The History Store

Chris Wright wants to start a cultural movement around history.  A former location scout for the film industry and a treasure hunter with a metal detector, he is the owner of The History Store in Mount Pleasant.

The store has been there almost a year, but unless you have an appointment, it’s only open from noon to 4:00 pm. on Saturdays. And, trust me that’s not long enough.

Chris specializes in photos, negatives, slides and postcards. But he also has movie size posters, maps, blueprints, letters—even a section of the Lions Gate Bridge.

There are boxes offering photos of animals, costumes and cars for $3. For $2 you can pick up a Christmas postcard or a photo of early New Westminster.

Chris tells me he has 400 pounds of negatives to go through and has looked at more than 30,000 slides this past week. He buys them in bulk and pays 10 cents per slide. The good ones usually go for between $10 and $20. “Mostly they are not worth much, after processing the bad out,” he says. “But I enjoy the hunt.”

Negatives are the future of the business. He has glass negatives dating back to 1900 and his intention is to develop the negatives, blow them up and sell them with the photo—so you know you have a one-of-a-kind photo hanging on your wall.

Vic Steele lives in Coquitlam and spends most Saturday afternoons at the store. He’s a military collector and says his best find to date is a Royal Air Force tunic that belonged to a pilot who flew in the Battle of Britain. The pilot survived the war and his uniform is now displayed in Vic’s man cave.

I knew this was a serious store when Neil Whaley walked in. Chris tells him that he’s just come into 18 boxes of film and television photos. Like any collector (or writer for that matter) there’s nothing more exciting than getting first crack at something archival.

When I asked Neil what he thought was the coolest thing in the store, he pointed to a poster for the 1922 film The Radio King, considered a “lost film,” likely destroyed in the fire at Universal Studios.

The poster was found under an oak floor during a home renovation in Kerrisdale ten years ago. It will find a home at North Vancouver’s Polygon Gallery.

Neil tells me that his favourite History Store find is a series of photos of the Black Gospel Rescue with Rev. Melinda Thorne. According to James Johnstone’s Blog, Thorne led the Mizpah African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church between 1966 and 1971 at 823 Jackson Street.

The History Store is addictive. I found some great aerial photos of Vancouver by George Allen taken in the 1980s.

Chris says he recently donated some George Nye photos to North Vancouver Museum and Archives. “I think we can do better for history by sharing it,” he says. “If you share more than you take, it rains down on you.”

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