Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 16
April 2, 2022
Meet Olivia McCarter: The 20-year-old genetic genealogist who got the Babes in the Woods Case
In February, we learned that the —the two little boys who were murdered in Stanley Park 75 years ago—were Derek D’Alton aged seven and his brother David, six. Genetic Genealogy—the latest crime fighting tool was able to do what seven decades of police work was not—identify the little boys through familial DNA.
March 26, 2022
Crystal Pool (1929-1974)
In light of the disturbing photos showing chunks of façade falling from the Vancouver Aquatic Centre earlier this month, this is a story about its predecessor—the Crystal Pool and plans of what might have been.
The story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History.
Joe Fortes taught hundreds of children how to swim in English Bay, If the much-loved life guard were still alive when Crystal Pool opened in July 1929, it’s hard to imagine that the parks board would have got away with separate swim days—six days for whites, one day for “coloureds and Orientals”—segregating their mostly young customers for the next 17 years.
March 19, 2022
The Royal Hudson goes South
This photo of the Royal Hudson travelling along the Arbutus corridor at Broadway on March 20, 1977 is one of my favourite Angus McIntyre photos, and if you’re a regular follower of my blog, you’ve already seen some of his wonderful early street photography. But it wasn’t until I was writing Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History that I did some digging to find out why locomotive 2860 was chugging its way from the old BC Hydro yards in Kitsilano across the border into Blaine.
March 4, 2022
Granville and Georgia: 150 Years in Virtual Reality
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of meeting Brian and Riva Walters at their North Vancouver house. I stood in their lounge room, put on a headset, and was immediately transported back to the corner of Granville and Georgia Streets in 1870 when the city was still blanketed by forest.
Even though Brian says his film is still in the rough-cut stage, what he has done is create something so special that I felt I was time travelling through the decades.
February 26, 2022
The Second CPR Station
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Even if you don’t love the architecture—and I do happen to be a fan of anything that’s gothic and grim and wears a turret—you’ve got to admit that the second CPR station would have made an amazing addition to our current landscape.
February 14, 2022
It’s almost 70 years since they were found buried in Stanley Park, but now the Babes in the Woods have their names back
When Ally Brady spit into a tube in 2020, she had no idea that her DNA would solve one of Vancouver’s oldest and coldest murder mysteries.
Ally Brady, 26 was flicking through the family album one day when she discovered that she had two great uncles who she had never met.
February 12, 2022
The Marvellous Inventions of Barney Oldfield (1913-1978)
You can be forgiven if National Inventors’ Day (February 11) passed you by yesterday, but it gives me a great excuse to write about one of British Columbia’s own treasures.
Horace Basil (Barney) Oldfield was a mechanical genius and inventor who lived most of his life in Saanich, just outside of Victoria. He and brother Brian founded the Prospect Lake Garage in 1934 on Old West Saanich Road, which amazingly still operates as a family-run business.
February 5, 2022
BC Binning’s Missing Murals
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
BC Binning wasn’t just an important artist; as a teacher, he influenced architects such as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth. His tiled murals are still outside the BC Hydro building (now the Electra Building) on Burrard Street, as well as in and outside his West Vancouver house which was designated a heritage building in 1999 and a National Historic Site in 2001.
January 29, 2022
Henry Switzer and his Shocking Pink House
A few years ago, I wrote a story about a West Vancouver house that became a local landmark. Readers told me that they fondly remembered the pink house on the hill as the “airplane house,” the “Jetsons House,” the “windmill house,” and the “helicopter house,” because it appeared to have wings. Legend has it that Henry Switzer designed the house in an afternoon.
January 22, 2022
Barr and Anderson: Established 1898
Back in the 1960s, Doug Archer was an apprentice plumber with Barr and Anderson, a Vancouver company founded in 1898 and the name behind the mechanical work in some of our oldest buildings – a few of which still stand.
Recently, Doug sent me photos of eight of the buildings they had worked on.
