Mr. Vancouver

A memorial service for Chuck

Edna Davis tells me that the memorial service for Chuck will take place on Saturday, March 26 from 2:00 to 4:00 in the Hotel Vancouver. The specific room will be announced so. Edna adds: "Many thanks to Jim McGraw and Rick Antonson et al. for arranging this."

February 24 in Vancouver history

Via The History of Metropolitan Vancouver - 1983 Chronology:

February 24 At UBC a team at TRIUMF (the Tri-University Meson Facility) did their first scan with a PET tomograph or camera. They had been developing the chemistry and building the camera since 1980. PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. 

Of the many definitions we found on the Net, we chose: an imaging technology that generates a computerized image of the body's functional systems and how the body is able to function in health and disease.

February 23 in Vancouver history

Via The History of Metropolitan Vancouver - Hall of Fame:

Ernie Fladell, b. February 23, 1925, Flatbush, Brooklyn, d. North Vancouver December 8, 2006.  Founder of the Vancouver International Children's Festival and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.  A native of New York City, he worked for NBC and then in advertising.  Co-authored “The Gap” with nephew Richard Lorber, condensed in 1968 as “The Generation Gap” in LIFE Magazine. 

Moved to Vancouver in 1971, opened Graphic House art gallery with wife Judy in Gastown and was befriended by Jack Wasserman and Jack Webster. Joined Vancouver's Social Planning Department with Maurice Egan and Jonathan Baker. Instrumental in the City’s cultural programs, The Urban Reader and The Vancouver Book (1976). 

Oversaw the City's participation in Habitat Forum at Jericho Beach held in conjunction with the 1976 UN Habitat Conference. The Children's and Folk Music Festivals evolved from Habitat Forum. The Children’s Festival is a world leader in arts for young audiences and the prototype for  festivals throughout Canada and the world. 

In the 1980s, Ernie was Director Public Relations CBC, Western Region and worked with Len Lauk. After retirement, he served as chair of the West Vancouver Seniors' Centre Board of Directors. He was innovative, enthusiastic and found new ways to make good things happen. (Matthew Fladell)  

February 22 in Vancouver history

Via History of Vancouver - Vancouver Board of Trade in 1940:

According to the Sun for Thursday, February 22, 1940 (Page 17) “An ambitious program for a greater Vancouver was outlined Wednesday before the civic bureau of the Board of Trade by J. Alexander Walker, secretary-engineer of the Town Planning Commission.” 

Time for consummation of the proposed projects of the commission, the Sun said, ranges from five to 25 years. Walker set them out as follows: 

•Preservation of English Bay foreshore for recreational purposes Acquisition of Kitsilano Reserve as a park 

•Acquisition of the right-of-way and construction of distributor streets Reclamation of False Creek 

•Creation of a terminal railway to serve the waterfront and False Creek 

•Acquisition of suitable areas for parks and creation of a system of parkways or pleasure drives 

•Promotion of the civic centre idea, auditorium, museum, art gallery and aquarium 

•Construction of a civic stadium Construction of an elevated railroad along the waterfront, from Granville to Heatley 

•Preparation of a plan for replotting 1,000 acres in the South Vancouver area as a fine residential subdivision 

•Some day an embarcadero, or esplanade, along Coal Harbor 

“Mr. Walker denied the Town Planning Commission is visionary,” the paper added. “Annual cost of the commission for the past five or six years, he said, expressed as millage on total taxable valuation of the city, is approximately 1-70th of a mill.”

February 21 in Vancouver history

Via History of Vancouver - SunSpots:

A ship that had a long and colorful career in British Columbia, the Lady Alexandra, was launched in Scotland February 21, 1924 and arrived in Vancouver harbor June 21. She became famous for her “moonlight cruises” to Bowen Island, taking as many as 1,400 passengers to the island for dining and dancing. 

“The Lady Alexandra,” writes historian Rob Morris, “was the 'Excursion Queen' of the Union Steamship Company fleet, carrying well over a million vacationers and daytrippers over her lifetime, mainly to resorts and vacation spots at Bowen Island and along the southern BC coast.” 

Union Steamship had bought Capt. John Cates' resort complex on Bowen in 1920. But the excursion business began to peter out in the 1950s, and by 1959 the Lady Alexandra had been sold and converted to a floating restaurant, moored at the north foot of Cardero Street, next to the Bayshore Inn. She made lots of money in the summer, lost lots in the winter. 

In 1972 new California-based owners towed her down to Redondo Beach, where she was turned into a floating gambling hall. A storm damaged her badly in 1980 and she capsized. The Lady was patched up, towed out to sea between San Pedro and Catalina Island, and sunk.

February 20 in Vancouver history

Via History of Vancouver - SunSpots:

On February 20, 1833, James Murray Yale, 36, who’d been with the Hudson’s Bay Company half his life, took command of the company’s Fort Langley. But it wasn’t the Fort Langley we know today. When Yale took over the fort it was four kilometres downriver. Under his supervision the fort was moved to its present location in 1838. And burned to the ground April 11, 1840. 

Here’s an indication of Yale’s independent spirit: When colleagues James Douglas and John Work offered him help after the fire, Yale “had only two requests to make, that they would supply me with six good Axes, and be off out of our way as quick as possible.” So the present site is the third Fort Langley. 

Under Yale the fort thrived, shipping salted salmon to Hawaii. A lot of the men who worked at the fort married women from the Kwantlen nation. Yale was one of them: he and his native wife had two daughters. 

The town of Yale was named for him as a reward for long and loyal service. So when CPR workers at Yale were sent down to Vancouver to work on the line’s extension into the city they nicknamed their little settlement here . . . Yaletown.

February 19 in Vancouver history

Via The History of Metropolitan Vancouver - 1931 Chronology:

February 19 Henry Ogle Bell-Irving died at age 75. He was the first of a battalion of Bell-Irvings who figure prominently in our history. H.O. was born January 26, 1856 in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, came to Canada at 27 as a surveying engineer for the CPR. 

He was briefly an architect in pre-fire Vancouver, then opened a general store in Gastown. By 1891 he was into the canning business, and that made his fortune: he became Canada’s largest exporter of canned salmon. We owe some of our knowledge of the early look of this area from his accomplished amateur watercolors. He left half of his own paintings to the provincial archives.

February 18 in Vancouver history

Via the History of Vancouver - Vancouver Board of Trade in 1909:

The Province of February 18, 1909 reported that several routine matters were dealt with speedily during a meeting of the Board the night before. One of them was the naming of a delegation to Ottawa to urge on the federal government the necessity for improving Vancouver’s harbor. Fred Buscombe and W.W.B. McLanes would go. It was also suggested that a representative of the CPR’s coast steamship service could go along, and a note to the CPR asking this was approved. (The first choice was Capt. Troup, the superintendent, if he was willing and available.) 

The Mountain Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, based in Nelson, wrote asking for support of their resolution “asking for protection against American rough lumber being dumped into Canada.” That was quickly and unanimously endorsed. Fred Buscombe pointed out that the lumber industry was the “only unprotected one in the Dominion, and this condition of affairs called for immediate alteration.” The Board had passed its own similar resolution in March of 1908. 

Member H. Bell-Irving reported for the Board’s fisheries committee. It seems the federal government intended to build one cruiser and rent another “for the protection of British Columbia fisheries. The letters also referenced that it was now known that Hecate straits and Dixon entrance were Canadian waters. In view of this the committee wired the department of marine asking if Captain Newcomb of the Kestrel had instructions to clear American poachers from these waters, and a reply is now awaited.”

February 17 in Vancouver history

Via The History of Metropolitan Vancouver - 1965 Chronology:

February 17 A testimonial dinner for Premier W.A.C. Bennett was held at the Hotel Vancouver on occasion of his becoming the longest-serving premier in B.C.’s history: 13 years. He would go on to serve seven more years.

February 16 in Vancouver history

Via The History of Metropolitan Vancouver - Chronology 1757 - 1884, a note for 1881:

February 16 A land grant of 25,000 acres of land was given to the CPR in exchange for its extending its line to Granville (Vancouver). Some 6,000 of those acres were in the city itself.