Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 37

The Tragic Death of CPR Constable Thomas Sharpe

A couple of months ago Murray Maisey sent me a clipping from the World regarding the death of Thomas Sharpe. Because Constable Sharpe worked for the CPR, I forwarded the clipping to Graham Walker, who did such an amazing job uncovering the story of Charles Painter last year. Graham, now a constable with the Saanich Police Department and a member of the Saanich Police Historical Society, hit the BC Archives, and this story is the result of his investigation.

By Graham Walker

Vancouver Daily World, March 19, 1920. Courtesy Murray Maisey

On March 18, 1920, Charles Cook, hotel keeper at the Clifton Rooms on Granville Street, received a call from the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Waterfront station, looking for Thomas Sharpe, a guest at the hotel.

Cook headed upstairs to Room 68 on the fourth floor and knocked and knocked, but there was no answer. Because he worked nights, Cook knew Sharpe was a hard man to wake, so he decided to let him sleep.

1100 block Granville Street, 1928. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Around 7:00 p.m. Cook went back upstairs and knocked again. When he tried his pass key he found the door had been locked from the inside. Cook went back downstairs to get his tools and saw Mr. Francey, a ship caulker, in the sitting room. The two men removed the bolt and opened the door. They found Constable Sharpe in a chair, a bullet wound to his head. Cook phoned police.

Vancouver Police Constable William Thompson was the first to respond. He saw that Sharpe still had a revolver in hand, his head was lying back on the stove, and there was a large pool of blood on the floor. It appeared to be a suicide, but Thompson had the presence of mind to fully examine the room.

Clifton Hotel, 1125 Granville Street, 1978. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

An ammunition box rested on a table in front of Sharpe. One cartridge was missing. Thompson examined the revolver and found one empty shell in the chamber. Except for the body, the room looked in order. The constable noted that the window was open, but the location of the body and the bullet hole led him to believe the shot could not have come from outside, and no one could have left by the window.

Constable Thompson’s testimony at the Inquest

Ms. Cole, the occupant of the room next to Sharpe’s, told Thompson that she heard a noise around 9 a.m. and thought it was a heavy object that had dropped.

Coroner Thomas Jeffs held an inquisition two days later at the City morgue.

Witnesses told him that 49-year-old Sharpe had worked for the CPR for eight years, and lived at the hotel for the past six.

Sharpe had recently transferred to the night shift because he liked the “quiet,” and had worked the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift the night before his death. He arrived home around 7:00 a.m. and changed into regular clothes.

Sergeant Charles Loscombe, a friend and coworker, described Sharpe as an honest and hard-working man, who was also reserved and introverted. Loscombe confirmed that the .38 calibre revolver found at the scene was not a police weapon. Sharpe’s duty revolver, a .32, was still in his locker at the station. Loscombe said that Sharpe was on a strict diet because he suffered from chronic indigestion. The sergeant also suggested that there may have been some financial troubles having to do with Sharpe’s investments in real estate in North Vancouver and Point Grey, as well as his shares in the CPR.

The Clifton Hotel, 1125 Granville Street, 2017

Thomas Pearson, a Reeve in Point Grey testified that he had known Sharpe since they were boys. He said that Sharpe’s father had recently passed away, and Sharpe had talked about taking a leave of absence to help out on the family farm in Quebec.

Pearson believed that the shooting was suicide brought on by temporary insanity. The jury agreed.

Sharpe was buried at Sainte-Julienne, Quebec.

Mental health awareness for emergency services workers has been in the spotlight due to many high-profile suicides by law enforcement officers and rescue workers. It’s likely that Sharpe’s work as a railway constable involved significant stress, duties involved, and still involve, responding to tragedies along the rail line.

For workers exposed to traumatic stress, problems can accumulate over time and end up with very serious consequences. Many agencies have taken great steps in recent years to educate their employees on mental health awareness and have provided instructional sessions for those who wish to be peer counsellors. But despite many improvements, tragedies like these still occur across the country.

Mental health resources:

paramedicnatsmentalhealthjourney.com

badgeoflifecanada.org

ivegotyourback911.com

afterthecall.org

 

 

City on Edge

On June 14, 1994, I started my shift in Surrey. My assignment for the Vancouver Sun was to wait until the end of the Stanley Cup final between the New York Rangers and the Canucks, catch the SkyTrain downtown, and report on what happened.

Stanley Cup riot June 14, 1994. Stuart Davis/Vancouver Sun

I crammed into a car with dozens of others who were openly drinking and yelling. The mood was intense. When we got out at Granville, the crowd flowed down the street, breaking the windows of the Bay and looting anything they could carry, including headless mannequins. Everyone drifted towards the epicenter at Robson and Burrard. Later, the riot police circled the crowd firing canisters of tear gas, but neglected to leave an escape route. I watched Anne Drennan, the VPD’s media officer tell national television that everything was under control, even as her mascara streamed down her face. It was a colossal fucking mess.

A march on February 14, 1992 for missing and murdered women in the Downtown Eastside was sparked by the murder of Cheryl Ann Joe. The march became an annual Valentine’s Day event. Denise Howard/Vancouver Sun

Kate Bird’s latest book City on Edge: A rebellious century of Vancouver protests, riots, and strikes brought all that back to me  with one powerful newspaper photo. And, I would be surprised if anyone who has lived in this city for any length of time doesn’t feel a similar connection to something in this book.

For Kate, who moved to Vancouver from Montreal in the ‘70s, and worked as the Vancouver Sun and Province’s librarian for 25 years, it was the peace marches, solidarity and the environment.

Property owners and neighbours protest May 19, 1949 on the site of the Fraserview housing development after a bulldozer destroyed a fifteen-tree cherry orchard. The government expropriated the property, but several holdouts objected to the land price being offered and the method used to divide lots. Vancouver Sun

Selecting photos for the book was a combination of events that Kate had researched in the past and great photos that needed more research.

“When I looked at all these images that I collected, I found some themes running through them,” she says. “Labour of course and anti-government, but also indigenous protests, social justice issues, the environment and hooliganism and riots.”

Residents and sympathizers picket along the 2500-block East Pender to protest land assembly housing development. Peter Hulbert/Province,September 29, 1975.

You might be surprised to learn that housing is a perpetual Vancouver problem. Themes such as affordable housing, evictions for luxury condos, homelessness, and land assembly run through almost every decade of the book.

But some things are better.

“Some people think we are still protesting over the same thing, but of course lots of things have changed.  Things have improved for women, for LGBTQ and for labour.”

Residents protested the demolition of a Kerrisdale rental apartment on August 14, 1989, one of three scheduled for demolition that week and the sixth apartment razed in two months to make way for luxury condos. Ralph Bower/Vancouver Sun

Vancouver, though does seem to have more of its share of protests, says Kate.

“Early in the 1900s, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) came up and got a real foothold here in the resource industries. In the ‘60s there were draft dodgers from the US and a lot of them stayed and got jobs at SFU and UBC as professors and got involved in politics. There was way more influence from the west coast than from eastern Canada.”

Kids picket on Columbia Street in New Westminster against eight-cent chocolate bars after a two-cent price increase. Vancouver Sun, April 30, 1947.

Kate, who is the author of the bestselling Vancouver in the Seventies, says she’s already working on her next book. This time she’ll be looking at Vancouver’s sports history.

The Museum of Vancouver has just opened a fabulous exhibition based on Kate’s book including wall-size photos. It will run until February 18.

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

Our missing heritage: the forgotten buildings of Bruce Price (1845-1903)

In the 1970s, the Scotia Tower and the hideous Vancouver Centre—currently home to London Drugs—obliterated a block of beautiful heritage buildings at Granville and Georgia Streets. The development took out the Strand Theatre (built in 1920), and the iconic Birks building, an 11-storey Edwardian where generations of Vancouverites met at the clock.

The Birks building and the second and third Hotel Vancouver in 1946. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 586-4615

I was surprised to discover that when the Birks building opened in 1913, it took out three of Vancouver’s earliest office buildings, including the four-storey Sir Donald Smith block (named for Lord Strathcona) and designed by Bruce Price in 1888.

The Donald Smith building opposite the first Hotel Vancouver at Granville and Georgia in 1899. Courtesy Vancouver Archives Bu P60

According to Building the West, New York-based Price was one of the most fashionable architects of the late 19th century. He was the CPR’s architect of choice for a number of Canadian buildings, and although he designed several imposing buildings in Vancouver between 1886 and 1889, not one of them remains today.

The Van Horne block (named for the president of the CPR) at Granville and Dunsmuir, later became the Colonial Theatre, and one of Con Jone’s Don’t Argue tobacco stores, before becoming another casualty of the Pacific Centre in 1972 (see Past Tense blog for more information).

Originally known as the Van Horne building at 601-603 Granville, built in 1888/89. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 447-399 in 1972.

Price also designed the Crewe Block in the 600-block Granville: “built of brick and granite, with sixteen-inch pilasters running the height of the three-storey structure”* It lasted until 2001.

The granite-faced New York block (658 Granville) which Price designed in 1888, and the Daily World described as “the grandest building of its kind yet erected here, or for that matter in the Dominion,” would be replaced by the existing Hudson’s Bay store in the 1920s. According to the 1890 city directory, the building had a mixture of residents and businesses including the Dominion Brewing and Bottling Works, the CPR telegraph office, and John Milne Browning, the commissioner for the CPR Land Department.

1890 Vancouver City Directory

Browning lived at West Georgia and Burrard in a stone and brick duplex that Price designed, described as “Double Cottage B.”* According to Changing Vancouver, sugar baron BT Rogers bought the property in 1906, and had the house lifted, enlarged and turned into a hotel called the Glencoe Lodge.

The Brownings home in 1899 would become part of the Glencoe Lodge. Courtesy Vancouver Archives Bu N414

The hotel was torn down to make way for a gas station in the early 1930s, and 40 years later, was bought up by the Royal Centre and is now the uninspiring Royal Bank building.

The corner of Georgia and Burrard Streets since 1972. Courtesy Google map 

*source: Building the West: early architects of British Columbia

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The Brutal Murder of Vancouver Poet Pat Lowther

Pat Lowther died on September 24, 1975, her head smashed in with a hammer at her East Vancouver home. This is a short excerpt from At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Houses.

The mustard-coloured house where Pat and Roy Lowther lived on East 46th Avenue near the cemetery, is a three-storey, classic kit home with a welcoming front porch and stained glass on the front door. There’s a church at the end of the street.

566 East 46th Avenue. Eve Lazarus photo, 2006

Pat, who was just 40 at the time of her murder, grew up in North Vancouver. The Vancouver Sun published her first poem when she was 10. She published her first collection of poems in 1968 and taught at the University of BC’s creative writing department. A Stone Diary, the book she was most known for, was published after her death.

At the time of her murder, Roy Lowther, 51, was a failed poet and teacher. They had four children—two were from Pat’s first marriage.

Vancouver poets Pat Lowther and Fred Candelaria, three weeks before her murder in 1975. Courtesy Vancouver Sun and Kate Bird (Vancouver in the Seventies)

A week after she’d last seen her mother, Pat’s daughter Kathy went to police and reported her missing. Roy told police that his wife was having an affair with a poet in Ontario, and he assumed she’d gone there to be with him. Police checked airlines, rail and bus companies—no one had seen her.

Three weeks later, a family hiking at Furry Creek found her body lying face down in the water—her head and shoulders jammed under a log. The body was badly decomposed and police identified Pat from fingerprints and dental records.

A search of the couple’s bedroom turned up 117 blood spots on the wall. Police found a blood-stained mattress and a hammer at the Lowther’s house on Mayne Island. Roy was charged with murder.

566 East 46th Avenue in 1985. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 790-1979

Roy’s lawyers put up a fascinating defense. Roy admitted to finding his wife’s naked, battered body in the upstairs bedroom. He thought that the police would suspect him, he said, so he decided to get rid of the body. He put his wife in the family car, drove to Furry Creek, threw her body over a cliff, and hoped she wouldn’t be found.

A reporter attending the trial described Roy as unhealthy looking. “His ill-fitting grey suit jacket—perhaps it was once royal blue—hangs on his frame like a burlap sack and the doubled- up folds in his waistline suggest a drastic loss of weight.”

Pat’s lover also attended the trial. He was described as a chunky Ernest Hemingway in a tweed sports coat—”a short, rumpled intellectual obviously uncomfortable with the entire affair.”

Roy was convicted of murder and died in prison eight years later. In 1980, the League of Canadian Poets established the annual Pat Lowther award.

 

For more on how Pat’s murder impacted her two young daughters see Christine Lowther’s book Born Out of This.

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More of Vancouver’s Buried Houses

Last month, Michael Kluckner wrote a guest blog about the hidden houses of Vancouver. It was hugely popular and readers wrote in to let me know about more of these houses. Today’s blog is a compilation of those comments, photos and emails.

The buried houses on Denman near Beach Avenue are still highly visible. Here they are in 1928 with thanks to David Banks and Vancouver Archives. 

Homeowners started building shops in front of their houses in the 1920s. Businesses ranged from bakeries and meat markets to cigarette and barber shops, shoe repairs and book stores. As Bill Lee points out, often with some bet taking on the side. “Having a small shop was a common second occupation in a family up to the 1960s when women had more opportunities for work,” he says.

1812 West Fourth Avenue via Google Maps. What goes around comes around.

Gregory Melle says the store on Kitsilano’s 4th Avenue near Burrard was his late brother’s “head shop” in the early ’70s. Later it became an Indian restaurant. “I was amused to see last year that it had reverted to the same business for which it was infamous in my brother’s day,” he says.

2818 and 2820 Granville Street via Google maps

Murray Maisie tells me that  the house at Granville (near 12th) was originally owned by Maud Leslie. Maud and her daughter June added a book store called The Library in 1928 at #2820. City directories for that year show Beattie Realty at 2818, which later became the Antiseptic Barber Shop in 1935 (today it is the Black Goat cashmere shop). Daniel le Chocolat is the current tenant at 2820. Check out Murray’s story on his awesome blog Vancouver As it Was.

Vancouver Archives photo from 1928 of , 2818 and 2820 Granville.

Susan Anderson says her favourite buried house dates back to 1911 and hides behind BC Stamp Works at 583 Richards Street. “My great grandparents owned a house at 540 Howe Street and this building is the only remaining building like this north of Georgia Street,” says Susan. ‘The building has been covered up so completely I am not surprised people don’t know it’s there.”

583 Richards Street, courtesy Google Maps

Kim Richards says the stores on the east side of Mackenzie at 33rd including neighbourhood favourite Bigsby the Bakehouse, are a front for some hidden houses currently facing development pressure. Check out Mackenzie Heights Community page.

Buried houses at Mackenzie and 33rd courtesy Kim Richards, 2017

Ryan Dyer has his own hidden house at 820 East Pender, built in 1904 and moved to the back of the property in 1908.

“There were originally three lots with three houses. Two of the houses were moved to the back of the properties and apartment buildings built at the front,” says Ryan. “The third house was amalgamated with the east apartment building, but can be seen if you look at the roof line of the building to the east of mine (828 east Pender).”

820 East Pender Street

David Byrnes says he lived in a cottage/storefront at 2291 West 41st in Kerrisdale in the 1960s, and Penny Street notes that 1314 Commercial Drive–now Beckwoman’s Hippie Emporium appropriately fronts a hidden house—”Possibly a BC Mills pre-fab,” she says.

1314 Commercial Drive in 1978 Courtesy CVA 786-78.18

Dan Enjo says there is still a house in the rear of Numbers at 1042 Davie, and the older floor space is part of the club. “There’s a noticeable bump between the newer and older buildings on the inside floor in places,” he says.

1141 Davie, courtesy Dan Enjo

The house that is the Gurkha Himalayan Kitchen is quite visible, even though it’s now fronted by a market at 1141 Davie.

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

 

 

 

Victory Square: what was there before?

Before Victory Square was Victory Square and home to the Cenotaph, it was a happening part of the city known as Government Square, because it was the site of the first provincial courthouse.

The impressive domed building was operational by 1890 and was the first major building outside of Gastown. It was quickly apparent that it was too small for our growing city, and within a few years had a large addition with a grand staircase and portico facing Hastings Street.

Flack Building and the Courthouse ca.1900. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Buildings started to spring up around the Courthouse. In 1898, architect William Blackmore (Badminton Hotel, Lord Strathcona Elementary) designed a building for Thomas Flack who had made his fortune in the Klondike and wanted to see an impressive building bear his name.

The Arcade (corner building on the right), 1898. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Four years earlier, Charles Wickenden, the same architect behind Christ Church Cathedral and the first Vancouver Club, designed the Arcade, a wooden building containing 13 shops, at the corner of Hastings and Cambie. It was gone by 1909, replaced by the fancy Dominion Building, at the time, the tallest building in the British Empire. It stayed that way until Mayor L.D. Taylor financed the Sun Tower as a monument to his newspaper (The World) in 1912.

Dominion and the Flack Building 1919. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 99.232

While Vancouver gained the Sun Tower and the new lawcourts on West Georgia (now the Vancouver Art Gallery), the city lost the original courthouse building–demolished after just 20 years.

The Square, which is actually more of a triangle than a square, is bounded by Hastings , Cambie, Pender and Hamilton. It didn’t remain empty for long. By 1914 it was filled with a military tent, used to recruit soldiers for World War 1. Then in 1917, up went the Evangelistic Tabernacle where the courthouse once stood.

The Evangelistic Tabernacle under construction in 1917. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

The church was short lived as well. The Southams, owners of the Province Newspaper, which was housed across the street, donated funds to develop a park on land on the vacant land, which was then renamed Victory Square. By 1924, enough public money had been raised to build the Cenotaph designed by G.L. Sharp. Sharp had the 30-foot Cenotaph constructed from granite from Nelson Island.

The inscription facing Hastings Street reads: “Their name liveth for evermore. Facing Hamilton it says “Is it nothing to you.” And Facing Pender Street: “All ye that pass by.”

Victory Square 1925, courtesy Vancouver Archives

Top photo: Courthouse on Hastings and Cambie, courtesy CVA Bu N13 ca.1893

References: Building the West; Public Art in Vancouver; The Vancouver Book;                     Vancouver Remembered.

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

The PNE: Party Like it’s 1957

The last time I went to the Pacific National Exhibition was about a decade ago when my kids were still small. I’m guessing it hasn’t changed all that much. But I bet 60 years ago it was a whole different story.

The PNE prize home in 1957. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 180-3947

Take the prize home for instance. This year’s house is valued at $1.6 million. It’s 3,100 square feet, and comes with something called an “entertainment lounge,” a separate six-seat home theatre, as well as a built-in Expresso machine in the master bedroom. Seriously, you’ll never have to leave the house.

In 1957, things were a lot less complicated. People went out to movies and drank Nescafe in the kitchen. The prize home, at 1,444 square feet, was one and a half times the size of a normal house. It was a single-storey, boxy, early Ranch style house.

It was also less than half the size of the 2017 prize home.

The 1957 house was taken to, and remains at 6517 Lougheed Highway in Burnaby. It originally sat on a concrete pad, but owners have since added a basement, bringing the total square footage to a little over 2,400. It’s assessed at $1.2 million.

There were good and bad things about the PNE in 1957.

The PNE in 1957. Note the prize home on the left. Photo courtesy: https://www.flickr.com/photos/4537981...

First the good. We had Elvis Presley. It’s true. He only ever performed three shows outside of the U.S.—Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. In August 1957, more than 26,000 fans paid $3.75 each, to see him at Empire Stadium.

 

Livestock ruled.

Miss PNE 1957, Burnaby’s Carol Lucas presents first prize to poulty farmer

On the downside, 1957 had beauty queens. In fact, there are 43 Miss PNEs. The last one hung up her crown in 1991.

Courtesy Vancouver Archives 180-3218

The first PNE home was raffled off in 1934. It was worth $5,000 and is still at 2812 Dundas Street. Today it’s valued at $1.6 million. The next house was raffled in 1952, and except for the years 1967 and 1968 when the PNE experimented with $50,000 gold bars, there has been a house raffled off every year. They exist in all areas of Metro Vancouver, and the 2017 prize home will finish up in the Okanagan’s Naramata.

With thanks to Helen Lee for her research, and to Elizabeth MacKenzie for access to her 2005 Master’s thesis, and the 1957 PNE prize home floor plan.

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

 

The Buntzen Power Stations on Indian Arm

A couple of weeks ago, I took a boat ride up Indian Arm with Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew and the Deep Cove Heritage Society. It’s hard to imagine that over a century ago Indian Arm was thriving and serviced by sternwheelers, a floating post office and grocery store.

The highlight for me was finally seeing the Wigwam Inn, but almost as exciting were the two massive power stations that dominate the eastern shore at Buntzen Bay.

Power Station #2 was decommissioned in 1964. Eve Lazarus photo, July 2017

Heather Virtue-Lapierre was born up there in 1943. Her grandfather Matt Virtue was one of the first power house operators shortly after #1 opened in 1903. Her father Jim carried on the family tradition from 1941 until the plant was automated in 1953.

1910: Far left Matt Virtue. H.R. Heinrich, master mechanic is in the cap. #5 Tom Lundy, #6 George Henshaw, and #8 Jim Findlay. Courtesy Heather Virtue-Lapierre

Heather’s school was a one-room building above the power house. She was taught by a teacher who had worked as a welder during the war. “You didn’t mess with her!” she says. The teacher and her husband, who worked on the new penstock, lived in a small apartment attached to the school.

Heather at Power House #1 in 1953. Courtesy Heather Virtue-Lapierre

Heather says that power house operators were exempt from service during the war years, and instead joined the Pacific Coast Militia Rangers. “Nobody was allowed to land at Buntzen without permission during the war,” she says. “I still remember the blackout curtains in our house.”

1940s, the second generation. Left to right: Jim Virtue (son of Matt), Vic Shorting, George Mantle, Gill McLaughlin, Bill Henshaw (son of George) Courtesy Heather Virtue-Lapierre

Dawson Truax’s father was a floor man, and Dawson was just 18 months old when he moved to Buntzen with his war-bride mother in 1946. They lived in a cabin on the hill above the power plant owned by the BC Electric Railway (the forerunner to BC Hydro). Supplies came weekly on the MV Scenic.

Dawson with his dad, 1948. He used a wheelbarrow to get parcels from the hoist to their cabin. Photo courtesy Dawson Truax

“It was quite a small community and only took three men to run the power plant at any time over three shifts a day,” he says. “There was a hoist on tracks that went up the hill from the plant area to the cabin. One of my first childhood memories is of my father putting me on the hoist with a pile of parcels while he walked alongside.”

“My mother talked about it quite a bit. It was quite horrifying for her to move from London, England to the Canadian wilderness,” he says.

Buntzen gets its name from Johannes Buntzen, BCER’s first general manager.  According to Ferries & Fjord, the power stations weren’t the first industry on the Arm. The area was populated as early as 1880 by a Japanese Logging Camp. Between 1902 and 1914 around 500 men camped up there while they worked on a tunnel from Coquitlam Lake to Buntzen Lake.

Vancouver’s rapid growth soon demanded more power, and Power Station #2 opened in 1914.

Rumour has it, #2 was designed by Francis Rattenbury, the architect who designed the Parliament buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria, and the Courthouse on West Georgia. It certainly looks like his work—large, gothic and creepy (Rattenbury, who was a bit of a jerk, was eventually murdered by his trophy wife’s 18-year-old lover). But according to Building the West, #2 was designed by Robert Lyon, an architect employed by BCER.

Power Station #1. Eve Lazarus photo, July 2017

Top photo of Power Station #2 courtesy Vancouver Archives LGN 1169 ca.1914

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Saving History: Twinning the Lions Gate Bridge

Lions Gate Bridge in 1940. Courtesy CVA 586-462

The Lions Gate Bridge spans the first narrows in Burrard Inlet, connects Vancouver to the North Shore, and is one of the most iconic structures in the city. Built by the Guinness family to encourage development after they bought the side of a West Vancouver mountain, the suspension bridge was tolled from the time it opened in 1938 until 1963.

It cost 25 cents for cars and five cents for pedestrians.

Vancouver Sun photo

By the early 1990s, the bridge was in serious need of an upgrade or replacement and the City narrowed down the options to three proposals. One was to build a tunnel; another to twin the bridge and double the number of lanes; and the third was to double-deck the existing three-lane bridge.

Last year, Daien Ide, reference historian at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives was sitting at her desk when she got a tip. A model of the proposed twinned bridge had turned up at the Burnaby Hospice Thrift Store on Kingsway with a $200 price tag.

A local had saved the model after finding it tossed out in an alley behind his house a couple of decades earlier. For whatever reason, he decided it needed rehoming, and gave it to the thrift shop.

The scaled model is clearly identified with the name of the architectural firm—Safdie Architects. In Canada, Moshe Safdie is a highly regarded architect, known for the Expo 67 Habitat in Montreal, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and our very own Vancouver Public Library.

In 1994, Safdie partnered with engineering firm SNC Lavalin, and the Squamish Nation, which owned the land on the north end of the bridge.

They wanted to build an identical bridge to the east of the original structure that would carry northbound traffic, while the original bridge would carry vehicles south into Stanley Park. The new bridge would be tolled, and judging by the model, cut a chunk out of Stanley Park.

As we now know, the Province chose the cheapest and least controversial option, electing to widen the three-lane existing bridge and replace the main bridge deck.

In 2005, the Lions Gate Bridge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

Our traffic problems persist.

Huge thanks to the NVMA’s Nancy Kirkpatrick for giving me the idea for the blog and for supplying research materials.

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

The amazing photography of Stephen Joseph Thompson (1864-1929)

Cordova Street looking west in 1898 with the Dunn-Miller building. Courtesy  CVA

I’m obsessed with a photographer named Stewart Joseph Thompson. I became aware of him a few weeks back when Pamela Post sent me a photo he’d taken of Georgia and Burrard Streets in the 1890s. Then, last week I found a photo he took the day after the fire destroyed New Westminster in 1898, including Thompson’s own Columbia Street studio.

Columbia Street, New Westminster after the fire 1898. Courtesy CVA

According to Jim Wolf’s A photographic history of New Westminster, the Ontario-born Thompson was a talented artist who trained in Toronto, Montreal and New York. He was 21 when he moved to New Westminster in 1886 and partnered up with the Bovill brothers. Many of his early photos were commissioned portraits, but he was also shooting and selling landscapes—mostly along the CPR line.

Stephen Joseph Thompson, courtesy NWPL 2927

By 1888 he had his own studio in the Hamley Block on Columbia Street, selling “beautiful views of B.C. mountain scenery and city views for souvenirs.”

Point Ellice bridge disaster May 26, 1896

Thompson was in Victoria on May 26, 1896 when a streetcar overflowing with 143 people off to the Queen Victoria birthday festivities, plunged through the Point Ellis bridge killing 55 and injuring many more. Evidently, he saw the disaster as a business opportunity, and took out an ad in the Vancouver News-Advertiser.

Thompson married Constance Victoria Clute In 1897. They moved to Vancouver, opened a studio at 610 West Hastings, and put an assistant in charge of the New West business. The following year, his New West studio and thousands of glass plate negatives were destroyed in the Great Fire.

Vancouver from Mount Pleasant 1898. Courtesy CVA

The city directories show the Thompsons living at various addresses in the upscale West End. He was listed as a photographer and art supplier until around 1911. After that, Thompson joined the ranks of property speculators and set himself up as a realtor, eventually moving into the Standard Building at 510 West Hastings.

From the 1909 Vancouver City Directory

In 1927, the tanking economy likely drove him back to photography. That year the city directory lists Thompson as the manager of Photo-Arts on Dunsmuir, and his home address the Washington Court at Thurlow and Nelson.

He died in 1929.

Granville Street looking north east from the first Hotel Vancouver at Georgia in 1905. Shows Hudson Bay, Bank of Montreal and the spire of Holy Rosary Cathedral. CVA

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