Each year Heritage Vancouver lists their Top Ten Endangered Sites around the city. These are libraries, schools, motels, theatres, and other structures whose fate is uncertain or threatened. The 2012 list will be revealed exclusively during a bus tour next month. Date: Saturday, May 5, 2012 Time: 1pm to 5pm (loading begins at 12:30pm and […]

New Westminster will be celebrating the 120th anniversary of the Burr Block building this month. The old provincial capital was destroyed by fire in 1898 (twelve years after Vancouver’s “Great Fire”) and the Burr Block at 411-419 Columbia Street was only one of two buildings that remained. Today, it’s the home of the Met Hotel, […]

Walking around Stanley Park nowadays there are hardly any remnants of the zoo that once housed over 50 species of animals, from monkeys and cobras to penguins and kangaroos. However, the old cement polar bear habitat still haunts the grounds just west of Brockton Oval and south of the Vancouver Aquarium. When I was young […]

Legendary elusive billionaire Howard Hughes once holed up in Vancouver’s Bayshore hotel (now Westin Bayshore) for six straight months. It’s been 40 years since his stay and Heritage Vancouver is hosting an anniversary tour to commemorate the unusual event. 1961 – Bayshore Inn, Coal Harbour. Archives item# 2010-006.046. What Howard Hughes at the Bayshore: 40th […]

If you live in Vancouver, chances are that you’ve passed a building designed by architect Francis Rattenbury. From Victoria and Nanaimo to Revelstoke and Jasper, several of Rattenbury’s houses, commercial buildings, and CPR-commissioned hotels still stand today. Photo credit: 1892: Roedde House This is arguably the first structure that Rattenbury built in Canada. It was […]