After hearing the loud rumble that caused the curtains to blow in my mother walked over to the crib to check on me. It was Mother’s Day. She thought the noise came from someone slamming lids on dumpsters but soon found out on the news that Mount St Helens in Washington State had erupted. I […]

Craigdarroch Castle, legacy of the Dunsmuir family, has been perched overlooking Victoria since the turn of the 20th century. Nowadays its red spires are barely visible over the stretching Garry Oaks but it’s definitely a main attraction on many tours and personal trips to the capital city. History The Dunsmuirs are pillars of BC’s industrial […]

The Pacific National Exhibition or PNE will be celebrating 100 years this summer. From livestock, pig races, demolition derbies, and the “As Seen on TV” marketplace, to cotton candy, fried onions, mini donuts and The Mousetrap, it’s a Vancouver tradition. While the PNE won’t be around for its limited engagement until summer is in full […]

The Museum of Anthropology is one of my favourite places in Vancouver, and I even shared that with the world through a feature I did with Google a few months ago. I recently visited for the first time since their renovation and was given the grand tour by Karen Duffek, Curator Pacific Northwest, Contemporary Visual […]

The history of Vancouver’s flag (and thus its coat of arms) was suggested by a reader the other day so I have dug up some research about our city’s icons. Coat of Arms Vancouver’s first Coat of Arms was drawn up by alderman Lauchlan Hamilton (as in Hamilton Street) and assumed in 1886. However, as […]

Being a seaside town, Vancouver has always had several lighthouses standing guard atop rocky perches. This morning I put the call out on Twitter for history post suggestions and the theme of lighthouses came from Tyler Ingram. Three lighthouses in particular came to mind so I have decided to profile them in a “Then and […]

It was 1915 at one of Canada’s first indoor ice rinks, the Denman Arena, where the Vancouver Millionaires lifted the Stanley Cup. Named after the same man for whom Stanley Park has its title, it’s been an interesting 95 years of hockey in this town ever since. Denman Arena from the Rowing Club in Stanley […]

If you’re into local history there are a few events coming up with Heritage Vancouver this month that may be of interest. Saturday, April 17, 2010 Annual Top Ten Endangered Sites Release and Bus Tour Each year Heritage Vancouver publishes a list of its Top Ten endangered heritage sites and this ride (inside a Transit […]

Update February 2011: Read about Vancouver’s 125th anniversary. It was 124 years ago today (on April 6, 1886) that the City of Vancouver was incorporated. The [incorporation] ceremony was delayed when it was discovered no one had thought to bring paper on which to write down the details. Someone had to run down the street […]

We may know it as a single complex but the Sinclair Centre started out as four separate buildings, built around 1910 and brought together in the 1980s. I recently featured the buildings in one of my Then and Now posts so when Marc invited me down for a private tour of the heritage building I […]