Factory of Haida Confections and National Biscuits, Vancouver. Sorry, that’s not a bite taken out of the side of the building; the newspaper is a bit worn after 100 years. Image taken from the Sun, February 12, 1912; you can see in the original paper here and here. I don’t yet know where this factory was located, but perhaps we’ll learn more from the comments.

Update! Brilliant! As predicted, Vancouver Archives has added some valuable comments:

This 1931 photo http://searcharchives.vancouve… shows what looks like part of that building with a huge new addition, at 1706 W. 1st & Pine. Looks like the new addition is still there today, but the old building is not. Not sure what happened to Haida by 1931—maybe Nabisco took over the whole building.

So this was situated right around the corner from the Seaforth Armouries, and just down the street from both the Capilano Brewery, and just up the street from Peerless Steam Laundry, both of which have been featured here previously. Put all three of these buildings together and you begin to have a clearer picture of this early Vancouver industrial district. The workers of the day probably never envisioned that Yoga pants and Porsches would one day take their place!

And ps: if anyone ever finds any more artifacts that depict the Haida brand, I would love to see them!

Update # 2! Great stuff! Michael Kluckner has also weighed in, adding:

This is the building that became Mitchell Press for many years. They printed/published quite a number of books about Vancouver, including Alan Morley’s Vancouver: From Milltown to Metropolis (1961, second edition 1974), the first good history of the city.

Now it looks to me like “the old Mitchell Press building” at 1706 West 1st Avenue in the Armory District of Kitsilano has become home to Livingspace since the fall of 2011! From cookies to books to trendy furniture! This building has seen it all!

A postcard for The York Hotel, 790 Howe Street, Vancouver. The York was featured on Changing Vancouver earlier this month. The Sears building designed by Cesar Pelli has taken it’s place. Soon, things are destined to change once again. Sears is planning to leave this building before Halloween of this year; then the building will get its makeover. Hooray!

Postcard acquired at All Nations Stamp and Coin, previously in the Bay on West Georgia Street, they’ve since moved to 5630 Dunbar.

A promotional Woodwards school textbook cover depicting a panoramic view of a coastal city very reminiscent of Vancouver, BC. (There is a small chance this was generic art that was used in other cities, but I’d like to think it’s our very own.) I can’t quite make out the initials with certainty in the bottom right hand corner, but it looks like either A. J. B. or possibly A. S. B. Theoretically, that might be Arthur J. Bannister (who was in the BC Artists exhibition in 1945), or perhaps Albert J. Blaney (who was in the BC Artists exhibition in 1946); both artists are listed in Gary Sim’s British Columbia Artists index.

I reduced the drawing to black and white and crudely Photoshoped out some of the extraneous info in an attempt to isolate the panoramic scene of the city.

“So this is Canada”, the satirical revue as advertised in the October 2nd, 1926 edition of The Morning Leader, Regina, Saskatchewan. This is a followup to my previous post showing the speculative drawing of a theatre at Broadway and Granville on land owned by J.A. Schuberg. This next quote should help to explain who Mr. Schuberg was. From the Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema: 

John Albert Schuberg (aka ‘Johnny Nash’), lived from 1875-1958. Schuberg, whose professional name was Johnny Nash, came from a Swedish family living in Minneapolis, and was already an accomplished magician by his teens. In 1894 he moved to Canada, touring the country’s fairs and variety halls. In 1898 he acquired an Edison projector and added films to his act…Wishing to end his family’s traveling life, Schuberg converted an empty shop at 38 Cordova Street, Vancouver into Canada’s first cinema in October 1902. He opened further theatres in Winnipeg and elsewhere, eventually owning eight theatres in Canada and the United States and by 1919 had become western Canada’s leading cinema exhibitor…

Luke McKernan

“So This is Canada” featured some real heavyweights of its day: John A. Schuberg presents a Charles E. Royal Production written by W.S. Atkinson. The ad boasts it’s “The World’s Funniest Show!” It must have been good, because this production went on a cross-country tour after some 50,000 people saw the show in Vancouver in a 6-week standing-room-only run at the Empress!

Now I have to admit, I am hardly the expert on Vancouver’s theatre history. All of these significant details were courtesy of the artist Tom Carter, whose expertise was invaluable in making this post happen; he also provided the ad for this post!

Tom recommends two more books about J.A. Schuberg; first there’s Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939 which was used as a reference in the Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema above. And evidently there’s an unpublished autobiography that Schuberg’s grandson donated to the VPL titled Fifty Years A Showman by John Schuberg.

In the future, I hope to highlight more gems from Vancouver’s theatre past. With a little bit of microfilm and some expertise from Tom, perhaps we can uncover a few more of Vancouver’s entertainment legends!

And ps: Here’s the review of the show in the October 2nd, 1926 The Morning Leader (I think) from Regina, which gives a great background into the making of the play.

Cascade Beer - The Beer Without a Peer, from the back of Fruit Magazine (December 1909), seen on archive.org. The name “STAHR” appears in the bottom right hand corner of the image.

Cascade Beer was an early brand of the Vancouver Breweries Ltd, the Reifel family’s brewing empire. If you don’t already know the Reifels, take a look at a few of their contributions to our city: they built the Commodore Block, the Vogue Theatre and the Studio Theatre (the Studio was across the street from the Vogue, which later became the Eve Theatre (1972-78), the Lyric, the Towne Theatre, Tonic, and now Joe’s Apartment); they donated property for the original Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street; they built the “Casa Mia” (recently under contention as the owners want to convert it to a seniors’ hospice) and the “Rio Vista”, two mansions on Southwest Marine Drive; they farmed sugar beets during WWII on Reifel Farms; and as I’ve mentioned before, they donated the land for the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta. Oh, and yes, they may have participated in sending alcohol into the US during prohibition. But more about that some other time.

The Sign of the Clock, Souvenirs in Gold. Henry Birks & Sons advert, with George E. Trorey acting as managing director. Originally known as the Trorey Clock, it became the Birks clock when Trorey sold his business to Henry Birks and Sons of Montreal in 1906. Advertisement from the August 1907 issue of Western Ho! Magazine, seen on Archive.org.

The Cave Supper Club souvenir postcard, circa 1957.

The Vancouver Trust Company, an architectural drawing from an advertisement in the September 1910 issue of Man-to-Man Magazine Vol 6, no.9 (previously known as Westward Ho! Magazine and later renamed British Columbia Magazine). The advertisement announces their new address at 614 Pender Street, and promises that “A Trust Company Cannot Die or Abscond”. I guess not.

The building didn’t turn out precisely as illustrated, lacking the arts & crafts typography for one, as the period photograph from the magazine illustrates. Today, the classic lines of the building can just barely be made out, as seen in the Google streetview image. The building is located just next door to Malone’s Bar & Grill downtown.

National Newspaper Boy Day, an advert in the News-Herald of Vancouver, a newspaper that started in 1933 and ended in 1957. It looks as though the name written along the laneway and front sidewalk is Allan Booth. A word from Chuck Davis about the paper:

April 24, 1933 The first issue of the Vancouver News-Herald appeared, operated largely by editorial staff fired by the short-lived Star. The new paper faced formidable competition: the Province’s circulation at the time was 90,265, the Sun’s somewhere in the 60,000 to 70,000 range. The News-Herald’s started at 10,000 and peaked at 40,000, but it would last until 1957.

So when was National Newspaper Boy Day? Seems it was held across North America on a Saturday in October in the 1940s and 1950s. Here’s another ad from Saturday, October 7, 1950, in the Ludington Daily News. If you can find an earlier or later reference to National Newspaper Boy Day, let me know in the comments. This newspaper ad has been hastily tweaked by me, and was spotted by Vancouver artist Tom Carter.

The Romance of Vancouver, a BC Electric trolley advertisement for the Vancouver Sun by cartoonist Fraser Wilson. I digitally enhanced this image, removing the brown ‘cardboard’ patina of the background to replicate what the original drawing might have looked like on paper. Wilson’s signature appears in the bottom right of the ad, and in the bottom left are the words:

José María Narváez
(1791) Discovers Vancouver

Wikipedia entry for José María Narváez

Fraser Wilson, mentioned here recently, was the cartoonist who sold his first cartoon at the age of 12 (circa 1917), and he continued to draw comics for the Vancouver Sun and the Daily Province until 1947. This trolley ad is one of the three referenced in this Vancouver Sun article, where John Mackie writes:

They probably date to the late 1930s and early ’40s, when posters were mounted on the front of streetcars. They survived because somebody packed them into walls as insulation and they were unearthed when houses were renovated or torn down.

The expression “The Romance of Vancouver” was a slogan used by the Vancouver Tourist Association on a number of occasions. Books were published with this title in 1926, 1929, 1936 (the year of the city’s Golden Jubilee), and in 1940. I wonder if this ad was part of a larger Golden Jubilee nostalgic ad campaign featuring all the early explorers; has anyone seen any others?

I’m putting out the call for anyone who has an old BCER trolley poster in their collection to get in touch with me. I’d love to build a larger visual database of these ads, and if possible, I’m attempting to make digital recreations of the posters I’ve seen thus far. Of course, you can read a lot of these ads in period photographs, but I’m super keen on seeing the real thing. You can get in touch with me by Twitter or via this site at illustratedvancouver.ca/submit. You can see my growing digital archive of this posters here.

Store flyer for Belleek China, from the D.E. Hutchinson Jewelers store in Vancouver, previously located at 683 Granville Street (now the site of the Sears building, former Eaton’s Pacific Centre). This is a bit late for Valentine’s, but better late than never? Oh, except D.E. Hutchinson closed decades ago, before Eaton’s Pacific Centre was built. Actually, I don’t see the business listed in the 1940 phone book, so that means they must have been there some time later from the 1940s-1960s. Store flyer for sale on ebay. Happy Valentine’s Day none the less!

As Acurate and Unfailing as the 9 O’clock Gun - Electric Time, a BC Electric advert from the Vancouver Sun, on page 2 of Sep 8, 1931. This one doesn’t feature much artistry, but it maximizes the local lore of the 9 o’clock gun. Plus BC Electric ads are classic, and we should see them more often.

Actually, the copy of this ad is so lofty, it deserves transcription. It’s also hard to read the right hand side, due to early printing inconsistencies.

As Accurate and Unfailing as the 9 o’clock Gun—Electric Time

Great astronomical observatories with their wonderfully precise instruments scrupulously recording exact time by rigid and careful observation of the heavens.

It is this fundamental exactness which has made possible the amazing accuracy of the 9 o’clock gun—the same exactness controls the electric clock.

NO SPRINGS OR WEIGHTS

Discarding springs, weights, and all former methods of time recording, the electric clock assures a flawless accuracy that corresponds exactly with computations of official observatories.

THE MASTER CLOCK

The Master Clock is controlled by radio waves from these official observatories. It in turn controls huge generators which transmit electric pulsations through your light circuit. In this way, your electric clock is kept absolutely accurate.

NO ATTENTION NEEDED

No winding, no regulating, simply connect to your electric light circuit.

COUNTLESS MODELS

Electric time is sweeping the country—models for every room in the house have been designed in rich, tasteful styles. Call and see the wonderful selection in our showrooms— models priced from $10 up to the lovely china Grandfather Clocks at $250. If you cannot visit the showrooms, mail coupon or phone for further particulars about electric clocks.

[no phone number included]

COUPON

Please send me further information about electric clocks:

Name

Address

BC Electric
APPLIANCE STORES
BRITISH COLUMBIA ELECTRIC RAILWAY CO.

Come fly with us! (for a one day vacation), a Grouse Mountain poster calendar from either 1980 or 1986 based on calendar dates, although I think the aesthetic is more 1980, and if it was 1986 they probably would have made some sort of Expo reference. More about the history of the tramway from wikipedia:

The tramway, known as the Blue Tram, was built by Austrian steel company Voestalpine and was opened and inaugurated on December 15, 1966, by Premier W. A. C. Bennett.

Ten years later, the mountain was purchased from its original owners by the McLaughlin family in 1976. The new ownership provided additional funding for the construction of a second aerial tramway, built by von Roll, known as the Red Tram or Super Skyride, that same year. The Super Skyride, using much larger gondola cars holding several dozen passengers, is now the main tram, arriving at a separate top terminal building a short walk from the lodge. The older Blue Tram is now mainly used to transport staff and supplies directly to the lodge structure.

Update: Not really an update; I’m just having second thoughts. I might not have picked up on some clues. The typeface for Grouse Mountain is very Expo86 inspired, and the fact that the gondola becomes a jet aircraft fits very well with the transportation theme of the transpo Expo. This also falls during the summer months at Grouse, right at the peak of Expo 86; maybe this WAS from 86!?

Update 2! I just learned from the artist himself! This is a Bob Masse original design!

Advertisement for Peerless Steam Laundry, once located at 1698 West 3rd Avenue at Pine, on the south east corner, now the site of a public storage facility. Oh, and their phone number was BAyview 0841. From a 1940 Strand Theatre programme.

For a rather unsettling commentary on the advertisement’s slogan, see the comments.

You may have noticed how I’ve tagged images by the street names on this blog; I used the street name only, without the suffix/type, which might get a bit confusing when folks randomly search Tumblr, but should work fine for the iconic street names. In addition to tagging the street name, the vicinity or neighbourhood, the medium/genre, the artists name, and Vancouver itself, I’ve used a few other niche tags to highlight some of my favourite work. This post features two of those; I’ve mentioned the Artist Unknown tag before; I’ve also used the Ad tag when the artwork was explicitly commercial art or advertising art, which often happens to be Artist Unknown as well.

Hotel, Map, Bridge, Concept and Transit tags are also personal favourites of mine, and I generally give the Popular tag to posts that rapidly receive at least 10 likes, reblogs, or comments, but these numbers are sometimes skewed by Tumblr spammers which I actively block, so results will vary.

Vancouver Tourist Association advert signed by Ronald Jackson, 1946. From inside the souvenir program for The Jubilee Show, seen here yesterday. This advert also resembles his colour painting for the Tourist Association seen here previously.