Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 19
June 11, 2021
The Day the Bridge Fell Down
Last month photographer and artist Bruce Stewart sent me some amazing photos that his father Angus Stewart had taken with his Asahiflex camera immediately following the collapse of the Ironworker’s Memorial Bridge on June 17, 1958.
Bill Moore died on June 17, 1993—exactly 35 years after he survived the collapse of the Ironworker’s Memorial Bridge.
June 4, 2021
S2 E14 Danny Brent’s Murder: Vancouver’s First Gangland Hit
This podcast episode is based on original research conducted for my book Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders
On September 15, 1954, Danny Brent’s body was found on the tenth green at UBC’s golf course. Stuffed inside his shirt was an early edition of the newspaper, soaked with his blood.
May 29, 2021
When Harry met Percy
This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
On May 30, 1959 Harry Jerome met Percy Williams—two of the most remarkable sprinters in Vancouver’s history. The meeting took place at the first indoor meet in British Columbia and was called the Percy Williams Invitational and held at the Agrodome.
May 21, 2021
Walks with Fred Herzog
Bruce Stewart has been documenting Vancouver ever since his father gave him a reflex camera for his eleventh birthday. A few years later, he started an after-school job at the Department of Biomedical Communications at UBC working with legendary photographer Fred Herzog. Bruce already had a love of photography, Fred just helped it along.
May 15, 2021
Wing Sang Building
Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
In 2006, I wrote a story for Marketing Magazine featuring Bob Rennie and his move into Chinatown. Just two years before, Rennie paid a million dollars for the Wing Sang Building. He bought it sight unseen and didn’t go inside for the first six months.
May 7, 2021
Boot Hill: New Westminster’s Strangest Cemetery
In last week’s blog, I wrote about my trip to New Westminster to visit the buildings that once formed part of BC Penitentiary, a federal prison that operated from 1878 to 1980. The most interesting part of the day though was finding Boot Hill, the jail’s cemetery which has become part of two large apartment buildings on the edge of a ravine just off Francis Way and Blackberry Drive.
May 1, 2021
Jail for Sale
In a real estate crazed city like Vancouver where a heritage house can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars over its list price, turns out it’s just not that easy to sell an old jail.
Realtor Leonardo di Francesco has had parts of the former BC Penitentiary on the market since last December, so this week I drove out to New Westminster to check out the buildings and former prison grounds.
April 24, 2021
Our Missing Heritage: The Stuart Building
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
The Stuart Building was a landmark that sat at the southeast corner of Georgia and Chilco Streets, marking the border between the city and Stanley Park from 1909 until its demise in 1982.
It didn’t have the elegance of the Birks Building, the grandeur of the second Hotel Vancouver or the presence of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building.
April 17, 2021
How the First CPR Station became William Alberts House
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
The first transcontinental train arrived in Vancouver in May 1887, and it was a very big deal. Businesses closed for the afternoon, city council adjourned its meeting, the city band and fire brigade led a parade of hundreds to the station and the Mayor arrived in Vancouver’s only horse-drawn cab to meet the train at the Canadian Pacific Railway station at the foot of Howe Street.
April 10, 2021
BC Binning’s Secret Mural
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Next time you’re downtown and have a mascara emergency or need some aspirin, drop into the Shoppers Drug Mart at Granville and Dunsmuir. Once you hit the cosmetics area, you might just forget what you came in there for, because opposite the front entrance and right above the gift cards is one of the hidden wonders of Vancouver—a stunning tile mosaic created by legendary artist BC Binning in 1958.
