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 […]

Look at an image of Vancouver before the 1990s and you’ll notice a very different landscape. Apartment towers have sprouted up at a rate of 3,000 units per year, which is 1,000 more annually than twenty years ago. Moving away from brick and stone, transforming into a city of glass. Apartment-dwellers outnumber those in row […]

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 […]

Vancouver is only going on 126 years old but despite its infancy compared to most other world-class cities, it had a community that supported the arts right off the bat. I dug around the Vancouver Archives to find evidence of everything from Vancouver’s vibrant vaudeville days to its fanatical film-going culture, in neighbourhood theatres to […]

Both Heritage Vancouver and the Vancouver Heritage Foundation host fascinating walking, neighbourhood, and housing tours around Vancouver. One upcoming event that caught my eye, aside from tomorrow night’s dinner in the Marine Building penthouse, is a walking tour with twist. Photo credit: davefisher99 on Flickr – Submitted to the Miss604 Flickr Pool. Walking Tour & […]