Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 17
October 30, 2021
Overlynn: Burnaby’s most haunted mansion
Earlier this month, St. John Alexander invited me to hang out at a Burnaby mansion for a CTV news Halloween segment. I spent an amazing Saturday with St. John, Greg Mansfield and Amanda Quill—two experienced ghost hunters.
As the history geek in the group, I discovered that Overlynn, which is in Vancouver Heights, is part of North Burnaby.
October 23, 2021
Ghost Train
In 1997, I was the Vancouver Correspondent for Marketing Magazine and one of a few dozen media invited along to launch BC Rail’s Pacific Starlight Dinner Train. It was a fantastic night, beginning with a musical send-off from the old North Vancouver station, great food, a stop at Porteau Cove and free booze all the way up and back.
October 15, 2021
S2 E24 Halloween Special 2021
Halloween is my favourite unofficial holiday of the year, so it was especially rewarding to end Season 2 of Cold Case Canada with a Halloween Special. I reached out to five fabulous story tellers to tell me their favourite ghost stories—stories that take place in some of Metro Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhoods.
October 9, 2021
Ivy Granstrom: Queen of the Polar Bears
October is women’s history month, and I can’t think of anyone more inspirational than Ivy Granstrom
This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Ivy Granstrom participated in 76 consecutive polar bear swims. She began in 1928, as a 16-year-old, which, incidentally, was the year of the chilliest swim on record with a water temperature of just 2 degrees.
October 1, 2021
S2 E23 Murder by Milkshake Part 2
In 1965, Rene Castellani, a 40-year-old radio personality decided to murder his wife Esther with arsenic-laced milkshakes so could marry Lolly, CKNW’s 25-year-old receptionist. The couple had an 11-year-old daughter called Jeannine, who became the collateral damage in one of the most sensational murder cases of the 20th century.
This podcast episode is based on my book Murder by Milkshake: an astonishing true story of adultery, arsenic and a charismatic killer
Rene Castellani was known for his outrageous stunts.
September 24, 2021
S2 E22 Murder by Milkshake Part 1
In 1965, Rene Castellani, a 40-year-old radio personality murdered his wife Esther with arsenic-laced milkshakes so that he could marry Lolly, CKNW’s 25-year-old receptionist. The Castellani’s had an 11-year-old daughter called Jeannine who became the collateral damage in one of the most sensational murder cases of the 20th century.
This podcast episode is based on my book Murder by Milkshake: an astonishing true story of adultery, arsenic and a charismatic killer
I’ve had a fascination with the Castellani murder case ever since I first saw the true-crime exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum in the 1990s.
September 17, 2021
Remembering TCA Flight 3
A couple of Sundays ago, my friend Virginia and I went for a walk around North Vancouver’s Rice Lake. We stopped to pay our respects at the two boulders near the entrance that serve as a memorial for Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 3. TCA—which eventually morphed into Air Canada—took off from Lethbridge, Alberta on April 28, 1947 on a routine flight to Vancouver.
September 10, 2021
S2 E21 Murder of a Poet
When Pat Lowther, 40 was beaten to death with a hammer in her East Vancouver home, she had just signed a contract with a major publisher. The mother of four was carving out a new voice in the Canadian literary scene and being recognized for her strong, often violent, feminist poetry.
September 4, 2021
It’s The PNE: Party Like it’s 1957!
For more stories like this one check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the city’s hidden history
In 1957, things were a lot less complicated. People went out to movies and drank Nescafe in the kitchen. The prize home, at 1,444 square feet, was one and a half times the size of a normal house.
August 27, 2021
S2 E20 Murder in Mole Hill
In the months leading up to her murder, Muriel Lindsay had been targeted and harassed. Her cat was stolen, she’d received bizarre anonymous letters, and someone had used her credit card to take out subscriptions and make a donation to the United Way in her name. Who was stalking Muriel and why was this 40-year-old postal worker found beaten to death in her West End apartment?
