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Victoria Heritage Foundation still lists over 150 buildings on its heritage inventory, some dating back to the 1860s.

Quite a few operate as either restaurants, pubs or B&Bs and are worth a look for both architectural merit and fascinating social histories.

The Bent Mast

I had dinner one night at the Bent Mast, a restaurant in an 1884 house on Simcoe Street. According to the menu I swiped, the house was once a rooming home, a brothel, four different restaurants and an erotic art gallery. Apparently a number of ghosts haunt the house. There’s the happy child, a cranky old man who likes to hide things in the kitchen (did have to wait a while for the wine) and an older woman. Female staff report being felt up by a guy in a red fedora who disappears before they can take his order. I’m pretty sure I saw him by the bar when I first came in. The second floor, where the washrooms are, is definitely creepy. There’s a staircase that goes down to the back of the house and a bunch of locked rooms that I wouldn’t want to explore by myself after dark.

James Bay Inn

The next morning I had coffee at the James Bay Inn on Government Street. The hotel was designed by architect Charles Elwood Watkins in 1911 and is the third oldest in Victoria. It sold to Mother Cecilia’s religious order during the Second World War, and its claim to fame is that Emily Carr died there in 1945, a block from where she was born. The artist would be mortified to learn that the room where she died is now the men’s room in the pub.

Tags Charles Elwood Watkins, emily carr, James Bay Inn, The Bent Mast, Victoria Heritage Foundation

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