For decades the North Shore mountains have been a playground for locals and visitors, especially during ski season. Grouse Mountain had one of the first double chairlifts in the world when it was constructed in 1949, Mount Seymour has been enjoyed since 1938, and Mount Strachan & Black Mountain make up the popular Cypress Mountain […]

Outdoor ice skating in Vancouver, photos from the City of Vancouver archives from the last 100 years at Lost Lagoon, Trout Lake and more.

Doreen Reitsma was the first woman from BC to enter Canada’s postwar Navy and although I came across her story in a very roundabout way, I am certainly glad that I found it. I was originally searching the Vancouver Archives for photos of hats — one of my very rare fashion posts sourced from scanned […]

The Cambie Bridge as we know it is the third iteration of a crossing in that particular area connecting south east False Creek with the downtown peninsula. The first Cambie Bridge, named after Cambie Street’s namesake Henry John Cambie, was built in 1891. In 1911 it was replaced by the Connaught Bridge, named in honour […]

For my archive photo collections I would normally reach way back into the 1880s, around the time when the City of Vancouver was established, however that’s not the case this week. Thanks to a suggestion from Keira-Anne, the ‘Archive Photos: Vancouver in the 80s’ I’m focusing on will be the 1980s, taking a glimpse at […]

This morning our clocks fell back an hour and we’ll take a look back at what happened in Vancouver during the month of November over the last century. November 6, 1917: Creating Lost Lagoon, separating it from Coal Harbour. Archives# PAN N54.Click to view full panorama by W.J. Moore. This Month in History Source: The […]

The site of the first city hospital in Vancouver has been commemorated as part of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation‘s Places That Matter plaque project. On October 9th, the foundation hosted a plaque presentation ceremony at the site, which is now an Easy Park lot. 1914: Cambie looking south from near Pender. Archives# LGN 1233. 2012: […]

A new month has arrived with rain, winds, and Halloween preparations. In Vancouver history, October has had some defining moments, some of which have been captured and preserved in the Vancouver Public Library and City of Vancouver Archives, while others live on through the words of Chuck Davis’ History of Metropolitan Vancouver. Here’s a quick […]

There are characters that can define a community and in the 1970s, it was “Ace” Aasen — the self-proclaimed Mayor of Gastown. Although the area on the eastern edge of Vancouver’s downtown is named after another character, John “Gassy Jack” Deighton, this historic quarter seems to have always attracted interesting personalities. “Ace” Aasen, “Mayor of […]

A great bit hat tip to the Vancouver is Awesome team for spotting (and promoting) Vancouver Rising, a new Tumblr blog that takes footage from the Vancouver Archives‘ video collection and creates fantastic animated GIFs. Here are just a few of the gems they have posted so far: 1973: Granville at Robson – “Vancouver Impressions“. […]