Browsing “Vancouver Was Awesome Series”

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

David H Nelson arrived in Gastown in 1881. Years later he described his arrival in the young settlement:

I came from Wiarton, Ont., when I was 20, traveling around by Frisco via Union Central, then by boat to Victoria. From there I took the old Western Slope to New Westminster and walked 12 miles over the old Douglas Road through solid green timber to Gastown — named after a man called “Gassy” Jack … There were three saloons, two hotels, and a little store kept by a Mulatto, and an oil works where the CPR depot now stands — nothing else except firs and cedars down to the water’s edge. It was certainly a wild spot.

Nelson recalls one eventful Christmas in the early days:

I remember one Christmas Sunday when sailors from five ships, which were loading lumber, were invited to the mill cookhouse for dinner. Sailors and lumbermen speedily got into a fight. Many suckling pigs had been baked. The upshot of the melee was that scores grabbed the pigs, stuck them under their arms, and hustled off to eat elsewhere, many of the loggers taking their pigs to their Indian and half-breed squaws.

They were a rough crowd. All had nicknames suitable to their peculiar characteristics. Disease was rampant. Working hours were 11 1/2 a day from 6 am to 6 pm, with half an hour for lunch. Wages ran about $40 to $60 a month and board.

This photo was heavily annotated by Major Matthews, who painstakingly identified all of the buildings, including Sullivan’s General Store (the Mulatto store mentioned above), Wah Chong laundry, and a restaurant that was only open when the proprietor, George Brew, wasn’t in jail.

Source: Photo taken from Major JS Matthews, Early Vancouver Volume 4, p 3, via the Internet Archive

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Bob Bouchette was the Vancouver Sun’s most popular journalist in the 1930s. His colleague at the paper, Pierre Berton, described Bouchette as an iconoclast for things like interviewing the loser of a boxing match while other reporters scrambled to get a sound bite from the winner. A bartender at Bouchette’s watering hole, now called Funky Winkerbean’s, remembers being told not to wake Bouchette if he saw him snoozing at the bar because “he was writing a column.” The bartender remembers one story of Bouchette swimming across Burrard Inlet to his West Van home with a bottle of rum tied around his neck.

In 1934 Bouchette went undercover in the relief camps for the unemployed. The result was a six-part series of articles that gave his readers a glimpse into the abysmal conditions in the camps and thus helped raise public sympathy for the plight of the unemployed.

The Birds’ Paradise was an aviary at the home of Charles E Jones at 5207 Hoy Street. Thousands of birds from 35 wild and domestic species lived in the sanctuary and gladly posed with visitors, children, dogs, and even politicians. Jones became Vancouver’s mayor after Gerry McGeer passed away in 1947 midway through his term in office. Jones won the mayoral election in 1948, but died himself later that year.

Source: City of Vancouver Archives #371-1268

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Poster for the Supremes at the legendary Cave Supper Club. I’m not positive what year this was, but if it was 1965, the Supremes (sans Diana) ended their night at the Elegant Parlor, an after hours club downstairs from what’s now Celebrities on Davie Street. Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers were playing that night and their encounter with the Supremes landed them a recording contract with Motown. A few years later, Bobby Taylor did the same for a young group that opened for the Vancouvers in Chicago called the Jackson 5.

Source: Canada.com

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

The On-To-Ottawa Trek began as a two month-long protest in Vancouver by a couple thousand unemployed men on strike from the relief camps that were set up and run by the military throughout Western Canada. On 3 June 1935 they decided they accomplished all they could in Vancouver and hopped on boxcars at the foot of Gore and headed for Ottawa to pressure the feds to do something about the unemployment crisis. The Trek was violently crushed in what became known as the Regina Riot. Although the effort failed, the Trekkers were successful in garnering public support and ultimately set the tone for Canada’s social safety net that was erected after the war.

What makes this image unique is that women’s role in the movement was largely confined to maternal activities like supplying food, raising funds, and motherly finger-wags directed at politicians. In contrast, the O’Brien sisters joined the mass of male protesters, attired in what the newspaper caption calls “their mannish best.” Unfortunately we know nothing else about “the pretty O’Brien sisters from Vancouver,” such as how far they travelled, what their motivations were, or what their personal economic situation was.

Source:  Ottawa Citizen, 11 June 1935

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

According to City Archivist Major Matthews, the top image is the first known portrayal of what’s now Vancouver. It’s a copy of a watercolour painted by Lieut. Willies of the HMS Ganges in 1861 and shows members of the crew helping local Squamish people pull heavy fishing nets to shore. Matthews determined that the location was Greer’s (now Kitsilano) Beach at the foot of Yew Street, where the bottom photo was taken in 1908.

The beach was named after Samuel Greer, an Irishman and American Civil War vet who lived on the beach. He was eventually evicted by the CPR, but only after a gunfight between him and the sheriff.

In his notes included with the photo, Major Matthews writes:

Samuel Greer’s cottage stood on the low mound—sand blown—where the long boat shed appears; his barn and water well were out of sight on the right; his orchard and garden, also milk-house were behind. His cows grazed in the swamp, where, in earlier days, elk had roamed. Three creeks entered this beach; one in the corner on right; one in the middle of beach; and a small one at far end; they almost dried up in summer. The Canadian Pacific Railway right-of-way is in the lower right-hand corner.

It was first used as a resort for summer camps in the early 1890’s; became most fashionable to have a camp there, was renamed “Kitsilano” by the Can. Pac. Ry, and when the single track street car line commenced, on or about Dominion Day, 1905, proved so popular that it became crowded. “Tent Town” had two rows of camper’s tents, with an irregular “street” of sand between them.

After serving as a camp site for more than 15 years, it was discontinued, after 1908, on account of improper sanitation, and the opening of the area for settlement 1909. The forest was cut down and burned, and a black empty clearing lay where it had been. The C.P.R. built five fine houses—one here and there—to induce settlement. When False Creek was deepened in 1913, the sand was pumped on the swamp, and the muskrats & frogs in the slough disappeared.

Sources: Top image: Major JS Matthews, Conversations with Khahtsahlano, 1932-1954, (Vancouver: City of Vancouver Archives, 1955); bottom photo: City of Vancouver Archives #Be P24; quotation: Major JS Matthews, Early Vancouver, Vol. 7 (Vancouver: City of Vancouver, 2011), 33.

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

The Moon Glow was already closed for a few years when this photo was taken, but in the late 1950s and early 60s, it was an R&B club. Tommy Chong talks about playing there with The Shades, his band from those days:

The Moon Glow was owned by Daddy Clark, a railway porter who loved The Shades and wanted to see us back together. Railway porters played a big part in our development as blues musicians because they were the ones who brought records up from the States, turning us on to Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, who did tunes like “Sexy Ways,” “Annie Had a Baby,” and “The Twist.” They brought us the latest records from Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and a host of other blues artists who were otherwise unobtainable. We would learn these great tunes and then play them for a grateful audience, who would be hearing them for the first time, since they were never played on the radio.

Tommy Chong became well known in the local live music scene and had a brush with fame when his band, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, signed with Motown. After that effort fizzled, Chong turned his brother’s topless bar at Main and Pender, the Shanghai Junk, into a comedy club where he paired up with Cheech Marin to form Cheech and Chong.

Source: City of Vancouver Archives #780-335