Tyler Thorne and his team at Roka Projects have seen their fair share of newspaper in weird places.
Thorne says it just comes with the territory when doing renovations. "We typically don't keep anything it's usually like crumpled up newspapers that are jammed in walls and it's nothing that we really see of interest."
But while working on a house in East Vancouver, he and the homeowner stumbled upon a little piece of Vancouver history in near-pristine condition.
"We're doing a renovation where we're taking off some floor," recounts Thorne, "and we took up the floor and we noticed there is a little piece of plywood...almost looks like an access panel." The crew opened that panel up and found sandwiched between the plywood perfectly intact pages from a decades-old local magazine and newspaper.
In a video posted to the Roka Projects Instagram, Thorne shows a preserved magazine ad from a 1959 issue of Weekend Magazine and torn newspaper clippings from the want ad section of The Vancouver Sun from September 19, 1959, claiming to reach 700,000 readers daily.
"We come across stuff like this in renovations where people will put old newspapers in walls and you come across some kind of vintage stuff...but this one, it almost seemed intentional where it was sandwiched in and you can see how it's kind of pressed flat," he adds. "Who knows if there was any intention there but it's pretty cool just because it's about old real estate in Vancouver."
The classifieds clippings list houses for sale in Shaughnessy, Kitsilano, South Fraser, West Point Grey, and the West End among others. The four-bedroom Shaughnessy listing reads: "This gabled home of cedar construction has 23x15' living room, separated dining room, den and master bedroom suite on main floor. Treed private garden for grown ups & safe children's play. Two car garage. Low taxes. Asking $29,500. Ask about this one!"
"I was joking with my friends," says Thorne, "when you look at the pricing of what houses used to be, that's pretty much what we do bathroom renos for is what the price of a house was back in 1959."
One ad for a 50-foot lot in Kitsilano a block from the beach was asking $25,500.
The magazine ad also reads like a time capsule. The tag line "if you love to live...you'll love Young Moderns" introduces a collection of mid century modern furniture in matching colourways and walnut wood accents, a style that is has fallen out of fashion and come back in style since. The pieces illustrated would be highly sought after as vintage or retro today. At the bottom of the page it indicates "a brilliant new idea in home furnishings by Snyder's." The furniture company had factories in Waterloo, Kitchener, and Montreal and eventually closed in 2004.
Thorne left the clippings in the hands of the homeowner to do what they see fit - hopefully frame them.
