Browsing “Vancouver Was Awesome Series”

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

The Beatles first and last Vancouver show was 48 years ago today at Empire Stadium. The best part of this recording is the blow-by-blow CKNW radio coverage (starting at 28:17) by the three Jacks – Cullen, Wasserman, and Webster.

With only 100 police on duty and tens of thousands of hysterical fans, the Beatles played for just 29 minutes before police and manager Brian Epstein shut it down. John Lennon famously told Red Robinson to get the fuck off the stage when he came out to try and quiet the crowd down. About a dozen fans had managed to get in by crashing through the gates.

Earlier in the evening, thousands of fans gathered at the Hotel Georgia, where the band was expected to be staying. A red car with a guy that sorta looked like Ringo got swarmed, and fans swiped a couple of police revolvers, leading the police chief to disarm his men. Dozens of fans were treated at the PNE and at St Paul’s for minor injuries and hysteria.   

As for the performance itself, the Vancouver Sun’s music critic was less than impressed:

Aside from their haircuts (or lack of them) and Mersey-side accents, I perceived nothing that made them better or worse than any number of less ballyhooed groups, either as vocalists or instrumentalists. They sounded just as loud, just as monotonous, and just as unmusical … I do not know how it came, why it came and when it will go away. But go away the Beatle phenomenon will, and with it will go The Beatles. The day has yet to come. When it does, music lovers everywhere can rejoice – yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can listen to the press conference the band gave before the concert here.

Source: alphajpgr0 on YouTube

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Mark Twain was as successful as any American writer could hope to be, but by the 1890s he found himself $80,000 in debt from a publishing company he invested in that didn’t survive the economic depression. To pay off his creditors, Twain went on a lecture tour of the world that included a stop at the Vancouver Opera House on Granville Street. He arrived in Vancouver 117 years ago today.

The stress of being so deeply in debt took its toll on Twain’s health, and he spent part of his time in Vancouver laid up at the Hotel Vancouver. The tour, he said, was helping his physical as well as financial recovery:

Lecturing is gymnastics, chest-expander, medicine, mind healer, blues-destroyer, all in one. I am twice as well as I was when I started out — I have gained nine pounds in twenty eight days and expect to weigh 600 before January. I haven’t had a blue day in all twenty-eight. My wife and daughter are accumulating health and strength and flesh nearly as fast as I am. When we reach home a year hence I think we can exhibit as freaks.

From his hotel bed, Twain regaled local newspapermen (pictured) with stories and his opinions on many subjects. In this photo, he’s holding a candle and explaining that he rejoiced when electric lights were introduced, but he still travels with a candle because many hotels shut the lights off at night. Major Pond, Twain’s manager, abruptly ended the interview because otherwise, he said, Twain would talk all day.

Source: Photo by Major JB Pond, via City of Vancouver Archives #Port P329

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

125 years ago today, the Vancouver Electric Illuminating Company switched on the city’s first electric lights in 53 homes and 300 street lamps from this (now demolished) building in the alley east of Abbott and north of West Pender. The steam boiler powered two Edison dyanamos and, according to the 1888 City Directory, another was on its way, “so great is the demand for the electric light in this city.”

One of the first, 16 candlepower, lights was installed at City Hall on Powell Street, to the objection of Alderman Humphries. When the light was turned on, Humphries struck a match on his pants, lit a candle, and held it up to the electric light. “Mr. Mayor,” he said, “they call this thing they want to plant on us 16 candlepower. I call it a swindle. I don’t see any improvement in it over this single candle.”

Source: Photo by Rowland J Towers (1931), City of Vancouver Archives #Bu N5.2

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Interurban trains operated in the Lower Mainland from 1891 until BC Electric Railway Co. (BCER) dismantled its rail system in the 1950s. The last streetcar ran in 1955 in Vancouver and the last interurban ended service in Steveston in 1958.

Interurbans were basically large and powerful streetcars that carried people and freight between cities. They were extremely popular and connected the numerous communities of the Lower Mainland. By the late 1940s, it was clear that the system required a massive and expensive overhaul following years of depression and wartime neglect. However, business and political leaders were aggressively restructuring cities around the private automobile at the time and so BCER launched a “Rails to Rubber” campaign to transition to diesel buses.

This particular car, BCER 1225, was snatched up by a museum in California after being decommissioned. In 2005 it made its way back to BC and has been undergoing an extensive rehabilitation with the end goal of returning it to service on the original BCER tracks in the Fraser Valley next year.

For more on Lower Mainland interurban history, see The Buzzer Blog.

Source: Photo by John Koschwanez, via the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Twenty year-old Percy Williams came out of nowhere to win gold medals for Canada in both the 100m and 200m sprints in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. He went on to break the world’s record at the inaugural British Empire Games in 1930 in Hamilton with a time of 10.3 seconds in the 100m dash, officially making him the fastest man alive.

Williams took up running in 1924 when he was a student at King Edward High School despite having a heart condition. At 5’6″ and 126 pounds, the sickly and slightly built teenager seemed an unlikely candidate for the top rank in any sport, but within a few years he was well known in BC for routinely winning track events throughout the province. On the world sports stage however, he was unknown and no one expected him to win a gold medal, let alone two, when he competed against the fastest runners in the world at Amsterdam.

Back in Vancouver, Williams received a hero’s welcome. He was driven through the streets and around Stanley Park to the cheers of 30,000 Vancouverites, including 2500 school children, and received kudos from the Premier, Mayor, and other officials.

Running with an injured leg in the 1932 Los Angeles games, Percy Williams failed to repeat his Olympic success and retired soon after. His world record held for eleven years, but Williams was hardly nonplussed when it was beaten. “Records are fine,” he once said, “but my aim was to beat the guy beside me.”

Williams donated his two gold medals to the BC Sports Hall of Fame, both of which have since been stolen. He isn’t well remembered as far Canadian athletes go, which might not have been the case had his Olympic victory been in the dirty thirties instead of the roaring twenties, and possibly because of his reserved personality.

A quiet man who largely kept to himself, Williams worked as an insurance agent and avoided the public eye for most of the rest of his life. He suffered depression following a stroke and ended his own life in 1982 at the age of 74.

For more images and documents from Percy Williams’ life, see Samuel Hawley’s website.

Source: Toro Magazine

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Russell the mountain goat busted out of the zoo and lived wild in Stanley Park for about two years, spending most of his time hanging out on the cliffs out of reach of zoo employees. Once Russell took up jumping on cars for sport, park authorities redoubled their efforts and finally captured the fugitive goat.

For more on Russell and other strange tales from the park, check out The Stanley Park Explorer by Richard M Steele (Whitecap, 1985)

Source: Vancouver Sun, 23 January 1967