The Stanley Park Ecology Society is hosting a special event during their Annual General Meeting next week. They’re inviting their members and the public to sit in on a presentation from Lyle Dick, Parks Canada Historian. The talk will be about the evolution of Stanley Park as a National Historic Site (designated in 1988) along […]

With another year comes another battle downtown over a historic property that is slated for demolition to make room for a high-rise. This time around it’s the Legg Residence on Harwood that’s on the chopping block. Listed as one of Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Endangered Sites for 2011, it’s one of only three West End […]

It was on this day in 1893 that the Hudson’s Bay Company opened a store at the corner of Georgia and Granville streets. 118 years later, the company is still in the same location (albeit in a different building). It’s been a shopping destination, a meeting place, and a beacon of Canadian pride during the […]

A boy and girl playing with a chained bear in their front yard in Kitsilano, a horse-drawn taxi rolling down Cordova Street, the Hotel Vancouver on the corner of Granville and Georgia. These are all images that I have featured during my weekly history photo series and which have been sourced from the City of […]

On this day in history, September 21, 1980, the Stanley Park seawall loop was officially completed. To avoid erosion around Stanley Park, work began on the first part of the seawall in 1917 thanks to the vision of W.S. Rawlings and James Cunningham’s initiatives with the Vancouver Park Board. Over the next several decades it […]

Next month McClure’s Cabs will be celebrating 100 years as a business in Vancouver, making it the oldest taxi company in the Lower Mainland. It was also the first taxi company to provide airport service in Vancouver. The theme of this week’s roundup of photos from the Vancouver Archives and the Vancouver Library collection is: […]

John and I are in Kansas City this week and when driving through KCMO, you get welcomed downtown by classic old billboards on rooftops and painted advertisements on the side of buildings. Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr Vancouver used to have a lot of these until they slowly disappeared due to city bylaws. Now […]

While it’s not a brand most associate with our city specifically, yesterday Nabob coffee celebrated its 115th anniversary in Vancouver, where it originally began. 1924 – Water at Cordova (between Waterfront and Steamworks, today). VPL Accession Number: 10698. Photographer: Leonard Frank. 1932 – Water at Cordova. Archives item# Bu N436. Photographer: W.J. Moore. Founded in […]

Today’s historic photo collection comes from the Surrey Archives and features early scenes of our province’s largest city (by area), largest school district, and second largest city (by population). Although Surrey didn’t receive “city” status until 1993, the municipality was formed in 1879. Left: 1910 – Ocean Park. Archives# 180.4.04 Right: 1958 – Crescent Beach. […]

Lumberman’s Arch is a popular meeting place and landmark on the North side of Stanley Park, West of Brockton Point. The single log propped up by two others is a monument to the major industry that built up our province and was installed by the Park Board and the BC Lumber Manufacturers Association almost 60 […]