I’ve having the immense pleasure of wading through the actual copies of dozens of newspapers from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s for a book that I’m currently writing. Every now and then I stumble across something really special.

In 1934, the Vancouver Sun bragged that it was “the only evening newspaper owned, controlled and operated by Vancouver Men,” and on page 2 of the Sunday October 6^th edition was this short sidebar that ran with the headline “Lovely Vancouver Homes.” Below, in what was clearly an early advertorial disguised as editorial, were the photos of five newish homes that had recently sold. I’m guessing sales would have been somewhat sluggish in the Depression, but the first sentence optimistically stated “Activity continues in Vancouver real estate.”

Naturally, I was intrigued to see if any of the houses still existed.

1. 4735 West Sixth: situated in the University district. This beautiful colonial two-storey residence of brick construction on a half-acre lot was purchased by Mrs. K. Rendell through the offices of H.A. Roberts Ltd.

Success. Still there hiding behind a huge hedge and big lot

2. 6212 Sperling Street,  Burnaby. “The lovely Magee residence” was purchased by Mrs. Olive Dawson of Prince Rupert through the offices of W.H. Moore.

Replaced by two houses that look like every other one in the area.

3. 2350 West 35^th Avenue. Attractive Kerrisdale home, beautifully located on the southern slope. Purchased by D.B. Niblock through the offices of Horne Taylor & Co.

Hard to tell with Google maps and a big hedge, but my guess is it’s gone

4. 4559 West 2^nd Avenue, Point Grey, came with a wonderful view of city, sea and mountains. Ivan Denton is the new owner bought through A.E. Austin and Co.

Miraculously still hanging in there, but looking at its neighbours, perhaps not for long

5. 3837 West 16^th Avenue – a five bedroom Dunbar house built in 1930, sold to Rev. Osbert Morely Sanford of New Westminster through the offices of Homer J. Moore.

And, yes it’s still there looking much the same as it did 82 years ago, but with some new clothes.

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

I love it when people tell me that Vancouver was a much safer place back in the good old days. Clearly they haven’t read my books. Vancouver was a violent place full of murders, guns, explosives and drugs. As early as 1954 Vancouver was known as the drug capital of Canada, and drugs have been a part of our city since its inception. This is an excerpt from Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders

On September 15, 1954, Danny Brent’s body was found on the tenth green at UBC’s golf course. Stuffed inside his shirt was an early edition of the newspaper, soaked with his blood. There was a half-smoked cigarette inside his shirt where it had dropped from his mouth when he was shot—once in the back and twice in the head with .45-calibre bullets.

Danny Brent’s murder was the city’s first gangland hit and it caused a sensation in the press providing a daily dose of true-crime for Mickey Spillane fans of the time. There was an assortment of sketchy characters—two ex-wives, rumours of a married girlfriend, and a Chicago-based drug syndicate. The plot wasn’t bad either. There were the hired killers from out of town, the attempted murders of two other Vancouver drug lords, and a large role for police chief Walter Mulligan, who would be kicked off the force the following year.

People liked 42-year-old Danny, even his ex-wives. He worked at the Press Club on Beatty Street. Tom Ardies, a Vancouver Sun reporter, wrote: “You can wander into the Press Club where Brent was head waiter and worked beneath the bizarre murals. One shows a man slumped over a card table. There’s a knife stuck in his back. There’s a reporter snitching a pickle off the dead man’s plate.”

On the night of his murder, Danny had finished his shift at the Press Club, and headed over to the Mayling Supper Club. He parked his red 1950 Meteor convertible—in the parking lot at the back of the building. A witness said he saw Danny leave with a woman and two men through the back door.

Police think Danny slid behind the wheel of his car, lit up a cigarette, and was shot in the back by one of the men. The first bullet pierced his spine at a downward angle and then tore a hole in his liver before it came out his navel. Dr T.R. Harmon, the pathologist, said he could have lived up to half-an-hour.

Four days after his murder, police opened a locker in the Vancouver Bus Depot and found 30 ounces of heroin with a street value of $175,000. It was quickly apparent that there was more to Danny than a waiter. Either he was killed by a gang trying to take over the heroin industry or murdered by a hit team for an outstanding drug debt.

By the end of 1954, the VPD were dealing with eight murders in a population of around 390,000. In 2014, Vancouver’s population was over 603,000 and clocked up nine murders.

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

When the second Hotel Vancouver opened its doors 100 years ago this year, it became one of the most elegant and ornate buildings that we ever destroyed.

Built in 1916 and pulled down just 33 years later to make way for a parking lot, the second Hotel Vancouver was  a replacement for the original Hotel Vancouver which was built in 1888.

The new 16-storey version had 700 rooms and was designed in the grand Italianate revival style. The hotel had arched windows, turrets, a roof top garden, and was dressed up with Gargoyles, buffalo heads and terra cotta moose.

At the end of the Second World War, homeless veterans took over the hotel, and it became an official barracks for a short time before its demise in 1949 at the tender young age of 33. And, after two decades as a parking lot, the site became home to the uninspiring Pacific Centre mall and the 30-storey black TD Tower which opened in 1972.

Interesting how this clip of the site today from Google Maps catches the reflection of the beautiful, but much less lavish and impressive third Hotel Vancouver in its black glass.

For more in Our Missing Heritage Series see:

Our Missing Heritage (part one) The Georgia Medical & Dental Building and the Devonshire Hotel

Our Missing West Coast Modern Heritage (Part two)

Our Missing Heritage (part three) The Empress Theatre

Our Missing Heritage (part four) The Strand Theatre, Birks Building and the second Hotel Vancouver

Our Missing Heritage (part five) The Hastings Street Theatre District

Our Missing Heritage (part six)

Our Missing Heritage (part seven)

Our Missing Heritage (part eight) 

or just go to Our Missing Heritage for the complete, sad list.

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

Kiyoko Tanaka-Goto may not be the first person who springs to mind for women’s history month, but she was brave and entrepreneurial and succeeded at a time when there were few opportunities for women, especially ones who weren’t white. This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver.

Kiyoko Tanaka-Goto was an enterprising Japanese woman who was born in Tokyo and came to Canada in 1916 as a 19-year-old picture bride. She spent a few years on Vancouver Island scratching out a living. It’s not clear what happened to her husband, but Kiyoko clearly had better things in mind than milking cows, cleaning out chicken coops and taking in laundry, and by 1920 she’d saved up $2,000, moved to Vancouver and bought into a brothel with three other women. The brothel was at the corner of Powell and Gore, and in a world that offered women few business opportunities, being a madam was well worth the risk of jail.

“The first year of the business was so good I couldn’t believe it. There weren’t many women around then and a lot of our customers were fishermen and loggers. I made a lot of money,” she told Opening Doors in 1978.

In 1927 Kiyoko leased a floor of 35 West Hastings Street from the Palace Hotel. The main floor was a medical clinic and Kiyoko turned the upstairs into a brothel. She hired 12 prostitutes and took 30 percent of their earnings, instead of the usual 50 percent commission. White women, she said went for $2, while the more exotic Japanese between $3 and $5.

If a police officer wanted a girl he got her for free and the house paid the girl. It was just the cost of doing business, she said.

In 1942, Kiyoko was one of 22,000 Japanese Canadians rounded up and interned in B.C’s interior. Although the Japanese were not allowed back onto the West Coast until 1949, Kiyoko pretended to be Chinese and moved back to Vancouver in 1946. She tried running various gambling, bootlegging and prostitution businesses out of a couple of different Powell Street buildings, but it was never the same.

“Everything’s changed since the war and the police are much tougher,” she said in 1978. I couldn’t get a licence, and although I still served sake in a teapot, I lost a lot of money.”

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

Roddy Moore, 7, was murdered 69 years ago this week. His family still search for answers. This is an excerpt from Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders.

On the morning of Friday October 17, 1947, Roddy Moore waved goodbye to his mother and left to walk to his grade one class at the Begbie Annex school in Vancouver’s Renfrew area. It was pouring rain and it took him about 10 minutes to walk along East 8th Avenue  to Rupert Street. There were only four houses on the west side of Rupert, while across the road the land was still undeveloped and mostly bush skirted what is now Thunderbird Elementary.

When Roddy didn’t come home for lunch, his worried mother phoned the school. They told her that he hadn’t arrived, but was probably just playing hooky and would turn up later that day. When he failed to come home, a panicked Nettie phoned police.

The search for Roddy continued all weekend. Albert Lockwood, one of the volunteers, was poking through the bottom of a trench near Roddy’s school when something caught his eye. At first he thought he had found a dead dog buried under dried bracken. He looked again and saw that it was a boy wearing a brown wool jacket.

Roddy had lain in that shallow grave, just three blocks from his house, for more than two days. One side of his head bore the imprint of a steel heel plate, his skull was smashed, and one of his ears severed.

While Roddy hadn’t been sexually assaulted, police believed he was grabbed by a pedophile soon after entering the trail. The theory went that when Roddy screamed it panicked his attacker and the killer flew into a rage, smashing in the little boy’s head with a shingler’s axe.

Roddy was a slight, dark-haired friendly little boy. He had grey eyes and long lashes and a small, but prominent scar over his right eye. He stood just four-feet-tall and weighed sixty pounds. His mother said he was scared of the dark and wary of strangers. His classmates described him as shy and quiet, and they would have been surprised to learn that he had seven siblings back in Saskatchewan.

Roddy’s mother, Nettie had her first child at 18 and her eighth at 31. At the time of Roddy’s murder she was eight months pregnant.

As police started investigating Roddy’s murder and his background, suspicion fell on his two step-fathers: Len Moore in Saskatchewan and John Turner in Vancouver. Both had iron clad alibis.

Roddy didn’t just disappear from the media; all traces of the little boy were obliterated from the Turner household. It was as if he had never existed.

Patty Turner was born in 1950, three years after Roddy died. Like her other brothers and sisters she grew up not knowing that she had a murdered half-brother, or that she had seven half-sisters and brothers still in Saskatchewan.

“Roddy was never spoken about in our house,” says Patty.

But it wasn’t until after Nettie died from cancer in 1973 that Patty finally learned the truth about Roddy. While more than sixty years have passed without resolution for the family, and against all evidence to the contrary, Patty Turner believes she knows the name of Roddy’s killer.  “Deep in my heart, I still believe my father had something to do with it,” she says.

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

Last year, Constable Graham Walker of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police was asked to research the history for their 10-year anniversary. Graham promptly fell down the rabbit hole and his journey has taken him to UBC Special Collections, City of Vancouver Archives, BC Hydro Archives, and the Vancouver Police Museum. Graham’s first surprise was that the history of transit police goes back far longer than 2005 when a recommendation by the BC Association of Chiefs of Police led to the creation of the Transit Police. In fact, the earliest record showing the appointment of a special constable for the BC Electric Railway dates back to 1904.

But Graham wasn’t calling me with a history of transit, he had uncovered a 100-year-old murder mystery in war-time Vancouver.

On March 19, 1915, Charles Painter, 34, was working the night shift for BCER. The special constable was patrolling the railway tracks at 6^th and Willow when he saw a man carrying a bag of what he thought was wire stolen from the overhead trolley wire. He struggled with the thief, who managed to get his gun and Painter was shot in the stomach with his own weapon.

“Everything comes full circle,” says Graham who is also 34. “I’ve worked overtime shifts myself where we were going up and down Fraser Street looking for trolley wire thieves.”

Nowadays, transit police work foot patrol in pairs for protection, but in 1915 Charles was alone, and wandered for about an hour before he found help. He was able to give a statement to police, but later died from blood poisoning.

Painter was unmarried and lived at 1543 West 3^rd Street. There’s not much known about him—Graham found out that he was born in 1881 in Ireland, and had served in the British Army before coming to Canada in 1908.

“They didn’t have any suspects at first, but a few years later there was an article in the Province saying this man Frank Van der Heiden was being tried in Seattle for murdering two people and was of interest in the murder of Charles Painter,” says Graham. According to the article, Van der Heiden, who had been in Vancouver at the time of Painter’s murder, told a soldier he was locked up with that he was responsible for the constable’s death. Van der Heiden was caught with a large sum of cash, and according to the article, the money was believed to have been provided by the German government for the purpose of persuading soldiers to desert.

Painter’s murder is still officially unsolved, and his death went unrecognized until Graham and his research. Now his name has been added to the Honour Roll of the British Columbia Law Enforcement Memorial in Victoria, and Graham is presently trying to secure the funds to have a headstone placed on his unmarked grave at Mountain View Cemetery.

“Something we struggle with at our work place is lack of history and culture and you look at Victoria and New Westminster and they have this proud heritage,” says Graham. “So to have this now is important.”

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

Seriously, is this the best that our architectural minds can conjure up? Take a beautiful mid-century building on a prime downtown Vancouver location and use it as a “podium” for three glass towers and call it The Post? After reading John Mackie’s story in the Vancouver Sun today, I was inspired to pull together a short history of the Canada Post Office.

McCarter & Nairne—the same architects who designed the Marine Building (and had an office there for 50 years), also designed the old post office building on West Georgia between 1953 and 1958).

Canada Post building in 1981, photo courtesy Vancouver Archives 779-E12.02

The firm’s architectural range was stunning and their buildings include Spencer’s Department Store (now SFU), the Seaforth Armoury and the YMCA (on different ends of Burrard), the Grandview Substation on 1^st Avenue, the Live Stock building at the PNE, the Patricia Hotel, and the now defunct Georgia Medical-Dental  building.

The Canada Post plant, which was essentially a five-storey machine covering an entire city block, was the largest welded steel structure in the world, capped with a rooftop helipad.

Up until a couple of years ago there was a 2,400-foot long tunnel that connected the post office to the CPR train station (now Waterfront Station). The tunnel was outfitted with two conveyor belts to move the mail, and was maintained by  engineers on bikes. It only lasted five years (1958 to 1963) after which mail stopped arriving by train and was transported by truck.

The change rendered the tunnel obsolete, but Fred Danells, a retired postal clerk and now president of Vancouver Heritage Club, says the tunnel was often rented out for movie shoots and he remembers some rocking Halloween parties down there. The last one just a few years ago, before the tunnel was filled in after the BC Investment Management Corporation bought the building in 2013.

There’s some great art that’s still there, but may not be for long.

In the mid-1950s Paul Huba cut a 16-foot high Postman into the red granite above the cornerstone adjacent to the Homer Street entrance. And, in the lobby there is a mural by Orville Fisher depicting the evolution of mail delivery and showing Mercury, the winged messenger of Roman mythology.

Fred says Canada Post employees created a huge postage stamp mural of the Canadian flag on the roof in the late 1980s. It was later made into an actual postage stamp.

In March, developers revealed plans that showed a 19-storey office tower with 850 rental and condo units. This latest rendition, according to the Vancouver Sun story, has three glass-faced towers added to the top of the building, including a 17-storey office tower and two residential towers of 18 and 20 storeys. This would be 51 fewer units then the previous plan and a lot more glass.

There is an open house about the project at the Hotel Vancouver 5:00 p.m. on November 22 at the Hotel Vancouver with he developer and members of the City of Vancouver in attendance.

Sources: Building the West; The Greater Vancouver Book, Public Art in Vancouver, Forbidden Vancouver, Illustrated Vancouver, Vancouver Sun

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

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.

The train came up again when I was writing a blog post a couple of weeks ago about getting the star of my next book—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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

This is an ongoing series that asks people who love history and heritage to tell us their favourite existing building and the one that never should have been torn down.

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 through his company, Famous Artists Limited. He is no longer willing to move your piano.

Favourite existing building: The Jericho Sailing Club because the main club building, along with the hostel, Jericho Arts Centre and the City works yard, is the only remaining structure from the RCAF Station Jericho Beach. In its latter years, the RCAF Station was home to several army units including 156 Company Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. That was my father, Major Arthur Allman’s unit. Dad’s office was housed in one of four massive hangers that stood on the site until the ’90s. It was in one of those hangars that, as the young child of a Militia officer, I sat on the knee of my very first Santa Claus and I played on the private DND-owned beach. I learned to swim in the ocean water outside what is now the Sailing Club.

The building that should never have been torn down: I want my opera house back.  The Vancouver Opera House, opened in 1891 and hosted a wide variety of “legitimate” dramas as well as vaudeville and music; but not much opera. The theatre was elegantly appointed and intended by the CPR to add to Vancouver’s status as a world class city. Over the years, the theatre often changed hands and, after a complete renovation in 1913, had a life as the “New Orpheum.”. The old Vancouver Opera House survived until 1969 when they ripped it down in favour of that effing Pacific Centre Mall. Nothing says “culture” like a shoe sale.

Kristin Hardie is the curator for the Vancouver Police Museum.  

Favourite existing building: I can’t help but choose 240 East Cordova, now the home of the Vancouver Police Museum and once the Coroner’s Services and the City Analyst Laboratory. Built in 1932, it was the last project architect Arthur J. Bird worked on in Vancouver. Fitting that he ended his career with the Morgue, no? The two-story building is made up of a wonderful mixture of classic Georgian Revival and Art Deco styles . The original design elements inside include the Georgian banister up the front stairs and the unique arched wooden roof in what was once the courtroom—oh and not to mention the actual rooms and autopsy tables used by the pathologist and the Coroner’s Services during 50 years of death investigations.

The building that should never have been torn down: The City Hall on Westminster (now Main) street was a robust turreted building that acted as Vancouver’s municipal and political hub for 30 years. It was built in 1890 to house a market on the lower level and a community gathering space above. It became City Hall eight years later. I love that it was nestled deep within the bustling east side neighbourhood–the busiest part of the city before big businesses started to move downtown. There, it was accessible and stood face-to-face with the regular people of the city. That in-and-of-itself should have guaranteed its longevity. I mean really, who tears down their own City Hall? The wrecking ball came in 1958 and in its place is a squat, single story brick eyesore.

Pamela Post is an award-winning Vancouver journalist, broadcaster and part-time journalism instructor/mentor at Langara College. She was born in the West End and now lives next door to the Sylvia Hotel.

Favourite existing building: This stately brick and terracotta building stands proudly as a vestige of a long-vanished Vancouver. Designed by architect William P. White and built in 1912 as an apartment building before being converted to a hotel in 1936, it’s named for the owner’s daughter Sylvia Goldstein. GM Ross Dyck tells me that in the autumn, the hotel used to get calls from the Coast Guard station in Kitsilano, saying boaters in English Bay were confusing the bright reds and yellows of the vine with a building on fire. The same family has owned the Sylvia since 1960 and steadfastly celebrated its heritage while regularly refusing lucrative offers to sell. A family recently celebrated its fifth generation of family members married at the Sylvia. The first was a young soldier, heading off to war in 1914. I often say to my friends ‘ahh, the Sylvia Hotel – where it’s always 1947.’

The building that should never have been torn down: The Englesea Lodge which once sat on Beach Avenue, was also designed by the same architect as the Sylvia Hotel in 1911. Throughout the ‘70s, the seven-storey building was a pawn in a civic battle royale between the Vancouver Park Board that viewed it as an ‘eyesore and blight’ at the entrance to Stanley Park, and a city council which was facing a severe housing shortage (sound familiar?) and pressure from the heritage-loving ‘Save the Englesea’ movement. The latter which proposed a rent-controlled residence for seniors with a tea/coffee house and educational facility in the lobby. In the end arson took care of the problem and the Englesea was removed from the landscape in 1981.

For more on the series see:

• Heritage Streeters with Anne Banner, Tom Carter, Kerry Gold and Anthony Norfolk
• Heritage Streeters with Michael Kluckner, Jess Quan, Lani Russwurm and Lisa Anne Smith
• Heritage Streeters with Caroline Adderson, Heather Gordon, Eve Lazarus, Cat Rose and Stevie Wilson 
• Heritage Streeters with John Atkin, Aaron Chapman, Jeremy Hood and Will Woods

Fans of Michael Kluckner’s history books—Vanishing Vancouver, Vancouver the Way it Was, and several others of his beautifully illustrated history books, might find his latest release a big departure. 2050, A Post-apocalyptic Murder Mystery is a graphic novel, a fictional account of a Vancouver that has been ravished by disease, climate change and a benevolent dictator who keeps the population poor to reduce their carbon footprint and ultimately save the planet. You’ll recognize Orwell, Huxley, and a nod to Mayor Robertson, with “Pleasant Planet”—a drink that keeps the populace both happy and sterile.

Michael came up with the idea on a trip to Cuba a few years back. “What intrigued me, was the way that people were cobbling the old cars together and keeping them going,” he said. “They were fixing things rather than just throwing things away, and I couldn’t figure out whether this was the future or whether this was the past.”

Michael took out his sketch pad and drew buildings in old Havana that had collapsed into the street from lack of maintenance, but still provided homes for people. He drew people fishing from inner tubes, the horses and carriages that provided transportation, and the posters of Che Guevara telling people to keep faith in the revolution.

Following a war over water, a significantly reduced population due to flu (not real estate prices), and water levels that have risen to massive proportions, Vancouver 30 plus years into the future isn’t all that recognizable. Fortunately, some things have endured.

There’s the Marine building for instance. Other Vancouver landmarks are the Burrard Bridge (or rather the top of it), the Carnegie Community Centre, and Hastings Street.

It’s Michael’s second graphic novel, Toshiko—set in the Shuswap and Vancouver during the Second World War, came out last year.

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

I was so sad to hear of Jim Munro’s death last Monday. Jim was a huge promoter and lover of books, heritage buildings, art and authors, including of course, his first wife the Nobel prize winner Alice Munro.

He was also a lovely man. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim a few years back when I was researching Sensational Victoria. Because my book was about the stories of people filtered through the houses where they lived and the heritage buildings where they worked, I was fascinated by both Jim Munro’s home and Munro’s Books, the building that he turned into a destination.

Jim told me that in 1966 he fell in love with a house in Rockland that was asking $33,000, and likely designed by the infamous Francis Rattenbury. The house had been turned into a duplex and was in rough shape, but Jim could see the potential, and managed to get the owners down to $20,000. Alice wrote Dance of the Happy Shades, a 1968 Governor General award winner in an upstairs room, and followed that with her bestselling Lives of Girls and Women. The Munro’s divorced in 1972 and Alice moved back to Ontario.

In 1977, Jim married textile artist Carole Sabiston in what the family called the “chapel” because of the stained-glass effect Jim had painted around the windows and for his old pump organ that still sits under the staircase. Jim played Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary on the organ before the wedding.

“I marry artists,” Jim told me “and I love heritage buildings.”

Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan, Vikram Seth, Jane Urquhart, Carol Shields and Simon Winchester, were just a few of the literary greats that have visited the house.

Carole kindly showed me through the house and garden. Both are beautiful and quirky. There is a wall of wearable art—everything from straw hats to top hats. One corner of a room has a key collection—big iron keys to tiny clock keys collected from flea markets around the world. Another corner has a collection of carpet beaters. Out in the garden, Carole created the Philosopher’s Walk for Jim with a bust of Voltaire.

Carole added a studio that’s connected to the house by a glazed passage. It was here that she created the dramatic five-panel work of mountains and ocean that hangs in Government House, as well as perhaps her most publicly accessible work: eight large banners depicting the seasons that hang in Munro’s Books on Government Street.

In 1984, Jim bought the Royal Bank building, designed by Thomas Hooper, the same architect who designed Hycroft in Shaughnessy, the Victoria Public Library, Roger’s Chocolate building and Christina Haas’s Cook Street Brothel.

“No one wanted a used bank building except me,” he said. “People thought I was insane because in those days there weren’t huge bookstores like there are now, but people who buy books also appreciate art and beautiful buildings.”

In December 2012 Jim invited me to have a Victoria launch at Munro’s and hang out with a bunch of local authors that included Kit Pearson, Sheryl McFarlane and Bill Gaston. Two years later he retired and handed over the keys and inventory to four long-time staffers. That same year he received the Order of Canada.

RIP Jim.

The Orillia at Robson and Seymour Streets was a distant memory by the time I moved to Vancouver, but from time to time I’ve seen a mention or photo of this early mixed-use structure. I thought of it again when I saw the photo (above) boarded up, covered in music handbills, graffiti, and destined for destruction.

Raymond Parker shot the photo in 1985, a few months before the building was bulldozed, and he tells me back in those days he often gave up food for film. The day he took this photo, he had ridden his bike piled up with camera gear all the way from Point Grey.

“The Orillia’s impending fate was well-known to Vancouver sentimentalists like myself, who clung to notions about the sense of community, continuity and civic cohesion contained in heritage structures,” he says.

The Orillia in 1961. Photo courtesy Vancouver Public Library 85767D

And, three decades later, we’re still battling the same issues, even down to the poor, sad “Save Me!” sign on the front of the building.

The Orillia was designed by architects Parr and Fee in 1903 for William Tait. A retired lumber and real estate tycoon, Tait owned a number of rental properties, and in 1903 lived at 752 Thurlow Street.  Initially, the Orillia was six row houses, and first appears with tenants in the 1905 directories–one is listed as a nurse’s home, and the other residents include a painter, a cutter, a saddler and a clerk.

In 1909, Tait had Parr and Fee expand the houses to incorporate retail stores. The name Orillia pops up for the first time in 1910 as a pool room, and by 1915 there is the Orillia Apartments, the Orillia barber shop, and the Orillia café. During the Depression years the Orillia Apartments became the Capital Rooms.

Over the years, the names changed as did the various businesses—Lewis Piano House, the Tamale Parlour Restaurant and Funland Arcade were just a few. Twiggy’s disco, a private gay bar and bottle club, opened there in 1967. The name changed to Faces in the ‘70s.

Real estate was good to Tait, and in 1911 he had Parr and Fee design his dream home in Shaughnessy. Glen Brae, named for Tait’s Scottish homeland, was dubbed “the Mae West” by locals because of its two outlandish turrets. Tait died in 1919, and Glen Brae changed hands several times before it became the home of Canuck’s Place.

The Orillia was demolished in 1985 and four years later it was replaced by the 16-storey Vancouver Tower.

For more posts about our Missing Heritage 

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

One day, someone is going to invite me for a sail up Indian Arm in their luxury yacht so I can get a look at the Wigwam Inn. It seems crazy to me that it’s still fairly inaccessible (unless you own a boat), yet in 1910 there were four different sternwheelers taking guests up and down the Arm from Vancouver—the year the Wigwam Inn opened.

I first “discovered” the Inn about 10 years ago. I was doing some research on Alvo von Alvensleben, an early Vancouver businessman and son of a German count who came to Vancouver in 1904, and not only has a name you couldn’t make up, he’s one of the most fascinating characters in BC’s history. For some reason, he has never rated a biography, so I’ve dedicated a chapter to him in my book At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes.

Benny Dickens, an advertising manager for the Daily Province saw potential in creating a resort and bought up a few hundred acres at Indian Arm in the early 1900s. He quickly ran out of money and turned to Alvensleben.

Alvensleben financed the construction of the Dominion Building. His private residence is now part of the Crofton House girl’s school in Kerrisdale, he owned a hunting lodge on Somerset in North Vancouver and houses in Pitt Meadows, Surrey and Washington State that are still known as “Alien Acres” and “Spy House.” It was Alvensleben who made the Inn a reality, turning it into a German Luftkurot (fresh-air resort). At the same time, Alvensleben was also selling lots for $200 to $300, and promising a private boat service to Vancouver that “guaranteed to get business people to the office by 9:00 a.m.”

When the war hit, Alvensleben headed to Seattle. The inn which had attracted guests like American millionaires John D. Rockefeller and John Jacob Astor, fell upon tough times after the government seized it in 1914. Over the years, the Inn changed hands many times, and all but disappeared from public view until the early 1960s when William “Fats” Robertson and his partner Rocky Myers took control.

The police caught wind of it and two boatloads of RCMP officers busted the old resort, arrested 15 people and uncovered an illegal gambling operation and plates for printing counterfeit money. Robertson and his partner were found guilty of trying to bribe an RCMP officer and received six years in prison. More owners followed until the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club bought the Inn in 1985. Now it’s strictly members only, and there’s no more room at the inn.

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

Confused by the new parking restrictions and hostile signage at Lynn Valley? Creeped out by the guy in blue that follows you around the parking lot? Not sure where LV shopping Centre starts and where LV Village takes over? Wondering why they can’t just enforce a one or two-hour parking limit and let customers park where they want?

I called Lynn Valley Centre manager, Lorelei Guthrie yesterday to find out. Guthrie has a long career managing shopping centres around the Lower Mainland, and sadly for her, landed at Lynn Valley in October, the same day the parking police were installed.

Turns out there  are actually four different landlords in this little area. Lynn Valley Village constitutes the library, Delaney’s, etc; the Lynn Valley Centre is the sad, aging, mall. Safeway has and patrols its own parking lot. The grey area is the parking lot outside the Black Bear, where staff encourage anyone who has had too much to drink to leave their car overnight. You don’t see any signs there.

“We’ve been experiencing quite a parking crunch,” says Guthrie. “We discovered that we were being used as a park and ride, we discovered that companies from across the street were asking their staff to park onsite, and it was taking away from our customer’s ability to come and park,” she said.

If you’re heading for a hot yoga class, wanting to return a book, or grab a coffee, then you need to park in the underground lot that’s accessible from Mountain Highway.

But if you want to grab some cash from the ATM at Vancity, buy clothes at Winners, pick up bananas at Safeway, and have lunch at the Black Bear, do you have to move your car four times?

“It’s a juggle and it’s one that we are still struggling with,” says Guthrie. “There’s no firm line because we are so blended.”

Things aren’t expected to change for another two years when a new parkade will be built, although Guthrie says the guards will be gone after Christmas.

I noticed today that there were a lot of empty parking spaces. Probably left by people on their way to other centres where they can shop in peace.

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

For my last post of the year, I’ve chosen the top 10 Facebook group pages. This list is highly subjective and based on a loose criteria—they have to deal with some aspect of the history of Greater Vancouver or Victoria, and you have to be able to see the posts without having to join (I’m intrigued by East Vancouver Selfies and Lululemon Barter Wars, but fear either rejection or disappointment).

1. Nostalgic/Sentimental Vancouver (10, 721 members)

I’m addicted to this page. I love that people are scanning photos from the family album and posting everything from Mum and Dad outside some long-lost house, to old posters, postcards and clubs. I also love the comments—it’s like time travel. Administrator and North Van resident Michael Arnold started the page about six years ago, and says half his members are ex pats from all over wanting to reconnect with Vancouver. The rest are locals, and a mixture of those who have moved to the ‘burbs and don’t make it into the city too often.

2. Old Victoria (13,015 members)

Similar to Nostalgic above, this is a fun, friendly, member-driven site.

3. I grew up in West Vancouver (3,225 members)

A mixture of anything to do with West Van. My favourites are the mid-century architectural photos from people who lived in the houses

4. BC Nautical History (2,506 members)

For people who have an affinity for water and the things that float on it

5. Kitsilano Then and Now (1,776 members)

It’s West Vancouver with a west side touch

6. Lynn Valley Love (1,711 members)

For those of us who have lived and loved Lynn Valley.

7. Historic Hotels and Pubs (633 members)

Glen Mofford has amazing knowledge of old pubs and their artifacts. I’m not sure if his recent book Aqua Vitae came out of this page or the page came out of the book, but worth checking out both.

8. Cold Case Canada (544 members)

Full disclosure, this is my page, and it evolved from my book Cold Case Vancouver. I wanted to recognize victims of unsolved murders and give people a place to talk about their loved ones; maybe even solve a murder. That hasn’t happened yet, but you never know.

9. Fraserview Baby Boomers (447 members)

For those who grew up in Fraserview (bordered by 41^st Avenue, Fraser Street, Kerr Street and the Fraser River)

10. Vancouver Vintage Posters (299 members) Quirky site of theatre, club and concert postings

Please add your favourite group pages in the comment section below!

For my top 10 Facebook pages with a hint of history for 2015 see: Making History with Facebook 2015

Happy New Year and thanks for following my blog!

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It’s the first week of January and if you own a house you’ve received your BC Assessment notice. If you’re like us you’re not popping open the champagne quite yet because your house has smashed through the ceiling of the home owner grant and you’re on the hook for a lot more taxes, all without putting out one lick of paint.

You can thank all those houses that have flipped and flapped over the past 12 months and likely sit empty on your street. The irony is, if you decide to sell because you can’t afford the taxes, good luck trying to get your assessment value.

Be sure to thank Christie Clark in the coming election.

But no use feeling sorry for ourselves, let’s feel sorry for Chip. Now I don’t know Chip Wilson personally, but I do wear his pants, and he has once again come in first for the most expensive house in B.C. To achieve this, all he had to do was mow down four old timers, send their parts off to the landfill, and build himself a 30,000+ sq.ft. Kitsilano bunker (imagine half a football field).

There have been a few changes in order, but the top 10 houses that I wrote about in 2015, are still the top 10 houses in 2017. The most prestigious address is Belmont Avenue which claims half the spots.

The house that comes with its own island, private docks and six guest cottages—James Island—has dropped to the third spot, trailing 4707 Belmont by $16 million.

Two years ago, 2815 Point Grey had the 10^th spot, this year it’s moved to number five and a 23% increase in value. Can anyone spell b.i.k.e. l.a.n.e?

The only heritage house on the top 10, and the only one from Shaughnessy to make the list, bumped up a spot to #6 with a $39.2 million price tag. Built in 1912, the Hollies is a rambling Neoclassical Revival, and less than half the size of Chip’s digs. The house also has an indoor pool, tennis courts, a playground and a coach house. At one point the owners paid their property taxes by renting out the mansion as a wedding reception hall.

Now there’s a thought!

If you’re wondering what your neighbour’s house is going for you can check it out here at: https://evaluebc.bcassessment.ca/ You have until the end of January to appeal your assessment.

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

More than 100 years before the laughing statues appeared at English Bay, the Imperial Roller Skating Rink opened in Morton Park at Denman and Davie Streets. Roller skating was experiencing a surge in popularity and the rink was housed in a big wood framed building with a huge tower that looked out over Beach Avenue and boasted the “largest skating floor on the continent.”

In 1912 for instance, you could go skating at the Roller Rink and wander across the road, past the Englesea Lodge and out along the English Bay Pier. If you continued back along Beach Avenue, you’d pass Joe Forte’s home at the foot of Bidwell Street, and you’d find more than 30 houses ringing the water side of Beach Avenue.

What happened to all those amazing structures you ask? Well they either burned down or we pulled them down. The Roller Rink was the first to go—it burned in 1914. Joe Forte died in 1922 and his sweet little cottage was burned to the ground—the standard practice for demolition in the 1920s. The English Bay Pier, considered an eyesore by many, was demolished in 1939. Following a plan to rid the shoreline of bricks and mortar, the City gradually purchased all of the houses, and by the 1950s Beach Avenue was bulldozed back to nature. The only hold-out was the Englesea Lodge, and arson took care of that problem in 1981.

At least we get to keep the sculptures. They were designed by Yue Minjun and installed in 2009. Each of the 14 bronze statues stands over nine feet tall, weighs more than 500 pounds and were installed as part of the Vancouver Biennale, a fantastic program that puts international art in public spaces for two years. The inscription that’s carved into the concrete reads “May this sculpture inspire laughter playfulness and joy in all who experience it.”

To give credit where it’s due, A-maze-ing Laughter is now a permanent exhibit because Chip Wilson forked over $1.5 million U.S. to keep it in the public domain. Or maybe because he can see it from his $75.8 million digs across the water.

For more about the Imperial Skating Rink and the missing structures of English Bay see:

AuthentiCity Vancouver Archives blog:

West End Vancouver blog

Vancouver as it Was blog

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

Project 200, 1968. Note we’ve kept Woodwards but nixed the 1914 Seabus station. Image courtesy Tom Carter

Gordon Price called it “the most important thing that never happened” to Vancouver, and certainly if Project 200 and the rest of the freeway plans had gone ahead, Vancouver would be virtually unrecognizable today.

The plan was to construct a $340 million freeway system that would connect Vancouver to the Trans-Canada Highway and to Highway 99. The freeway would run between Union and Prior Streets, and wipe out Strathcona, most of Chinatown, much of the West End, plop an ocean parkway along English Bay, and turn Vancouver into a mini Los Angeles.

The Chinatown section of the freeway would connect to a giant ditch that would run through downtown along Thurlow to a third crossing of Burrard Inlet from Stanley Park. Fortunately, the only part of the plan that eventuated is the contentious Georgia Viaduct built in 1972.

“What they proposed for Vancouver would have laid concrete on elevated decks, in tunnels and trenches over and through much of the land now occupied by residential towers, parks and the seawall,” writes Price.

To get a sense of Project 200—which took its name from the needed $2 million investment—take yourself to the bottom of Granville Street and check out the plaza. Then look up at the Sun/Province tower. Then imagine a forest of office and residential towers, plazas, a major hotel, and parking for 7,000 cars that would destroy Waterfront Station, most of the Sinclair Centre and the heritage buildings in Gastown. Notes Price: “The site would have demolished practically everything from Howe to Abbott Streets, north of Cordova, and covered over the rail tracks on the CPR yards, with a southern extension to Woodwards on the east side.”

The experts say that the freeway proposal died because of lack of federal and provincial funding, but I’m clinging to the belief that it was defeated by grassroots opposition.

Gordon Price will be discussing the discontented ‘60s, the great freeway debate and urban renewal next January 26 for the Vancouver Historical Society’s monthly speaker series. Please join us at the Museum of Vancouver. For details see:  Vancouver Historical Society Events.

• Thanks to Tom Carter and Jason Vanderhill for the images. There are more at: Illustrated Vancouver blog; and Jason’s page: Flickr

Angus McIntyre recently sent me some photos that he’d taken of operator-run elevators in the 1970s from buildings such as  Woodwards, the Bay and BC Electric. I told him that I wanted to write a blog based on his photos, then I realized that it should be Angus who writes that story.

By Angus McIntyre

“Going up, she said,” is the opening line in the 1970’s pop song Heaven on the 7^th Floor about a tryst between a female elevator operator and a male passenger. At that time, you could ride on some 40 elevators in Vancouver that were operated by men and women. Vancouver City Hall, the Hotel Vancouver and all the department stores had elevator operators in the early 1970s. Most large American cities had already automated most of their lifts, but Vancouver did not start in earnest until later.

My interest in both horizontal and vertical movement of people started at an early age, and I was always fascinated with electric streetcars and trolleybuses. We lived in Windsor, Ontario, in the 1950s, and visits to Hudson’s, Detroit’s huge department store, were always a treat. There were dozens of elevators, all run by uniformed staff with white gloves, with a senior operator known as a “Starter” to keep things moving. In 1958 our family moved to Geelong, a city near Melbourne, Australia. One of the department stores had a manual elevator, and I became friends with the operator. I was in grade 7, and would sometimes visit after school. She showed me the mechanics of the lift, and how it all worked.

Our family moved to Vancouver in 1965, and soon I found many buildings with elevator operators. Woodward’s on Hastings Street had a set of manual elevators in the centre of the store. The Starter stood at an information booth on the main concourse near the lifts, and she had a set of castanets. When she saw that a car was full, she would signal the operator with a “clack-clack”, the gate would slide across and the doors would close. The sound could be heard above the busiest crowds on $1.49 Day. Since there were windows in the doors, you could see all the people inside as the car ascended.

The old B.C. Electric Building on Carrall Street had elevators that ran on 600 volts Direct Current, sourced from the trolleybus system. About a dozen downtown buildings were wired into the trolley system, so if there were a trolley power failure people would be stuck in the elevators. The last building to use such power was the Sylvia Hotel, converted in the 1980s.

There may be a few isolated manual elevators in Vancouver now, most likely for freight rather than people. New high-rise buildings often have the exterior construction elevator manually operated. A large downtown bank still requires an operator to take you to the safety deposit vault.

If you want to see a large building with elevator operators today, you can visit Seattle’s iconic Smith Tower.

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

In 1904 Joe Fortes was living in a sweet little cottage at the foot of Gilford, right by where the Sylvia Hotel is today. When he heard that the city wanted to rid the water side of homes, he got permission from the mayor to put his home on skids and move it three blocks down the beach to the foot of Bidwell.

Two decades earlier Joseph Seraphim Fortes jumped ship in Burrard Inlet and decided to settle in Vancouver. He was a porter for a time, but after Vancouver burned to the ground in 1886, he started to teach kids to swim in English Bay—hundreds and hundreds of them. Twenty-nine is the official number of lives he saved, but the unofficial number is estimated to be closer to a hundred.

Joe lived in his little cottage by the water until his death on February 4, 1922. He was 57.

Instead of moving his former home across the street to Alexandra Park where it could become a repository for black history in Vancouver, for Joe Fortes, and for the houses that once dotted the water side of Beach Avenue, we burned it to the ground—the standard practice for demolition in the ‘20s.

“Our friend Joe’s” funeral was held at Holy Rosary Cathedral, and it was the most heavily attended in the history of Vancouver with thousands of people spilling outside the packed church.

In 1927, the people of Vancouver–many of them children–raised $5,000 (the equivalent of about $70,000 today) to build a memorial fountain in his honour. The fountain was sculpted by Charles Marega, one of the most interesting and prolific artists that you’ve probably never heard of, and inscribed with the words “little children loved him.”

Joe’s legend continues to carry on almost a century after his death.

Joe has a seafood restaurant named after him, and a library. In 1986, the Vancouver Historical Society named him “Citizen of the Century,” and in February 2013 he was honoured with a stamp on the 150^th anniversary of his birth.

For more on the life of this amazing man, check out Our Friend Joe: the Joe Fortes story.

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