The first tourist bus service began running in Stanley Park in 1908 but it wasn’t until the 1920s that a public bus service “challenged the supremacy of the electric streetcar”1 in Vancouver. 1940s: Grandview Hwy & the Bus Stop Coffee Shop. Archives# CVA 1184-3267. Photographer: Jack Lindsay. On March 19th, 1923 under BC Electric Railway’s […]

Anna Ethel Sprott (1879-1961) has a legacy in Vancouver that most might associate with a radio jingle: “Sprott-Shaw Community College, since 1903!”. However, Anna Ethel Sprott did more than marry the school‘s founder, R.J. Sprott, in 1918 and take on the role of president after his passing in 1943. She was a solid member of […]

Empire Stadium Ski Jump

December in Vancouver means holiday shopping at the market, ice skating at Robson Square, light displays and city views from the ski hills. Here’s a quick glimpse of this festive month throughout the last century thanks to Chuck Davis’ History of Metropolitan Vancouver: 1936: City Hall prior to opening. Leonard Frank Photos. Archives# City P19.1 […]

This Sunday Santa Clause will arrive to welcome the holiday season to downtown Vancouver and to help collect donations for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. I browsed the Vancouver Public Library and City of Vancouver Archives to see if I could spot Santa around town throughout the years. As it turns out, he used to […]

For decades the North Shore mountains have been a playground for locals and visitors, especially during ski season. Grouse Mountain had one of the first double chairlifts in the world when it was constructed in 1949, Mount Seymour has been enjoyed since 1938, and Mount Strachan & Black Mountain make up the popular Cypress Mountain […]

Outdoor ice skating in Vancouver, photos from the City of Vancouver archives from the last 100 years at Lost Lagoon, Trout Lake and more.

Doreen Reitsma was the first woman from BC to enter Canada’s postwar Navy and although I came across her story in a very roundabout way, I am certainly glad that I found it. I was originally searching the Vancouver Archives for photos of hats — one of my very rare fashion posts sourced from scanned […]

The Cambie Bridge as we know it is the third iteration of a crossing in that particular area connecting south east False Creek with the downtown peninsula. The first Cambie Bridge, named after Cambie Street’s namesake Henry John Cambie, was built in 1891. In 1911 it was replaced by the Connaught Bridge, named in honour […]

For my archive photo collections I would normally reach way back into the 1880s, around the time when the City of Vancouver was established, however that’s not the case this week. Thanks to a suggestion from Keira-Anne, the ‘Archive Photos: Vancouver in the 80s’ I’m focusing on will be the 1980s, taking a glimpse at […]