Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 30

Paul Yee’s Vancouver Archives

About six years ago, I was doing some research for my book Sensational Vancouver and took a tour of Strathcona with James Johnstone. I was excited to meet Paul Yee, a historian who now lives in Toronto, and has written several brilliant books which include Salt Water City, Tales from Gold Mountain, and most recently, A Superior Man (see Paul’s website for a full list).

Paul Yee outside his childhood house at 540 Heatley Street in 2013. Eve Lazarus photo

Paul told me that he lived in three different houses in Strathcona between 1960 and 1974.

“I was an orphan,” he said. “When whole blocks of houses around me were demolished, I felt like I was being shoved onto a stage for the world to see all the shame that came from living in a slum. Even as a child, I knew Vancouver had better neighbourhoods. I was embarrassed to tell people my address, show others my library card.”

Paul’s first address was 350 ½ East Pender Street. The house is long gone, and the ½ refers to a smaller house that stood at the rear of the main residence, he says. The family left in 1968 to live above the Yee’s family store at 263 East Pender, and in 1971 they moved to 540 Heatley Street. Later, the Yee’s moved east into the Grandview Woodlands Neighbourhood.

200 Block East Hastings in 1986, from the Paul Yee Fonds, Courtesy CVA 2008-010.0523

Paul, was amazed at how much Strathcona had changed “When I walk through Strathcona now, what really hits me is how green and lush it is. The place is now respectable, unlike when I lived there,” he said.

This week, Vancouver Archives announced that thanks to funding from the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives, they have now digitized 3,700 photos that the Yee family donated in 2014. Many are Paul’s own photos, and there are also oral interviews online from the ‘70s and ‘80s with Chinese Canadian seniors and community members. You can read more about it on their great blog AuthentiCity.

A racist poster from UBC in 1987. Courtesy Paul Yee Fonds and CVA 2008-010.1762

Many of the historical photos that you see in our books and on the many Facebook pages that are about “old” Vancouver, including my own Every Place has a Story, come from Vancouver Archives, and it’s all free of charge. It’s an incredible resource, and if you become a member of the Friends of the Vancouver Archives, your money goes to digitizing more of these records.

Arrival of Chinese Statesman Li Hung-Zhang at the CPR dock at the foot of Howe Street in 1896. Courtesy Paul Yee Fonds and CVA 2008-010.4121

Personally, I’m looking forward to the AGM on March 31 with guest speaker Ron Dutton. Ron started the BC Gay and Lesbian Archives in 1976, and he recently donated over 750,000 posters, sound recordings, photographs, magazines and clippings to the Archives.

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

Episode 01: The Mysterious disappearance of Clara Millard



The first time Inspector Vance was called to work on a police investigation was for a missing persons case in 1914. Charles and Clara Millard lived in Vancouver’s West End with their 16-year-old Chinese houseboy, Jack Kong. Charles who was an executive with the Canadian Pacific Railway, was away on business, and when he returned home his wife Clara was gone. Had she disappeared without telling anyone? Had she been kidnapped? Was she murdered?

The stories for this first series are from my book  Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance (Eve Lazarus, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017).  Vance was one of the first forensic scientists in North America, and during his 42-year-career, helped to solve some of the most sensational murders of the 20th Century. Each episode focuses on one of those cases.

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

Thank you to my first listeners for their feedback and support:

Mark Dunn
Tom Carter
Bill Amos
Amy Erb

Primary source material:  Vancouver Sun, Province, Vancouver News Herald, The World; Inquest into the death of Clara Millard; and the personal files of Inspector John F.C.B. Vance.

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 

The Mysterious disappearance of Clara Millard

The first time Inspector Vance was called to work on a police investigation was for a missing persons case in 1914. Charles and Clara Millard lived in Vancouver’s West End with their 16-year-old Chinese houseboy, Jack Kong. Charles who was an executive with the Canadian Pacific Railway, was away on business, and when he returned home his wife Clara was gone. Had she disappeared without telling anyone? Had she been kidnapped? Was she murdered?

Iaci’s Casa Capri

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Rick Iaci was driving down Seymour Street one day when he was horrified to see dozens of framed photographs being thrown into a dumpster outside #1022—the house that was a family restaurant for more than 50 years. He stopped and put as many as he could into his car, and in that moment, saved a piece of Vancouver’s history.

Iaci’s is the house on the far left in this 1981 photo of the 1000 block Seymour Street. Courtesy CVA 779-E06.35

Frank and Eva Iaci, cousins to the Filippone’s who ran the Penthouse across the street, raised their six children in the home, and turned it into a bootlegging joint during the Depression. Eva started making plates of pasta so her customers could have something to eat while they drank. The menu was simple—spaghetti with meatballs, T-bone steak, ravioli, chicken cacciatore. A card clipped to the menu read “Dear God. Please save us from the Italian man that expects us to cook as well as his mother. How in the hell can we when his wife can’t?”

Photo of Eva and Frank Iaci  (Junior) saved from the dumpster. Courtesy Rick Iaci and Ashley Waller

Her food was so popular that the house became known as Casa Capri. The family called it #1022, locals just called it Iaci’s.

Iaci’s was gone by the time I arrived in Vancouver, and I first heard about it when I was researching Murder by Milkshake. Before Rene Castellani murdered his wife, he, Esther and their daughter Jeannine, would spend a few nights a week in the restaurant, helping out in the kitchen or just hanging out.

Mary and Rick Iaci, Jeannine and Ashley at the book launch for Murder by Milkshake, November 2018. Scott Alexander photo

“We were at Iaci’s all the time. I don’t even know how many times a week,” says Jeannine. “We never sat in the restaurant. We were always in the kitchen where they were cooking.” When it got late, Jeannine was put to bed in Eva’s downstairs suite which also harboured the illegal booze. “When the police came in, they never checked because they saw me there, sound asleep,” she says.

Customers could park for free in the tiny lot in the back, go through the basement, climb up the stairs to the back porch and then enter through the kitchen. Someone would be there to greet them, take their coats, and find them a seat in one of the three small front rooms, where they could check out the Iaci’s old wedding photos or framed covers of Life and Look magazines.

Courtesy Rick Iaci and Ashley Waller

Rick remembers the bathroom being covered in stock certificates. One night a broker was using the facilities when he noticed that one of the old stocks was worth money. “They took down half the wall to get it,” says Rick. The magazine covers went up after that.

Casa Capri was the place to go for anyone looking for a good meal and a drink late at night. After performing at the Palomar or the Cave stars such as Dean Martin, Red Skelton, Tom Jones, Louis Armstrong, and Sonny and Cher would head to Iaci’s with an autographed photo made out to one of the family members—usually one of Eva’s daughters—Koko, Teenie and Toots.

Signed to Tootsie and Teenie from the Mills Brothers. Courtesy Rick Iaci and Ashley Waller

Rick is now the guardian for the old photos. He spent every Saturday night for more than ten years at Casa Capri, sometimes as the bartender when the regular guy didn’t turn up. Once he asked Eva why they were using Tang in the Vodka and orange juice. She told him: “If it’s good enough for the astronauts, it’s good enough for our customers.”

In 2005, Eva and Frank Iaci were posthumously inducted into the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame.

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

Aborted Plans: Deadman’s Island

Members of the Town Planning Commission passed a resolution stating that they were not in favour of Deadman’s Island as a site for a proposed museum of Vancouver art, historical and scientific society. It was declared the Coal Harbour site was too inaccessible—Province: April  9, 1932

Deadman’s Island via Google

It continues to amaze me that Stanley Park has survived, despite all the attempts to develop it over the years.

In 1912, there was a push to “transform” Lost Lagoon into Grand Round Pond, with a surrounding museum, stadium and amusement park. There would be ornamental gardens, fountains a children’s playground, library and Georgia Street would be the “Champs-Elysees.”

Plans for Lost Lagoon in the Vancouver Sun, December 28, 2018

Fortunately, commonsense prevailed. Said Mayor James Findlay: “Thomas Mawson may be the finest architect in the world, but he cannot put Stanley Park back for us once it is destroyed.”

In the 1960s and ‘70s there were three attempts to turn Seasons Park—the 14 acres at the entrance—into a massive hotel and condo complex.

Sharp and Thompson Architects drawing of a proposed museum at Deadman’s Island in 1930. Courtesy VPL #7899

And in the early ‘30s there were plans to plop what the Sun’s John Mackie describes as “an Empire State Building-style tower and an adjoining citadel-style building” on Deadman’s Island.

Sharp and Thompson Architects drawing of the Pacific Museum for Deadman’s Island. Courtesy VPL #7898

Measuring just 3.8 hectares, and attached to Stanley Park by a short causeway, Deadman’s Island, or Skwtsa7s (meaning island), has an amazing history. It was a battle site. It was an indigenous burial ground, where the dead were placed in wooden coffins and buried both in the ground and up in the trees. When small pox hit, it was used to quarantine the victims, and later bury those who didn’t make it. The land has also claimed British Merchant seaman, people from Moodyville, victims from the Great, and workers killed while extending the CPR line from Port Moody to Coal Harbour. One article says West Vancouver’s Navvy Jack is buried there.

Deadman’s Island seen just behind the second CPR station at the foot of Granville Street in the early 1900s. Courtesy VPL #9834

In 1930, the federal government leased the island to the city. Shortly after, the city commissioned Sharp and Thompson Architects to draw up designs for Pacific Museum. It didn’t get very far, and in 1944, became the site of HMCS Discovery Naval Reserve.

When the 99-year lease came up for renewal in 2007, Mayor Sam Sullivan tried to make it publicly accessible. He told the Globe and Mail he wanted a ferry service from downtown and a museum that could preserve and display the maritime heritage of native people.

Vancouver in 1933 with Deadman’s Island in the background. Courtesy VPL 4368

The Musqueam just wanted it back.

Except for an open house once or twice a year, which I always seem to miss it, the site remains off limits.

Sources:

Jason Vanderhill’s Illustrated Vancouver
Vancouver Public Library’s Special Collections
Globe and Mail , April 27, 2006
Vancouver Sun ,  December 28, 2018
Vancouver Courier , March 30, 2010

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

Nanaimo Mysteries

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With Aimee Greenaway, Nanaimo Mysteries curator

Aimee Greenaway was reading Blood, Sweat, and Fear when she came across George Hannay, a safe cracker from Nanaimo. She’d heard a story about the former BC Provincial police officer turned criminal, but this was the first time she’d seen evidence of his crimes.

Aimee thought Hannay’s story would make a great inclusion in the museum’s new exhibit—Nanaimo Mysteries.

The exhibit opened February 16, and my friend (and book editor) Susan Safyan  and I went over to check it out. It’s the first time I’ve been to the Nanaimo Museum, and it blew me away.

Inspector Vance, the subject of Blood, Sweat, and Fear and founder of the Vancouver Police Museum’s building on East Cordova Street, gets a starring role. Vance was known as the “Sherlock Holmes of Canada” in the media at the time, and in 1934 there were seven attempts against his life. The last and most brutal was an attempt to blind him with acid and stop him from testifying against Hannay in court. The attack was thought to be instigated by Hannay—at least the note left in Vance’s garage was signed “Hannay’s pals”— (apparently criminals weren’t too smart back then either). The attack on Vance delayed the trial, but went ahead a few weeks later with the Inspector under police guard.

 Province, October 10, 1934

Vance linked Hannay to the robbery through trace evidence. But even though fibres found at the scene were from Hannay’s clothing and a splinter in his coat matched a floor board, the jury was unable to reach a decision because the foreman—a friend of Hannay’s—refused to bring in a guilty verdict.

The material for this chapter and the archival material that Aimee has curated for the display, was found in the garage of one of Vance’s grandsons, in 2016 while I was researching the book.  He found several cardboard boxes filled with photos, newspaper clippings, forensic materials and case notes predating 1950. After the book was finished, the Vance family donated everything to the Vancouver Police Museum.

This is the first time any of these documents have been displayed, and there’s some intriguing, material including a letter that Hannay wrote to Vance’s boss in an attempt to discredit him. Aimee has also uncovered Hannay’s connection to Albert Planta, a corrupt senator from Nanaimo.

Nanaimo, it turns out, is quite mysterious. The exhibit has a section on hauntings and ghosts, another on murders and missing children, the red-light district and the infamous Brother X11, who started a cult in 1927 until 1932, when he and Madame Zee skipped town with donations from their wealthy followers.

The exhibit runs through until September 2, and if it’s your first time, there’s plenty of other things there to keep you fascinated, including the mystery of a samurai sword dug up in downtown Nanaimo in the late 1800s.

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

George Garrett: Intrepid Reporter

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If you listened to CKNW any time from the mid-1950s to the end of the ‘90s, you’ll remember George Garrett.

George Garrett in the CKNW news cruiser in 1959

His memoir, George Garrett Intrepid Reporter has just been published, and it’s a great ride through four decades of politics, disasters, consumer investigations and murders.

I met George in the mid-1990s, when I was a Vancouver Sun reporter at the beginning of my career and George was nearing the end of his. I’d studied some of his investigative work in journalism school which included going undercover as a tow truck operator to expose a scam in the ‘70s and covering a riot at the B.C. Pen.

George reporting from the North Shore in 1982. Alex Waterhouse-Hayward photo

Known as “Gentleman George,” because in the competitive world of journalism, he was just so darn nice. Daphne Bramham told me she once arrived late to a scrum and George handed her his notes. She asked him why he’d do that—a reporter from a competing media outlet—and he just said ‘why not?’

George helped me when I was researching Murder by Milkshake, my book about the murder of Esther by her husband CKNW personality Rene Castellani who was having an affair with Lolly, the young receptionist. George worked with Rene and knew “Lolly the dolly,” and covered the case for the station during Rene’s two trials for capital murder.

George covered the murder trial of Jeannine’s mother by her father Rene Castellani in 1966, but this was the first time he met Jeannine. Ashley Waller photo, 2018

George was there for all the major events. He covered the Second Narrows Bridge collapse in 1958 that claimed 19 lives and the Hope slide of January 1965.

He wrote the book the same way he reported his stories, with humour and compassion, relying on brief notes and memory. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t go to great means to get a good story, and some of the methods he used are not only very funny, but should be required reading for journalism students.

He covered some of the most sensational murders of last century. There was the disappearance of Lynn Duggan in 1993, and the discovery of her skull in the North Vancouver forest a year later. Her boyfriend, a former VPD police officer was eventually charged in her murder and that of another girlfriend.

George covering the arrest of a woman in Clayoquot Sound in 1993 for CKNW

There was 19-year-old Sian Simmonds, sexually assaulted by her doctor and murdered by a hitman to stop her reporting him and ending his medical career.

George personally knew Doris Leatherbarrow and her daughter Sharon Heunemann who ran a lady’s wear shop in North Delta, and whose son/grandson Darren recruited two teenage friends to murder them so he could inherit the money. George went to the funeral and was shocked when Sharon’s husband wrote a eulogy with an unflattering description of her in gym wear. “After the service, I complimented the minister on how well he had conducted the service and commented on the husband’s eulogy, saying I wanted to make sure I quoted it correctly,” writes George. It was a thinly veiled attempt on my part to get that eulogy—and it worked! The minister reached into his inner jacket pocket and handed me the eulogy. I admit that sometimes I was shameless in order to get a good story.”

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

 

Muriel Lindsay, Murdered in Mole Hill

Several people have asked me, why out of  hundreds of unsolved murders, I chose the 25 people for my book Cold Case Vancouver.

Mostly, they chose me.

Each person has a compelling story that needed to be told. Some like the Babes in the Woods are well known, but most just received an item or two in the newspaper and then disappeared, consigned to Vancouver’s not-so-nice history.

Muriel Lindsay waiting for cancer treatment at St. Paul’s Hospital ca.1990s. Photo courtesy Kent LIndsay

Muriel Lindsay, for instance, was a 40-year-old Canada Post worker, who had recently beaten cancer, and was about to move into a new apartment when she was beaten to death in her West End boarding house. I contacted her brother Kent, and learned about Muriel’s story—one with many layers and connections to West Vancouver.

Richard Levis, 1914. Courtesy Vancouver Police Museum

Eight decades before Muriel’s murder, her great-grandfather Richard Levis, a 28-year-old Vancouver police officer, was shot and killed while hunting down a criminal known as “Mickey the Dago.” His wife Estelle was left to raise their three children—Cyril, Muriel and Carroll—all under the age of five. Estelle was hired as a matron in the women’s division of the Vancouver Police Department and worked there until 1919.

Cyril became an actor, and he and his brother Carroll Richard Levis, moved their families to England. Carroll became quite famous in the ‘40s and ‘50s hosting his own television program The Carroll Levis Discovery Show, on the BBC.

Kent, Marjorie, Muriel and Eric Lindsay at their British Properties home late 1950s

Muriel (May), Muriel Lindsay’s namesake and grandmother, was a successful businesswoman in the ‘50s, who had the exclusive rights to sell real estate in the British Properties, and was a shareholder of West Vancouver’s Panorama Film Studios (the studio produced movies such as Carnal Knowledge and McCabe and Mrs. Miller). Muriel’s father, Eric Lindsay, was a celebrity photographer and reporter for the Vancouver Sun. Eric took a job with CBC’s the National and the family moved to Toronto. Soon after he split with his wife Marjorie, and young Muriel’s mental health started to unravel.

The Comox Street house where Muriel was murdered in 1996. Photo courtesy Quentin Wright

Muriel eventually followed her mother and brother back to B.C., and in 1983, moved into a room in a heritage house in Mole Hill, where she stayed for the next 13 years. In the months before her death, she received bizarre anonymous letters, and her brother believes she had a stalker.

Part of a chilling letter Muriel sent to her father shortly before her murder. Courtesy Kent Lindsay

Muriel died from blows to her head and larynx, just after finishing her shift at Canada Post. Her mother found her body.

In April 2017, I received an email from a man who had heard another man talk about murdering Muriel Lindsay some years ago. I chatted with him, and for a number of reasons, he didn’t want to contact police; so I did it for him. I was told by a VPD sergeant that the “file was solved” and the man my source mentioned, wasn’t the suspect. I’m not sure what this means-that the suspect is dead, or in jail or they just don’t have the evidence to convict him, and I can’t find out, because  police won’t talk about unsolved cases.

Find the full story of Muriel Lindsay in Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders.

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

St. Andrews-Wesley Church’s $30 Million Dollar Makeover

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I have just acquired a piece of St. Andrews-Wesley Church. A rug that’s worn in all the places that you’d expect of something that has graced the entranceway of this downtown heritage building for eight decades and hosted thousands of multi-denominational feet.

The renovations were made possible by the sale of church land and a 20-storey condo tower in 2002.St. Andrews-Wesley church at Burrard and Nelson is a special kind of place, and I was lucky to get a tour from Kathy Murphy last month before the church closes for a $30 million makeover.

It’s the first time I’ve been inside the church, and even in its less-than-perfect self, it’s breath-taking. From the stained-glassed windows to the gothic tower, it’s easy to see why people want to get married or buried there, play music, shoot movies, and yes, even worship.

St. Andrews Presbyterian Church at 686 Richards Street ca.1934 (now a 10-storey building designed by Zoltan Kiss in 1974 and the new home of Canada Post) Courtesy Vancouver Archives

While the Church has operated from the corner of Burrard and Nelson since 1933, it was the result of a merger between St. Andrews Presbyterian Church and Wesley Methodist, both designed by William Blackmore, and both demolished in the early ‘30s.

Wesley Methodist Church at the corner of Burrard and West Georgia in 1908. Built (1900-1904) courtesy BC Archives B-01433

It was the Great Depression when the current church opened, and there wasn’t a lot of cash. The pews were made from fir instead of oak. The bell tower didn’t have a bell, and the planned terrazzo floor became a cheap lino stop-gap. The temporary fix became permanent, and will now be updated along with a seismic upgrade, a new copper roof, and an electrical system that will also light up the incredible stained-glass windows.

January 2019. Eve Lazarus photo

The Mandela of Compassion will go back after the rehab, and its very presence is an indication that this is a different kind of church. Made of sand by three Buddhist monks over three days, the Mandela looks like an exquisite tapestry. Normally, the monks, who do not believe in having material things stick around, would blow the sand away when they’d finished, but church officials talked them into letting it stay.

The Mandela of compassion, made in three days in 2009

The pipe organ—the largest in Vancouver—is off to Montreal for a refit. While we were up there inside the guts of the organ, Darryl Nixon, Minister of Music, started playing the music he’d chosen for the following Sunday’s service.

Darryl Nixon, playing the pipe organ. January 2019. Eve Lazarus photo

The chapel is as an interesting room. Aside from hosting Tony and Tina’s wedding for 14 years, it has a 14-foot tracker organ (that’s for sale). The room has been used for small weddings and for yoga, the pews long ago repurposed into a cabinet, a table, and a casket for the carpenter.

Kathy Murphy with the church’s oldest artifact. Eve Lazarus photo

The Church is expected to be closed for up to two years. But it’s not too late to see it. Services run as normal tomorrow Sunday February 3.

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The Maharajah of Alleebaba

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Last week, Bob Shiell sent me a note telling me that he worked with Rene Castellani at CKNW in the early 1960s, and was a huge force in one of the station’s most visible promotions—the Maharajah of Alleebeeba.

I wrote about Rene the Maharajah in Murder by Milkshake, but Bob added a personal twist.

Rene Castellani and Bob Shiell in 1963, courtesy Bob Shiell

In 1963, Bob was 22 and worked in the promotions department for CKNW. Rival station CKLG had brought up Marvin Miller, an actor in a US-show called the Millionaire (1955-1960) where Miller give away money to people he’d never met. CKLG saw this as a great way to boost ratings in the upcoming BBM wars and had Miller go around town handing out cash.

“We had to come up with an idea for something that would counter that,” says Bob, and the Maharajah was born. “The idea was that he was coming over to buy the province of British Columbia.”

Courtesy Bob Shiell

Rene was hired and dressed up as the Maharajah. Bob played Ugie, his driver and wore a red tunic and striped pants. The black Rolls Royce was a loan from one of the station’s owners—Robert Ballard, of Dr. Ballard’s dog food. They hired an off-duty motorcycle cop who provided an escort, and two women who normally did in-store food demonstrations for the station were dressed up as harem girls.

“We had a crossed sword logo made with sticky tape and we put that on the passenger and the driver’s door, and I found a little flag—the kind of embassy flag that you see on the President’s car. It was actually the flag of the Republic of Germany, but nobody noticed,” says Bob.

The Maharajah at a BC Lions game at Empire Stadium. Courtesy VPL)

They stashed the Rolls at Bob’s Mum’s house on Granville Street, met there each morning and got changed in the basement. For two weeks the entourage drove around Vancouver—to clubs, restaurants, hotels, drive-ins, and a BC Lions game at Empire Stadium, often accompanied by a CKNW reporter named Sherwin Shragge (yes, that’s his real name) who would interview them on radio.

“I had this big leather suitcase handcuffed to my wrist full of silver dollars,” says Bob. “I would go around and give people a silver dollar from the Maharajah.”

Rene, says Bob, was a great guy to work with. “He just loved it, he was a born Maharajah, he loved the attention, he loved the harem girls, he loved riding around in the rolls Royce, it was the ideal role for him.”

In fact, it was so successful that locals got out with their hand made signs that said “Keep BC British.”

“A lot of people took it really seriously, they really bought into this whole idea, they did a really good job of selling this concept of a guy coming in to buy the province,” says Bob.

A little over a year later, Rene Castellani would become famous for poisoning his wife Esther with arsenic milkshakes . Read the story in Murder by Milkshake.

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