Vancouver Websites Years Ago

There are many milestones being celebrated in Vancouver this year. We have the 40th anniversary of the Whitecaps, the 25th anniversary of Bard on the Beach, The Arts Club’s 50th anniversary, the 50th anniversary of the Stanley Park Train, and several more. Many of these organizations and businesses have also been online for a long time and I thought it would be fun to hop into the Wayback Machine at Archive.org to check out what some popular Vancouver websites looked like at least a decade ago.

Vancouver Websites Years Ago

Vancouver Art Gallery in December of 1996 (includes site visitor counter)

Canucks.com in July of 1997 (was the Orca Bay home page)

UBC in November of 1996 (not pictured here, the Guestbook at the bottom of the page. Remember those?)

Canada Place in June of 2000 (-5087 days 10 hours and 47 minutes Until Canada Day 2000!)

Museum of Anthropology in January of 1998

CKNW in May of 1999 (includes helpful instructions to “simply point and click on the buttons at the side or the links at the bottom of this page” to navigate)

Bard on the Beach in August of 2000 (complete with an animated GIF of a lightning bolt)

The Arts Club Theatre Company in August of 2000 (with popular Comic Sans font)

White Spot in March of 2000 (best viewed in Internet Explorer 5)

And to be fair, here’s the evolution of Miss604 since 2004:

I salute all of these businesses and entities for not only being online for 10 to 15 years, but for evolving their web presences and keeping up with the times. I look forward to seeing what the future of web design holds for all — and to see if other trends like the animated GIF will make a come back.