Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 35

The Mysterious Visit of John and Yoko to Stanley Park

By Lani Russwurm

Several years ago, I came across an art project by the Goodweather Collective that re-imagined a Vancouver in which the City had left select old growth trees in those roundabouts that dot the city’s residential neighbourhoods. Their photoshop work was convincing and it was jarring seeing our familiar urban landscape dotted with unfamiliar giant trees. I had been doing my Past Tense Vancouver blog on Tumblr and thought it would be fun to do some photoshopping of my own for April Fools’ Day.

The first one I did was John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Hollow Tree. This one remains the most successful in terms of the number of likes it got, and also the number of times I’ve seen someone post it to Facebook without any mention that it was fake. I used the image from the cover of John and Yoko’s Wedding Album, thinking it was a familiar enough image that wouldn’t fool too many people, but alas, no. It put me in a bit of an awkward position, since I spend a fair bit of time sorting out what I believe to be the truth of Vancouver’s past; here I was being a purveyor of fake history.

The next fake image I did was a dog riding a tricycle down Water Street in 1887. This one actually may have happened, though I have no proof.

For the last one, I riffed on all of the unsubstantiated stories of Jimi Hendrix’s time in the Vancouver. I photoshopped Jimi’s face onto a bonneted lady in a car visiting Stanley Park. Everyone in the car is smiling and appear to be in on the joke except for a boy with a puzzled expression looking at Jimi. This one was an obvious fake, but the original photo had its own weirdness. On the left is what appears to be another man in women’s garments that I swear I had nothing to do with.

Lani Russwurm is a Vancouver historian who has been blogging for over a decade as Past Tense Vancouver on Tumblr and WordPress , and more recently for Forbidden Vancouver walking tours. He is the author of Vancouver Was Awesome: A Curious Pictorial History and lives and works in the Downtown Eastside.

Source photos:

Hollow Tree, 1905, City of Vancouver Archives, #Port P1257
Britannia, ca. 2010 by the Goodweather Collective
Water Street, 1887, City of Vancouver Archives #Str N58

Vancouver’s Monkey Puzzle Tree obsession

In 2012, I wrote a book called Sensational Victoria and one of my favourite chapters was Heritage Gardens. I visited and then wrote about large rich-people’s gardens like Hatley Park, and smaller ones like the Abkhazi Garden on Fairfield road built on the back of a love story. There was Carole Sabiston’s beautiful garden on Rockland Avenue anchored by a 100-year-old purple lilac tree, and the garden Brian and Jennifer Rogers created around their century-old Samuel Maclure designed horse stable. (Brian is the grandson of BT Rogers, the Vancouver sugar king, and another ardent gardener).

Nellie McClung at her Ferndale Road home in 1949. Courtesy Saanich Archives

On the back cover of the book, there’s a photo of Nellie McClung standing in front of a giant monkey puzzle tree at the house she retired to at Gordon Head in 1935.

Lurancy Harris, the first female police officer in Canada, built her house on Venables in 1916. When I went to photograph it, the now two-storey house was dwarfed by a monkey puzzle tree that she’d planted in her front garden.

Lurancy Harris built 1836 Venables in 1916 and planted herself a monkey tree.

I’ve always had a thing for monkey puzzle trees—they seem to go particularly well with turrets, old houses and great stories. But I’ve never given them much thought until I was chatting with Christine Allen this morning about her upcoming talk for the Vancouver Historical Society next month. Christine—another Australian transplant—is a master gardener. She tells me that there was a huge craze for monkey puzzles trees here in the 1920s and 1930s.

“People were very proud of their monkey puzzle trees. It was so Victorian, they loved that kind of odd ball stuff,” she says. “There is a tiny post-war bungalow in my neighbourhood (Grandview) where somebody planted two massive ones on the south side of the house. That house gets no sun ever.”

Bowen Island Inn in the 1930s with a massive monkey puzzle tree. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Christine says that another reason why these South American natives were so popular is because of Vancouver’s mild climate that allows us to grow anything from arctic tundra plants to palm trees.

But it’s not just people, towns are proud of them to. The tiny town of Holberg on Vancouver Island boasts the world’s tallest monkey puzzle tree. I have no idea how tall it is now, but in 1995 it was measured at 77 feet—that’s higher than a seven-storey building.

Nellie McClung’s home was known as Lantern Lane after the books she wrote in her upstairs study. Courtesy Saanich Archives, 1960

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Finding the Rhea Sisters

Courtesy Ital Decor

I was driving along Hastings the other day when I saw a huge statue in the yard of Ital Decor in Burnaby. It looked suspiciously like one of the WW1 nurses that guarded the 10th floor of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building before it was imploded in 1989.

Mario Tinucci of Ital Décor, says the one in his yard is a fibreglass version that he cast from an original nurse, and made in 1990. It was the first of four that were replicated—the other three are attached to Cathedral Place, the Paul Merrick-designed tower that replaced the GM-DB.

The three “Sisters of Mercy” were affectionately known as the Rhea Sisters—Gono, Pyor and Dia.

Ital Decor , 6886 Hastings Street, Burnaby

According to newspaper articles, the eleven-foot-high terra cotta nurses, designed by Joseph Francis Watson, weighed several tonnes each and were in rough shape when they came down. The cost to fix them was upwards of $70,000 each.

Instead, developer Ron Shon donated all three to the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. He also donated some of the terra cotta animals, spandrel panels and chevron mouldings from the main entrance, and the secondary arch (the main one is in the Bill Reid Gallery which is currently closed for renovations).

Photo courtesy Ital Decor

In 1992, the VHF had their first fundraiser at the Museum of Vancouver’s parking lot and sold off pieces of the GM-DB’s terra cotta.

Maurice Guibord, who was manager of community affairs for the MoV, paid $100 for a piece of the archway, now in his garden, and which came with Certificate of Authenticity #92.

The VHF donated one of the nurses to the MoV in 2000, and later sold the two original nurses to Discovery Parks at UBC.

Nurses on the Technology Enterprise Facility Building at UBC. Courtesy UBC

Wendy Nichols, curator of collections at the MoV, says their nurse is at UBC on a long-term loan agreement. I’m told all three original nurses are attached to the Technology Enterprise Facility 111 building completed in 2003, although only two are visible in this photo.

I never saw the GM-DB, and neither did Maurice, but on Thursday he, Tom Carter and I took a field trip to Cathedral Place. Tom prefers Cathedral Place to the original art deco building because he says the back was unfinished, and the building was only ever designed to be viewed from the front.

Maurice and Tom inside the Cathedral building with the mystery head

Robin Ward described the GM-DB’s “Mayan/Hollywood style lobby” in 1988. “It’s like a film set for a bank robbery in Mexico City,” he wrote.

I get what he means. The lobby in Cathedral Place is very similar to the Marine Building complete with brass doors on the elevators. (The Marine Building and the GM-DB were both designed by McCarter and Nairne architects).

The Hotel Vancouver from the courtyard. Cathedral Place on the left, Christ Church Cathedral on the right. Eve Lazarus photo.

It’s easy to appreciate Merrick’s skill when you get into the monastery-like courtyard that joins Cathedral Place to Christ Church Cathedral and the Bill Reid Gallery. He has used a similar CP Hotel-style roof to complement the Hotel Vancouver’s copper lid, and gothic touches and cloisters to connect the buildings together.

Now the questions remain:

Is the head that is displayed at Cathedral Place terra cotta or fibreglass (we couldn’t tell) and where did it come from? (There were three original nurses that are now at UBC and four fibreglass moulds—three are attached to Cathedral Place and one is at Ital Décor)
What is the connection between the Technology Enterprise Facility Building and BC’s nursing history?



The Georgia Medical-Dental Building in 1973. Courtesy CVA 70-28

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The Photography of Bob Cain

I had the pleasure of chatting with Bob Cain this week and discovering his beautiful photographs.

The interurban to Marpole. Bob Cain photo, 1957

Bob grew up in Marpole, at a time when a swing bridge joined Marpole to Sea Island (it was dismantled in 1957 after the Oak Street Bridge opened).

“Marpole was a small town like Kerrisdale and Kitsilano,” he says. “They were just a series of small towns separated by bush and connected by interurban and trams. They had their own mayors, their own celebrations, and they used to have a May Day parade every year.”

The Vancouver skyline and the Marine Building. Bob Cain photo, 1967

When Bob was about 12, he had a morning paper route for the Vancouver News Herald. “I was getting up at 4:00 am, riding down to the Safeway on Granville Street where the papers were tossed in bundles onto the sidewalk and we would count them out and load up our bikes,” he says. “I think I had 70 deliveries which I would finish just in time to go to school.”

When he decided to quit, his manager told him if he’d stay on for another month, he’d give him a camera. “It was a Brownie Hawkeye and my first really good camera.”

Boats in Stanley Park. Bob Cain photo, 1967

What his manager didn’t tell him was the paper was going under and he didn’t want the bother of looking for another paperboy.

Now he had a “Baby Brownie,” Bob started to get more serious about photography. His family had moved into a Marpole fixer upper in the ‘50s that had a basement with a fully working darkroom. He took it over, shot, developed and printed photos as well as 8mm and 16mm reversible movie film.

Bob Cain photo, 1969

In 1967, Bob was hired as a darkroom assistant with Focus Prints at 1255 West Pender Street. “Focus Prints was located up one set of stairs and down a long corridor all the way to the back of the building. The office and workroom had gorgeous views of the Burrard Inlet,” he says. (I worked in the same two-storey blue building in the 1980s for Business in Vancouver—now it’s a 15-storey condo building called The Views).

CPR ferry to Nanaimo. Bob Cain photo, 1971

Focus Prints mostly dealt with ad agencies in the area, and Bob’s main job was to making what he calls Azos. “Using a 5×7 camera we made line negs (black and white negs, no shades of grey) of the copy sent to us.”

The Orillia on Robson. Bob Cain photo, 1980

He moved to Hornby Island in the 1970s and became the island’s official photographer—taking passport photos, recording weddings, and marking other events such as art show openings with his camera. He’s retired now, but still taking photos and he’s been adding to his website since 2006.

Britta Dansereau and Ron Schulman. Bob Cain photo 1990

These days, he gets to Vancouver less and less. “I don’t like Vancouver anymore it’s outgrown itself,” he says.

I asked Bob his favourite photographer. Foncie, he said.

Ron Schulman and Bob Cain. Foncie photo, 1961

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Emily Carr’s James Bay

Emily Carr died on March 2, 1945, and since March 8 is International Women’s Day, it seems fitting to write a blog about this famous artist and take you on a tour of her James Bay neighbourhood. The tour is laid out in much more detail and accompanied by then and now photos in Sensational Victoria.

More than 12,000 people visit Emily Carr House every year. Eve Lazarus photo, 2011

Her name adorns a university, a school, a bridge, and a library. She is the subject of several documentaries, museum exhibits, books and plays. In 2009, her painting Wind in the Tree Tops sold for more than $2.1 million, one of the highest-priced Canadian paintings ever sold at auction. Tourists visit her family home, seek out her sketching places along Dallas Road and Beacon Hill Park and walk over the memorial bridge paid for by her sister Alice. Her grave is the most sought-after in the Ross Bay Cemetery.

Emily Carr’s presence in Victoria is pervasive. Yet for most of her life, she was shunned by the Victoria of her day, and for all of her fame, locals still seem a bit stunned by the attention. It wasn’t until the fall of 2010—65 years after her death—that Victoria honoured the artist with a $400,000 statue on the lawn of the Fairmont Empress Hotel.

Emily was born at Carr House in 1871, and died a few blocks away at the James Bay Inn, 74 years later. For most of her life, she lived in James Bay and wrote extensively about the area and her family’s homes.

James Bay is the oldest residential area of Victoria and takes its name from Governor James Douglas. Douglas built his house in the 1850s on the current site of the Royal BC Museum. Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken married Douglas’s daughter and built his house next door. His house is still there and is now a provincial museum.

Map of James Bay walking tour created for Sensational Victoria by Ross Nelson, 2012

Until a causeway was completed in the early 1900s, Government Street was made up of Carr Street (named after Emily’s father Richard), Birdcage Walk, and the James Bay Bridge—a wooden bridge that crossed the mud flats and continued downtown.

In 1908, the James Bay mud flats were hidden underneath the spanking new $13-million Empress Hotel. By the 1940s, houses had taken over all the land. Postwar development hit in the 1950s, and then in the 1960s and ‘70s—as in Vancouver’s West End—many of Victoria’s superb heritage houses were bulldozed to make room for apartment buildings.

Emily with her animals in 1918. Courtesy Royal BC Museum, BC Archives

Yet with all these changes, the Victoria Heritage Foundation still lists over 150 buildings on its heritage inventory, some like Helmcken’s, that date back to the 1850s.

Emily started writing in the late 1920s and had seven books published during her lifetime and after her death. She wrote extensively about James Bay and her family house in The Book of Small, and about how much she hated being a landlady in The house of All Sorts.

Mother Cecilia bought the hotel in 1942 and ran it as St. Mary’s Priory. Emily died here in 1945. Eve Lazarus photo, 2011

What was great, at least in 2012 when I was putting this tour together, was that most of the houses that involve Emily—including the home where she was born on Government Street, the “House of All Sorts,” known for all the different people who boarded there, two of her sister’s houses, and James Bay Hotel (Inn) built in 1911, are all still there.

So, the next time you’re in the area, grab a copy of Sensational Victoria from Munro’s Books, and take a walk around Emily’s James Bay.

Carr family, 207 Government St, 1869. Courtesy Royal BC Museum, BC Archives

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The shootout at False Creek Flats

On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats . The officers are remembered in an exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum that opens March 1, and their stories are part of Blood, Sweat, and Fear.

During the 1940s, many of Vancouver’s young men aged between 13 and 18 were recruited into “hoodlum gangs.” The youth were good at steering clear of police, members were rarely identified, and their crimes became increasingly serious. Police believed that an organized crime ring was recruiting these boys and using them to rob military depots and armouries and then use the stolen guns to rob banks around the Lower Mainland.

False Creek Flats and the Great Northern Railway Round House in 1956. CVA 447 250

On February 26, 1947 three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First. A 17-year-old boy named William (Fats) Robertson, was upset with his friends for leaving him out of the robbery and tipped off police. Just as the boys were putting on their stocking masks, police rolled up and got into a car chase. It ended with the boys bailing out of the car and trying to lose police in the railyards of False Creek flats.

A gun fight ensured in which officers Ledingham and Boyes were killed, and another officer Percy Hoare, was shot in the leg and shoulder. Badly injured, but still able to shoot, Hoare killed Doug Carter, an 18-year-old with a wife and baby, another hit Harry Medos in the leg.

Oliver Ledingham and Charles Boyes. Courtesy Vancouver Police Museum

The shootings put Chief Walter Mulligan in a difficult position. Just two days before he had told a Vancouver Sun reporter that the “gloves were off” in a war against city crime. And, as the same newspaper reported, in the next 48 hours Vancouver experienced seven burglaries, two hold ups, two attempted robberies and 19 thefts.

Harry Medos, 18, was executed, while 17-year-old William Henderson received five years for possession of a firearm.

Fats Robertson,  who was not invited along on the robbery that day, went on to a spectacular life of crime and a career on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. He was a co-owner of the Wigwam Inn on Indian Arm in the early 1960s and turned it into an illegal gambling operation, printed counterfeit money, and ran a brothel. Eventually he was jailed for trying to bribe an RCMP officer.

More than 100,000 people attended the funeral for Boyes and Ledingham. VPL 42982

Ledingham, 40, who was known in his Kitsilano neighbourhood for his crops of gladioli and tulips, left behind a wife and 13-year-old son. Boyes, 38, who was a wizard with tools and often fixed the toys of the kids in his Point Grey neighbourhood, left behind a wife and six-year-old daughter.

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

$1.49 Day Woodward’s. $1.49 Day Tuesday

Sixty years ago today, CKNW creative director, Tony Antonias  wrote the famous Woodward’s $1.49 day jingle.

Antonias, a New Westminster resident and former Aussie—who like most of us ex pats have kept our accents—started as a copywriter at the station in 1955. He stayed there for the next 40 years—to the day.

As Tony tells it, the jingle came about almost by accident after he hit the key on a new typewriter and it made a loud ding. When he hit it again, it made another ding—yup $1.49 Day. Tuesday.

Tony wrote the jingle on February 17, 1958, recorded it on the Easter weekend and heard it go to air in April 1958 “after Woodwards took six weeks to decide to use it.”

“Everybody wants to know how the $1.49 jingle came to be,” he told me. “I’ve scripted it and I’ve got it on CDs and they love hearing it.”

Percival Archibald Woodward (Puggy) ran the Woodwards Department Stores for many years. It was Puggy who created Woodward’s famous food floor—and with it, turned the entire concept of retailing on its head.

Woodwards ca.1940s. Courtesy VPL 27900

And, it was his idea in 1927 to build a 75-foot-high beacon modelled after the Eiffel Tower to act as a giant billboard advertisement for the department store. The tower held a searchlight that threw out a two million candlepower beam which revolved six times each minute and could be seen from Vancouver Island. When the war hit he was told to remove the tower and the 16-foot W took its place. Puggy predicted that malls were the wave of the future and he was a driving force behind the Park Royal Shopping Centre, which in 1950, was the first shopping mall in Canada.

He died in 1968—10 years after Tony created the Woodward’s jingle. Puggy was a huge philanthropist with an interest in medical research and he left his vast estate to the Mr. and Mrs. P.A. Woodwards Foundation where it continues to do great work.

A Woodwards elevator operator in the 1970s. Photo courtesy Angus McIntyre

If that jingle and the famous whistle is not firmly wedged in your head for the rest of the day—or if you were born after 1992—you can listen to here on soundcloud

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Saving History: the life’s work of J.F.C.B. Vance, Vancouver’s first forensic investigator

In July 2016, several large cardboard boxes filled with photographs, clippings, forensic samples, and case notes pre-dating 1950, and thought to be thrown out decades ago, were discovered in a garage on Gabriola Island. They are now with the Vancouver Police Museum and Archives, and form the basis of Blood, Sweat, and Fear: the story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s first forensic investigator. 

I first “met” Inspector John F.C.B. Vance when I was writing Cold Case Vancouver. He turned up at a crime scene in Chapter 1, the murder of Jennie Eldon Conroy, a 24-year-old war worker who was beaten to death and dumped at the West Vancouver Cemetery. It turned out that Vance wasn’t actually a police officer–he ran the Police Bureau of Science for the Vancouver Police Department, and his cutting-edge work in forensics solved some of the most sensational cases in the first half of the last century.

Unfortunately, Jennie’s wasn’t one of them.

Vance examines a spent bullet through a comparison microscope in 1932. Courtesy Vance family

For most of his career, Vance worked out of 240 East Cordova Street, the building that now houses the Vancouver Police Museum. With their help, I was able to track down a couple of Vance’s grandchildren. Janey and David remembered that J.F.C.B.—as Vance was known in the family—had packed up several cardboard boxes full of photographs, clippings, and case notes from dozens of cases when he retired in 1949. He took them with him when he moved in 1960, but no one had seen them for years, and it was thought that they’d been thrown out. And then, in July 2016, more than half a century after Vance’s death, the boxes were found in another grandchild’s garage on Gabriola Island.

Vancouver was the only police department in Canada that had a forensic scientist on staff and one of the few police departments in North America to use forensics in criminal investigations. Forensic samples found in one of the boxes

Incredibly, when Janey opened the first box she found a large, tattered envelope labelled Jennie Eldon Conroy murdered West Vancouver, Dec 28, 1944. Inside there were smaller envelopes marked with the VPD insignia and filled with hair and gravel samples from the crime scene, an autopsy report, crime scene photos, and several newspaper clippings.

Vance’s science was so successful that in 1934 there were seven attempts on his life. This was a home made bomb sent to Vance’s lab through the general police mail

Vance was skilled in serology, toxicology, ballistics, trace evidence and autopsy. He was a familiar face at crime scenes and in the courtroom, and was called the Sherlock Holmes of Canada by the international media. Yet few people have heard of him.

Hopefully that will change with the publication of Blood, Sweat, and Fear, but best of all, all those boxes, the crime scene photos, the case notes, even Vance’s personal diary, are now with the Vancouver Police Museum and Archives. They’ll be properly processed, cared for, and eventually made available to the public.

Crime scene photo from the murder of two police officers in Merritt, BC in 1934. 

Excited to be taking part in a few events coming up in Vancouver and on the North Shore. I’ll be talking about some of the murders from Blood, Sweat, and Fear; Vancouver’s role in the development of forensics; and of course, our city’s criminal past.

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Fifty Years Ago: Vancouver International Airport

On February 7, 1968 a Canadian Pacific Airlines flight from Honolulu was on final descent into Vancouver when it hit a small fog patch just above the runway. The Boeing 707 touched down, swerved out of control and smashed through light planes, trucks and a workshop before crashing into a concrete building. Martinus Verhoef, a 33-year-old flight attendant from West Vancouver was crushed to death in the buckled fuselage near the front of the plane, and Elmer Nedcalf, a 44-year-old airport employee from Richmond died in the wreckage from the workshop.

All sixty passengers and crew survived.

Thanks to Angus McIntyre for passing along this photo that was published by the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board in 1969. The caption read: “A modern jet-age terminal opened on Sea Island. Giant boarding arms reach out to serve air-age travellers to all domestic points and exotic foreign centres around the world.”

This was the first crash at the airport involving a major aircraft and a rough start to the year for YVR.

It was also the same year that the airport opened a new terminal building designed by local architect Zoltan Kiss to handle all domestic, US and international flights. It was one of the few airports where aircraft could pull up to gates attached to the terminal and where passengers could load and unload via a bridge.

A recent view of YVR, courtesy Angus McIntyre

Kiss worked for Thompson Berwick Pratt, the firm that served as an incubator for such other up-and-comers as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Barry Downs and Fred Hollingsworth.

If you’ve taken a plane from Vancouver to any other point in Canada—you’ve walked through this terminal. You’ve also likely noticed the two large air-intake towers that flank it. These concrete towers were an engineering feat back in 1968 and replaced the old system which had the air intake in the roof. When the wind would blow the wrong way, employees and passengers would complain about the overpowering smell of aviation fuel.

YVR in 1967. Photo courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority (air-intake tower at left of frame)

YVR officially opened in 1931 when the City of Vancouver invested $600,000 in a runway and a small wood framed building topped by a control tower after US aviator Charles Lindbergh refused to visit because there was “nothing fit to land on.”

Big changes happened in the ‘60s after the City sold the Airport to the Department of Transport. By 1968 the airport sat on more than 4,000 acres of land, and the spanking new terminal building served close to two million passengers in its first year of operation.*

“I remember how large and modern it was compared to the old (now South) terminals. You could drive your car up to the departure level, park and pay 25 cents at a meter,” says Angus McIntyre. Photo courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority.

Half a century later, more than 24 million passengers pass through YVR.

And, while air travel today generally sucks, the good news is that not one person died in an accident on a commercial passenger jet last year —making 2017 the safest year ever.

Before and after. Photo courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority

*see SFU: The history of Vancouver International Airport

 

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Saving History: the autographed lights from the Orpheum Theatre

A couple of weeks ago Bill Allman, Tom Carter and I were sipping martinis and discussing bits of history that have been saved from the dumpster. The subject of the rescued lights from the Orpheum Theatre came up, and next thing he knew, Bill had agreed to write this blog.

By Bill Allman

Deep in a haunted basement on West Cordova, below Vancouver curio shop, Salmagundi West, lay a collection of vintage stage lights. I blew the dust off one marked TUTS (for

Tom Carter and Bill Allman, 2017

Theatre Under the Stars) and marveled at the antique design. “There are more.” said my friend – theatre historian and painter extraordinaire, Tom Carter. “Where?” I asked. “The Orpheum. A whole collection. All signed by different stars.”

I let out a low whistle. We emerged from the cavernous cellar, went to the Sylvia Hotel for a drink (or three), and decided that we HAD to see the Orpheum’s treasure trove.

Tom and I were organizing a gala fundraiser and auction for the Friends of the Vancouver Archives to benefit the Hugh Pickett Collection. But that’s another story. This one is about lights – stage lights that had illuminated shows for hundreds of thousands of people.

I am fascinated by objects from great performances by famous people. “Screen used” props, and dog-eared shooting scripts are the only ones I care about; likewise, any piece of stage memorabilia with a genuine connection to a gifted artist. So, when we got access to the Orpheum’s cache of autographed lights, AND a very generous donation from the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame of three of those lights for our auction, we were in seventh heaven.

Three lights went up for auction at the Hugh Pickett Gala in November 2017.   Courtesy Christina Potter

There we were, crouched in a room in the Orpheum hidden from public view and illuminated only by a flickering Radio Shack strobe light bouncing off the walls and the tinsel curtain that covered the racks of antique Leko lights. As quickly as we could read the names, we’d call them out with schoolyard excitement. “Tina Turner!”, “Michael Buble!”, “Ray Charles!”. Then we found the three we wanted for the auction – artists that Hugh had presented at one time or another: “Tony Bennett!”, “Victor Borge!”, “And here’s a friend of mine – Jeff Hyslop!”

A light signed by Tony Bennett after a performance at the Orpheum. Courtesy Jason Vanderhill

The lights had almost been lost to time and the dumpster. Another near-tragedy of Vancouver’s urge to purge its past. But eyes that were keen and hearts that long to preserve and celebrate our city’s culture had intervened. The three lights that sold went to homes where their rich history would be appreciated. And the remainder? They rest in a secret room in a famous theatre. And the day will come when they are displayed and perhaps even researched by top people.

Who?

Top people.

Bill Allman is a “recovering lawyer” and instructor of Entertainment Law at UBC. Bill has been a theatre manager (the Vogue), president of Theatre Under the Stars, and a concert promoter and theatre producer through his company, Famous Artists Limited. He is no longer willing to move your piano.