Heading down to the Piggly Wiggly for a quart of milk is something you would hear in Memphis, Tennessee where the revolutionary grocery store chain was founded in 1916. However, you could also go to the Piggly Wiggly over on Granville Street in Vancouver about 80 years ago. The Vancouver Sun, March 27, 1931 In […]

There will soon a be new sculpture in Stanley Park as the Park Board has accepted a statue donated by the Portuguese Joe Memorial Society. The piece, featuring pioneer Joe Silvey (“Portuguese Joe”), will celebrate the ancestral connection of Coast Salish and Portuguese communities in Vancouver. Source: Park Board Proposal From the proposal to the […]

Browsing the Vancouver Public Library Archives I came across another photographer with an extensive collection of local, historical photos. Stanley Triggs produced portraits, street photography, and captured some downtown Vancouver scenes that I had never come across before. He’s the former curator of the Notman Photographic Archives and was born in Nelson, BC in 1928. […]

Vancouver’s English Bay Pier was built in 1905 and was demolished in 1938.

The Vancouver International Auto Show is coming up next week so with all of the event notifications I’m receiving this week I have cars on the brain. Therefore in the search for today’s Vancouver history piece, Canada’s first gas station came to mind. 1920 – Imperial Oil at 590 Hornby St. Donated by J.E. Hayden. […]

It was in March of 1921 that the Capitol Theatre opened at 820 Granville. The movie palace was massive for its time (the silent movie era) with 2,500 seats. It had a grand marquee and it’s where legendary theatre manager Ivan Ackery got his start in the business as an usher. 1926 – Archives Item: […]

The weekly collections of archive photography that I usually assemble date back a century if not more. We have early Vancouver (even before it was called Vancouver), its formative years with the original Hotel Vancouver, the race to continually have the “tallest building in the British Empire” over and over again, and the post-war era. […]

In a city where the skyline changes annually, it’s always fascinating to look back ten to one hundred years to see how it has evolved. Last week I had the opportunity to fly around the region with News1130’s Kim Seale and I had my cameras firing every few seconds as I tried to capture the […]

Hollow Tree in Stanley Park has been the main focus of tourist photo ops for the last century. Images of cyclists, couples, and even cars (inside the tree) come up often in my search of the Vancouver Public Library and Vancouver City Archives. However, when I search for recent photos, like in the Miss604 Flickr […]

On this day in 1833, James Murray Yale – namesake of Yale, BC and Yaletown in Vancouver – took command of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Langley. He was 36 years old and had been with the company for half his life already. 1900s – Yale, BC. VPL Number: 41974. Photo credit: Edwards Brothers. […]