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. […]

Vancouver has a few triangle-shaped buildings but none are as prominent and photographed as the Hotel Europe across from Maple Tree Square in Gastown making it today’s Vancouver Icon photo feature. (Left) 1908 – Completed Hotel Europe. Archives #HotP17. (Right) 1910s – Archives #M-11-32. 1960s – Archives #CVA 1135-57. 1970s – Arhives #CVA 780-508. Our […]

Travel vloggers eat your hearts out! Back in 1936 James A. FitzPatrick presented a series of newsreels in fantastic new Technicolor called Traveltalks which included profiles of Victoria and Vancouver. Most of Fitzpatrick’s Traveltalks were produced by MGM and featured over a hundred destinations, from Motoring in Mexico (1943) and Chicago the Beautiful (1948) to […]

One of my prized possessions is an original 1876 Map of Westminster that depicts the Lower Mainland a decade before Vancouver even became a city. Unfortunately for me it’s on loan from my father but I enjoy inspecting it every now and then to follow the lines of rivers and creeks that have disappeared, boundaries […]

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation presents Gritty City: Vancouver in the 60s at the historic Hollywood Theatre later this month. This is a mini three-night film festival that will feature Vancouver’s earlier days of neon, West Coast architecture, and the evolution of the West End. The films will include: 1958 – Granville neon. VPL Number: 65548 […]