Woodwards Department Store

Woodward’s: Store #1

by Eve Lazarus on July 25, 2020

Margaret Cadwaladr has written a memoir Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, a nostalgic walk through the area, filled with black and white and colour photos.

When I first came to Canada in the mid-1980s the Woodward’s Food Floor saved my life. It was literally the only place in Vancouver that sold jars of vegemite. And I certainly wasn’t the only one. Lots of other immigrants and travellers were able to find things from home, everything from Scandinavian rye crackers to saffron and matzo to rattlesnake meat imported from Florida.

Woodward’s postcard ca.1953. Courtesy Margaret Cadwaladr

Food Floor:

Margaret Cadwaladr kindly sent me her new memoir, Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, a nostalgic walk through the area, filled with black and white and colour photos.

Margaret started work at the downtown Woodward’s store in 1967, but her relationship with the store, like many locals, started way before that.

A brill trolleybus in front of Woodward’s in 1968. Steve Scalzo photo, courtesy Margaret Cadwaladr

“I had known Woodward’s all my life. I remember, as a child, taking the tram down Main Street with my grandfather. We would visit the hardware department then go down the wide steps to the grocery department and order cases of Carnation condensed milk, grapefruit juice and tins of food for Muggins the cat,” She writes: “The next day the blue Woodward’s truck would deliver the order.”

Test Kitchen:

There was Bea Wright’s test kitchen that dished out advice and recipes, elevator operators a small café, a book shop and $1.49 day. Employees got to take their breaks on the roof with views of the North Shore mountains and harbour.

It was a good time to work in retail. Cadwaladr says decent wages and perks such as medical benefits, paid holidays, a pension, profit-sharing and a 15% discount, kept unions out. Social events included picnics at Bowen Island and roller-skating.

At its height, Woodward’s had 26 stores in BC and Alberta. Store #1, as it was known, operated at the corner of West Hastings and Abbott Streets for 90 years, while everything changed around it. When the store opened in 1903 for instance, the courthouse was at Victory Square and several theatres lined Hastings Street.

The resting place of the giant red W. Margaret Cadwaladr photo

The chain went bankrupt in 1993 and store #1 sat empty and boarded up. The original building is now surrounded by retail stores and housing. A replica of the giant red W was installed on the new project in 2010. You can visit the original in the courtyard, near Stan Douglas’s spectacular photo mural depicting the Gastown riot of 1971.

Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days sells for $15.95 and is available through Margaret Cadwaladr’s website and Chapters/Indigo.

Tags Food Floor My Woodward's Days, Margaret Cadwaladr, Stan Douglas, Store #1, Woodwards Department Store

Save on Meats creates food currency for the DTES

by Eve Lazarus on December 15, 2012

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is a warehouse for the desperate: filled with crackheads, hookers, chronic alcoholics and the mentally unhinged. Drive down Hastings and it looks like a Dostoevsky novel. There are drug addicts shooting up in the alleys, pawn shops, scuzzy hotels and a myriad of agencies trying to unravel the mess.

This sketchy area—one of the poorest in the country—is getting a makeover, but not everybody thinks that’s a good thing.

The Pantages Theatre, a once beautiful building that told the story of early vaudeville in Vancouver, was ripped down last year. Five years ago the Woodwards Department Store was replaced with condos, and for a while it looked like Save on Meats—an institution since 1957—would suffer the same fate. But the owner refused to sell to developers and Mark Brand bought the business.

Save on Meats opened in 1957 at 43 W. Hastings

Brand, has sunk a ton of money into the building, kept the neon sign, a butcher shop, bakery and diner. He’s also employing the unemployable, installed a roof top garden to grow produce, and created a type of currency to feed the homeless.

The “currency” is a token that can only be exchanged for food at his diner. He kicked off the program at the end of November thinking he might sell a thousand. He sold 5,000 in the first 10 days. His reasoning is that give money or bus passes or gift cards and 90% of the time it’s turned into drugs, booze or cigarettes. It’s a big reason that people won’t give handouts.

“All it is, is giving somebody a sandwich, it’s really black and white,” he told me. “What’s really important to me is being able to create the conversation between the affluent and the people who are struggling. The token has to be handed to someone. You are not doing a random donation you have to look somebody in the face and give it to them.”

Brand is not without his critics. They say he’s part of the problem—he’s making the area trendy again and increasing rents and prices for the poor. He’s also accused of making money off the tokens—many which will never be redeemed.

Personally I don’t have a problem with this, he should be making money. He’s not going to fix the systemic problems of the DTES, but he’s not going to hurt them either, and he’s offering a way for people to do something to help those in the area.

He’s also attracting like minded souls.

Village&Co office, 231 Union Street

Justin Young and Nora Ahern were making big bucks at an ad agency on the right side of town, before leaving to form Village&Co, a small social media shop on the edge of Chinatown. They like Brand’s vision and wanted to help so they devised a campaign. Whenever someone clicks on #shareameal the agency puts a token on the office Christmas tree. On December 31, the tokens will be donated to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre and transformed into food at a time when it’s needed the most.

Tags Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, DTES, Justin Young, Mark Brand, neon sign, Nora Ahern, Pantages Theatre, Save on Meats, Village&Co, Woodwards Department Store

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