The evolution of the Buzzer logos, via the Buzzer blog. Translink’s Buzzer editors will be hosting a Google Hangout on Wednesday, March 27 at noon to 1pm Pacific. It’s your chance to chat all about the history of the Buzzer, plus get answers to any transit questions you might have. Check it out!
Masthead for The World newspaper; “the paper that prints the facts”, dated Monday, March 3, 1913. Note the fine typography employed for the word “Vancouver”, complete with it’s own underline flourish. Thanks to John Mackie for submitting the image! The World was led by the following over its lifetime in print:
1888-1901 J.C. McLagan
1901-1905 Mrs. J.C. McLagan
1905-1915 L.D.Taylor
1915-1921 John Nelson
1921-1924 Charles E. Campbell
The masthead above ran during Louis Denison Taylor’s command of the paper, the year following the completion of The World Building (later known as the Bekins Building, now the Sun Tower). Oh, and that “copper” green roof? It’s not actually copper, but simply green paint! The year 1913 was also the year of a worldwide financial depression where the overreach of financial markets caused the building to go into bankruptcy. Ironically, this was also the year that the prestigious Birks store opened at Georgia and Granville, and construction began on the second Hotel Vancouver (1916).
You can read more of The World’s exploits in the book L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver by Daniel Francis, much of which is accessible online.
From the Vancouver Province Saturday, June 27, 1936, a special Dominion Day cover. This front page has been digitally enhanced, looking a bit surreal when enhanced to this degree. It’s hard to imagine newspapers were ever so colourful! For a more accurate view, here is the original scan of the newspaper.
News headlines of the day included “Canada Comes West”, “When Rowing was Sometimes a Hazardous Sport”, “Why Shouldn’t Germany Regain Her Lost Colonies? The Reasoning Behind Hitler’s Demands”, “That ‘Woman’s Place’ Question is Here Again”, and “Blame Your Grandpa if Your Hair is Non-Existent”. The artwork is uncredited, although the comic on the back page is signed Raymond Flanagan, so perhaps it’s the same artist utilized throughout the paper.
The flag draped across the illustration is the Canadian Red Ensign, and the Canadian shield (used on the flag from 1921–1957) appears alongside the British Columbia shield (which foreshadows BC’s own future provincial flag). Here’s an interesting side note about BC’s flag:
With the exception of Nova Scotia and Quebec, the widespread attitude was that provincial flags were irrelevant. In 1946, Mr. William MacAdam, B.C.’s long lasting Agent General in London, visited Premier John Hart in Victoria. He brought with him a sketch of the armorial banner and suggested that it would make a good provincial flag. Mr. Hart is reported to have turned it down with the remark, “Where and how would we use it?” The province, he felt was adequately equipped with the Canadian Red Ensign and the Union Flag.6
The source link above goes on to describe in detail how BC officially got it’s current provincial flag, which finally became official on June 27, 1960. It’s worth a read in its entirety. Happy Canada Day everyone!
Coal Harbour, looking up the Inlet; and Coal Harbour, looking South. Two hand-coloured etchings from page 306 of the September, 1884 issue of The West Shore magazine. These two lithographs originally appeared in black and white, and they are likely based on period photographs.
I can almost make out the name “A. Burr” in the bottom left hand corner, perhaps the artist who etched the image? Following on the heals of yesterday’s post, these hand-coloured etchings are also from the Vancouver Archives documentary art collection.
This particular issue of The West Shore is significant, as Major Matthews describes in Early Vancouver Volume 5:
The earliest appearance we have seen of the name “Vancouver” is in the magazine West Shore, published in Portland, Oregon, September 1884, Vol. 10, No. 9, page 304, which says: “investigate the merits of Vancouver on Coal Harbor,” etc.”
I let the cat out of the bag yesterday, briefly mentioning The West Shore before realizing that I had the wrong publication. Yesterday’s post was from Canadian Illustrated News.
I will be featuring more from The West Shore in the near future, and I hope to digitize the microfilm of all the British Columbia specific issues, as there are at least half a dozen of them. It was an amazing publication which featured spectacular colour pullout lithographs in many of their issues. I asked the Oregon Historical Society if they had plans to digitize their collection of The West Shore in colour, but as of yet they do not. I believe this is a significant early publication that deserves much more attention. As a teaser, here is the first issue I’ve digitized (September, 1884), which you can conveniently review on your iPad in PDF format.
View of Moody, Dietz, & Nelson’s Saw-mill, at Burrard Inlet, a hand-coloured etching from a photograph by D. Withrow, believed to be published in the West Shore magazine, circa 1884 (I have yet to determine exactly which issue it is from). Oh, correction; this might actually be from Canadian Illustrated News, published in Montreal, Quebec by George Desbarats from 1869 to 1883. The Library and Archives Canada has a picture of this same etching which it dates as 22 June 1872, vol.V, no. 25, 389. The first and last complete issue of Canadian Illustrated News can be viewed online here:
This hand-coloured print is from the Vancouver Archives documentary art collection.
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!
“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.
From an article written by Eric Sommer in The Georgia Straight, published by the Vancouver Free Press, February 14-27, 1969. These sketches show something of a comeback for the Vancouver freeway Project 200 that never was. One ambitious firm thought they would try their hand at ‘hiding’ the freeway underground, or perhaps partially underground. Needless to say, I don’t believe this went anywhere, as it no doubt would have been vulnerable to enormous cost overruns while offering very little benefit to the city.
I’m sorry the pictures are such poor quality here. It would be nice to visit the UBC Archives to see the original article in person; perhaps one day I will get the chance. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
City Council will soon consider plans for a new Vancouver freeway that could almost be called a non-freeway.
The new concept is not an ugly concrete span scarring the city skyline; it is not a roaring thunderway through downtown Vancouver; it would not interfere with pedestrian traffic; and it would leave Chinatown intact.
The new concept is explained in a report commissioned by the National Harbors Board and prepared by the local engineering firm of Swan-Wooster and CBA. Although not due for presentation to City Council until early in March, the STRAIGHT has managed to obtain an advance copy of the report.
This report originated as an attempt to find a replacement for the great elevated freeway scheme that collapsed last year under tons of criticism from Vancouver residents. The defeated scheme would have cut a wide swath through Chinatown, introduced true multi-lane ugliness to Vancouver, and might well have initiated the Los Angelization of the city…
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.
Cover of Edith Adam’s Wartime Cook Book, 1943, from the Vancouver Sun (digitally enhanced). The cover art is by Fraser Wilson, who drew comics for the Vancouver Sun and the Daily Province until 1947. This quote from the publication Youth, Unions, and You:
Wilson was born in 1905, in Vancouver. A gifted cartoonist, he sold his first published illustration to a national magazine at the age of twelve. In his early life he painted ships in Wallace’s Shipyards, ran a candy store, did carpentry, developed photos, worked as a painter and decorator, and laboured in a shipyard. It was due to a work-related injury in the yard that he pursued commercial cartooning as a career. At the peak of his political cartooning reputation, he was a favoured artist in both Vancouver dailies, the Vancouver Sun and the Province.
Back to this wonderfully ambitious and optimistic guide to better wartime cooking, the publication was mentioned here in the October 2009 issue of the North Vancouver Museum and Archives paper, Express. The cover indicates this was the 9th annual issue of the cookbook, but fails to mention that Edith Adams was, in fact, a pseudonym! Actually, most folks may well have known that; the recipes in these books were prize winning entries submitted by Vancouver Sun readers, as mentioned in the book Culinary landmarks: a bibliography of Canadian cookbooks, 1825-1949 by Elizabeth Driver. A quote from the introduction of this book notes:
From 1947, Edith Adams even had her own ‘cottage’ adjacent to the newspaper’s building, where Vancouver residents would flock to see Marianne Linnell as ‘Edith’ demonstrate recipes.
If you want to see more of these books, you can seek out the Edith Adams Omnibus, a reprint from 2005 with more than 1000 recipes, compiling the first thirteen of these famed cook books and updated for today’s standards of cooking.
Happy 100th Birthday, Vancouver Sun!
Addendum by pasttensevancouver:
Fraser Wilson is the artist who painted the proletarian mural inside the Maritime Labour Centre. It was moved there from its original location at Pender Hall.
