Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 21

Behind the Stone Wall on Lynn Valley Road

For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History, there’s a section on North Vancouver.

I was driving along Lynn Valley Road for probably the hundredth time this year, stopped at the traffic lights at Fromme. The Lynn Valley Care Centre is on the corner there, sitting behind a stone fence and a very big monkey tree.

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Would you buy a murder house?

A heritage house at Fraser and East 10th went up for sale last week for $1.4 million. It wasn’t the price-tag though (low by Vancouver standards) that captured people’s attention, it was the house’s murder history.

The Mount Pleasant house has sat empty for 30 years—since the day in August 1991 when the 20-year-old resident was murdered.

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The Imperial Roller Skating Rink and Other Missing Structures of Beach Avenue

For more stories like these please check out my new book Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

In 1907, more than 100 years before the famous laughing statues appeared at English Bay, the Imperial Roller Skating Rink opened in Morton Park at Denman and Davie Streets. Roller skating was surging in popularity and the rink was housed in a big wood framed building with a huge tower that looked out over Beach Avenue and boasted the “largest skating floor on the continent.”

In 1912 for instance, you could go skating at the Roller Rink and wander across the road, past the Englesea Lodge and out along the English Bay Pier.

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The Lost Cemetery of Stanley Park

This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Mountain View Cemetery may have been Vancouver’s first official cemetery when it opened in 1886, but it certainly wasn’t the first. Bodies had been buried on Deadman’s Island in Coal Harbour for thousands of years, and those who didn’t want their relatives interred  alongside the socially undesirable, the diseased or unchristened, moved their burials further into Stanley Park.

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A short history of the 2400 Motel

I fell in love with the 2400 Motel on Kingsway 20 years ago when I was writing  Frommer’s With Kids Vancouver. Loved the old fashioned, retro feel of the place and its huge red and blue neon sign. The freshly painted green and white bungalows had the feel of a country cabin.

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Missing Heritage: The Orillia

The Orillia is an excerpt from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History 

The Orillia was just a memory by the time I moved to Vancouver in the mid-1980s, but from time to time I see a mention or a photo of this early mixed-use structure at Robson and Seymour.

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The Lost Art of Lynn Vardeman

In 2012, Keith Carpenter a Vancouver artist and filmmaker, biked up to Simon Fraser University to visit a sculpture created by Lynn Vardeman.

Lynn was Keith’s photography professor in 1984. They’d become friends at the time but had lost contact over the years.

A talented photographer, filmmaker and sculptor, Lynn was born in Chicago but later moved to San Francisco to work and study.

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The First Vancouver Art Gallery

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

If you live in Vancouver, you know that the Vancouver Art Gallery is housed in the old law courts, an imposing neo-classical building designed by celebrity architect Francis Rattenbury in 1906. What you may not know, was that the VAG started out in a gorgeous art deco building at 1145 West Georgia, a few blocks west from its current location.

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Here & Gone: Vancouver’s Corner Stores

Michael Kluckner’s latest BC bestseller Here & Gone: Artwork of Vancouver & Beyond is gorgeous. One half is filled with his paintings of disappearing Vancouver (Here) and the other of his travels in countries such as Australia, Cuba, Mexico and Japan (Gone).

In the introduction to Here, he writes: “I see myself as a witness, certainly not an activist anymore or a serious historian.” I served on the board of the Vancouver Historical Society with Michael for several years and I see him as all these things.

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The Dunsmuir Tunnel

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

While you’re stuck for an hour on the Lions Gate Bridge or crawling through the George Massey Tunnel, it may be comforting to know that traffic problems, just like the price of real estate, have always been an issue in Vancouver.

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