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 & […]

Walking past the box office of the Spanish Revival style building, I opened the doors to the Patricia Theatre and was greeted with the haunting aroma of buttered popcorn. A poster board propped up in the entranceway spelled out the future of the historic Powell River theatre rather bluntly: Digital or Dark? The Patricia is […]

It was on March 10th 1870 the settlement know locally as Gastown was given its official name: Granville Townsite. Lord Granville was the Colonial Secretary at the time and the Granville Townsite was selected as the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway. It wasn’t until 1886 that the townsite was renamed, when it incorporated, as […]