Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 29

Episode 06: The Widow

Sidney Colbourne lived in Oak Bay, Victoria, and frequently beat up his wife Vera and their five-year-old daughter. One night, the gun that Sid bought to keep Vera in line, went off and shot him in the head. It was 1938. Vera was put on trial for murder, and Inspector Vance was called in to investigate.

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The Vancouver Heritage House Tour, Alvo von Alvensleben and the Old Residence

The Vancouver Heritage House tour is coming up Sunday June 2, and I haven’t been this excited since Casa Mia was featured in 2014. Don’t get me wrong, the VHF works hard all year to curate a great mix of architectural styles, neighbourhoods and house sizes, but unless you work at, or have a daughter at Crofton House School, you likely won’t get inside the Old Residence.

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Episode 05: Victoria’s Ghost

In 1936, Inspector Vance was called to the crime scene of 30-year-old Doris Gravlin. Her strangled corpse was found under logs on the beach beside the seventh fairway of the Victoria Golf Course. Exactly a month later, her ex-husband’s body was found tangled up in the kelp off Gonzales Point. He’d killed himself after murdering his wife.

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Episode 04: Lay Off or We’ll Bump You Off

By the 1930s, Inspector Vance had become a familiar face at crime scenes and was often called to testify in court because of his knowledge of forensics. In fact, his skills and analytic abilities were so effective that in 1934 there were seven attempts on his life—including a car bomb—and for a time he and his family were under constant police guard from criminals afraid to go up against him in court.

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The Kitsilano Laneway House

There’s been a lot about laneway houses in the media over the last couple of years. Loosely defined, it’s a legal way of plonking down a small house in your backyard, and depending on your point of view, either exploiting or helping to ease the current rental squeeze.

Laneway houses have to be under 1,000 square feet.

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Episode 03: The Suspicious Death of Stewart Ashley



On April 13, 1933, 19-year-old Stewart Ashley went to work out at the YMCA in downtown Vancouver. He didn’t come home. A short time later, a ransom note arrived. It said: “Get $5,000 by April 20 or your son will die.”

Music Credits:

Intro and outro: Duke Ellington’s St.

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Episode 3: The Suspicious Death of Stewart Ashley



On April 13, 1933, 19-year-old Stewart Ashley went to work out at the YMCA in downtown Vancouver. He didn’t come home. A short time later, a ransom note arrived. It said: “Get $5,000 by April 20 or your son will die.” Ten days later, Stewart’s body was found on the old Songhees Reserve near Victoria.

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Streetcar Advertising and the Hobby Lobby Radio Show

My friend, Angus McIntyre emailed me these amazing photos of streetcar advertising that he came across on the Vancouver Archives site this week.

Courtesy CVA 586-1872, 1944

The first photo shows Car 211 on the  #3 Davie Street route passing the 400-block Granville Street. According to Angus, it was a two-man car, where you would board at the rear and pay the conductor.

 

Don Coltman, 1943. Courtesy CVA 586-1039

The photos were commissioned by a company called Canadian Street Car Advertising, and the photographer was Don Coltman, who bought Steffens-Colmer Studio in 1944 and took a lot of these fantastic “noir” photos during wartime Vancouver.

Courtesy CVA 586-1873, 1944

The ad on the front of the streetcars for Dave Elman’s Hobby Lobby Stage Revue is fascinating. According to Wikipedia, 22-year-old, Dave Elman started his entertainment career on the vaudeville circuit as the “the world’s youngest and fastest hypnotist” in 1922. He was a song writer and moved into radio. In 1937 he approached NBC with an idea for his own show “Hobby Lobby.” The premise was that anybody could advocate for their hobby—the weirder the better—and the most interesting were asked to come on the show and “lobby for their hobby.” Guests  included a woman who hypnotized crocodiles, a man who put hot coals in his mouth and cooked bacon on his face, and a fingerless pianist. When Elman went on holidays in 1939, first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was his replacement.

Beacon Theatre in 1932. Courtesy LF00218 JMABC

The Hobby Lobby ran until 1948, and would have been in its prime when these ads appeared on the front of Vancouver streetcars in 1944. The show was at the Beacon Theatre at 20 West Hastings Street, which according to Changing Vancouver, was replaced by a parking lot in 1967. It became non-market housing in 2000.

“Car 206 was a one-man car on the Powell Street line,” says Angus. “The white X on the front of the car denotes board at front and pay operator.”

Courtesy CVA 586-1874, 1944

Angus also found this painting of Granville Street painted by Jack Shadbolt in 1946 showing the other end of the block. “It sure captures the times. In both the photo and painting, note the blackout hoods on the tops of the streetlights,” says Angus. “By the time our family moved here in 1965, the Colonial Theatre was a second run movie house. It may well have been then.”

The Colonial Theatre was demolished in the early 1970s.

Jack Shadbolt painting, 1946

Don Coltman also shot this photo of interior streetcar advertising in 1946. Car 195 had ads for McGavin’s Bread, a BC Electric concert featuring Allard deRidder  (first conductor of the VSO), and the Bible.

Courtesy CVA 586-4586 1946

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

 

 

 

 

Episode 02: The Murder Factory

Japantown, Vancouver in 1928 showing the CPR tracks where Watanabe’s body was discovered behind the American Can Company. Courtesy VPL 4269
https://bloodsweatandfear.podbean.com/mf/play/pcqybd/Podcast_2_The_Murder_Factory_mixed.mp3

The murder of Naokichi Watanabe in 1931 exposed an insurance scam, the murder of up to 20 people, a Japanese hitman, and was eventually linked to an assassination ring operating out of a house on East Cordova Street, Vancouver.

Credits:

Intro and outro music: Duke Ellington’s St. Louie Toodle
Background track created by Nico Vettese www.wetalkofdreams.com
Intro and voice overs: Mark Dunn

“The Murder Factory” on East Cordova Street, Vancouver. Eve Lazarus photo, 2016

Source materials:  

Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator, by Eve Lazarus (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017)
Nikkei National Museum
Stories of My People: A Japanese Canadian Journal, by Roy Ito (Nisei Veterans Association, 1994)
Various clippings from the Vancouver Sun, Province, Daily Colonist, Globe and Mail, Vancouver News Herald
The Inquest into the death of Naokichi Watanabe
The personal files of John F.C.B. Vance located in a grandson’s garage on Gabriola Island in July 2016.

And if you’d like to sponsor the podcast, my blog, or upcoming books, I’ve set up a page on Patreon.

More books by Eve Lazarus 

Blood, Sweat, and Fear: A True Crime Podcast

I’ve been working on a true crime/history podcast for the last couple of months based on my book Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator. My original thought was that it would be a great way to reuse some of the research I do for my books, and it is, but it’s become a bit of an obsession, and I plan to do a future series on Cold Case Vancouver, Murder by Milkshake, Sensational Vancouver, Sensational Victoria, and At Home with History where I can weave in many of the interviews that I conducted with family, friends, house owners and experts over the years.

Vance in his lab, now the Vancouver Police Museum and Archives building on East Cordova Street.

The learning curve is huge and my podcasts are a work in progress. I’m learning to write for the ear, and I’ve spent dozens of hours watching YouTube videos to teach myself Audacity, the free audio software program, so I can produce the show myself.

There will be 12 episodes in this first series, published every second Friday. Each one follows a major crime that Vance helped to solve using cutting-edge forensics during his 42-year-career.

Vance’s exploits frequently appeared in “true crime” detective magazines

I’ve tried to show how the social forces of the time impacted the crime. For instance, Vance’s work took him all around the province and up into the Yukon in what is one of the most interesting periods in British Columbia’s history. Vance started work for the city of Vancouver in 1907, four months before anti-Asian riots swept through the city. He worked through the crime-ridden Depression and two world wars, and he was employed by two of the most corrupt police chiefs in the history of the Vancouver Police Department.

Vance’s work turned him into a celebrity, and he became known as the Sherlock Holmes of Canada in the  press.

Much of the information came from the Vancouver Sun, Province, Vancouver News Herald, and the World. Most of the quotes are from Coroner’s Inquests, but the bulk of the information (including the clippings shown in the post)  came from the personal files of Inspector John F.C.B. Vance that were discovered in a garage on Gabriola Island by one of Vance’s grandchildren when I was doing the research for the book in 2016. The archival material is now with the Vancouver Police Museum and Archives, and some is currently on display at the Nanaimo Museum.

The first episode: The Mysterious Disappearance of Clara Millard, takes place in Vancouver in 1914.

Ways to Listen:

My website
iTunes
Podbean
Stitcher

Please let me know what you think.

If you’d like to sponsor the podcast, my blog, or upcoming books, I’ve set up a page on Patreon.