It was in March of 1921 that the Capitol Theatre opened at 820 Granville. The movie palace was massive for its time (the silent movie era) with 2,500 seats. It had a grand marquee and it’s where legendary theatre manager Ivan Ackery got his start in the business as an usher. 1926 – Archives Item: […]

On Saturday, March 16, 2013 the Vancouver Canucks will be wearing throwback replica jerseys that pay homage to the Vancouver Millionaires, a team that changed hockey as we know it and paraded down Denman Street with the Stanley Cup in 1915. 1920s – VPL Number: 17996 & 17995. Photographer: Stuart Thomson. The Vancouver Millionaires were […]

The weekly collections of archive photography that I usually assemble date back a century if not more. We have early Vancouver (even before it was called Vancouver), its formative years with the original Hotel Vancouver, the race to continually have the “tallest building in the British Empire” over and over again, and the post-war era. […]

In a city where the skyline changes annually, it’s always fascinating to look back ten to one hundred years to see how it has evolved. Last week I had the opportunity to fly around the region with News1130’s Kim Seale and I had my cameras firing every few seconds as I tried to capture the […]

Hollow Tree in Stanley Park has been the main focus of tourist photo ops for the last century. Images of cyclists, couples, and even cars (inside the tree) come up often in my search of the Vancouver Public Library and Vancouver City Archives. However, when I search for recent photos, like in the Miss604 Flickr […]

On this day in 1833, James Murray Yale – namesake of Yale, BC and Yaletown in Vancouver – took command of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Langley. He was 36 years old and had been with the company for half his life already. 1900s – Yale, BC. VPL Number: 41974. Photo credit: Edwards Brothers. […]

I was recently contributing photos to Tourism Surrey’s Flickr Group and selected several of the images I took while on a photowalk in Whalley with my sister and my nephews. The boys were in Little League and so we had walked around the ballparks and then over to the recreation centre. Captured in many of […]

Vancouver has a few triangle-shaped buildings but none are as prominent and photographed as the Hotel Europe across from Maple Tree Square in Gastown making it today’s Vancouver Icon photo feature. (Left) 1908 – Completed Hotel Europe. Archives #HotP17. (Right) 1910s – Archives #M-11-32. 1960s – Archives #CVA 1135-57. 1970s – Arhives #CVA 780-508. Our […]

Travel vloggers eat your hearts out! Back in 1936 James A. FitzPatrick presented a series of newsreels in fantastic new Technicolor called Traveltalks which included profiles of Victoria and Vancouver. Most of Fitzpatrick’s Traveltalks were produced by MGM and featured over a hundred destinations, from Motoring in Mexico (1943) and Chicago the Beautiful (1948) to […]

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation is celebrating Heritage Week in BC (February 18th to 24th) by hosting a series of events that shine a spotlight on our local history. Tuesday, February 19, 2013 Chinatown: Why is it a National Historic Site? Historian John Atkin and Planner Jeannette Hlavach lead this lecture about Chinatown and the process […]