The Waldorf Hotel, a work in gauche, ink, and arcylic on paper submitted by Natasha Shubaly. Thanks Natasha!
Lions Gate Bridge, a souvenir tin by Gray and Dunn, Biscuit Manufacturers established 1853 in Scotland. Except it’s Lions Gate, not Lion’s Gate. North Vancouver Museum has a great specimen of this tin as well. Text from the McCord Museum:
Since the Lions Gate Bridge was a powerful source of civic pride, its image was quickly co-opted to sell products. The artist who created the scene on this biscuit tin was almost certainly based in Great Britain, where the tin was manufactured. Interestingly, he saw fit to imbue the relative wilderness of Stanley Park with bucolic touches, exaggerating the low fence and pasture scene to the right of the bridge’s entrance. This employment of artistic licence probably sprang from attitudes in the motherland towards its rough imperial outposts, as Vancouver was still viewed in the 1930s. The name of the Lions Gate Bridge also reflects this colonial heritage. Although there is a double-humped mountain called The Lions on Vancouver’s north shore (not actually visible from the bridge deck), the name also refers to the lion symbolizing the British Empire.
- What
This biscuit tin from Scotland was produced for the Canadian export market. Ongoing immigration from the United Kingdom meant especially strong sales in British Columbia.
- Where
Foodstuff tins of this era made widespread use of landmark images. It is not surprising that the longest bridge in the British Empire was soon reproduced in this way.
- When
While this tin was manufactured in the early 1950s, the lid’s painting is based upon a 1939 photograph by Leonard Frank. Embellishments include the cars, scenery and a modern vessel…
There are lots of other similar vintage cookie tins from Gray and Dunn; they really had the market cornered! However, the factory has been shut down for more than 10 years now. It looks like the Kinning Park site in Glasgow has been listed for sale since September, 2011. Here’s a video of the facility from January, 2012; it’s a bit spooky without any biscuits!
Empress of Japan II leaving Vancouver by Ronald Threlkeld Jackson (1902 - 1992), an oil painting from 1935. As I mentioned before, Ron Jackson also did commercial illustration work for the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Tourist Association. This painting was sold by Heffel Fine Art Auction House on May 10, 2000 for $10,925, well over the estimate of $6,000 - 8,000 CAD, showing romantic steamships and cityscapes can come at a premium!
Celebrating BOMA’s 100th Anniversary in 2011, by Barb Wood. Last month Barb Wood celebrated her 30th year in the illustration business; she blogged about the occasion here, where she posted a few celebratory images from her portfolio.
Goad’s atlas of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia and surrounding municipalities in four volumes from 1912. Fire insurance maps are great; I’m posting it here primarily for the typography, but the maps are great too! From Collections Canada, which has volume one (Kits) and two (Grandview) posted out of four. Via Michael Kluckner’s recent blog post at grandviewheritage.blogspot.com.
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.
An ink on paper drawing submitted by Louise Phillips dating back to November 30th, 2005. Louise writes:
I thought of this drawing today, a few years after it was made, but the map of Vancouver and my impression of Richmond remain true to the time of its making.
The drawing is in ink on the cover of an environmentally friendly notebook found on sale in a Steveston shop. I was newly arrived from Toronto and experiencing a strange kind of culture shock. Drawing and writing were a guarantee of sanity.
Perhaps it is timely in this year, 2012 - the Queen’s Jubilee Year, to look back at the past!
Thanks Louise!
Another Vancouver harbour scene by artist Walter J. Phillips, this time in colour, and from 1933, showing a mountainous background, cargo ship docked at grain elevator, and workers on the dock. The above watercolour sold at auction for $38,000, according to this Winnipeg auction house website (image is slightly cropped, and colours may be a bit off; the tweaked image comes from the aforementioned webpage).
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!
A Vancouver harbour scene from 1941 by W. J. Phillips, showing workers loading / unloading ships on the Vancouver dock. This watercolour is printed on page 187 of the book Canada, The Foundations of its Future by Stephen Leacock. It would be nice to see this in colour, so if anyone knows where this painting is, let me know!
Walter J. Phillips (Walter Joseph, ASA, RCA, CSPWC - 1884-1963) was a celebrated Manitoba artist who on occasion, painted in British Columbia.
Militant Moms of Raymur, Wednesday 6 January 1971
Concerned for the safety of their children, mothers from the Raymur Housing project in Strathcona lobbied to have a pedestrian overpass built so their children wouldn’t have to cross busy train tracks to get to Seymour Elementary School. After getting nowhere with the City and rail companies, the moms set up an encampment on the tracks and blocked rail traffic to the waterfront. To resolve the issue, the City was forced to build the Keefer Street overpass. For more on this story, check out Viaduct.
As far as I know, this image originally appeared in Open Road, an anarchist newspaper published in Vancouver from the late 1970s to the mid-80s.
Source: Only (A) Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology, via GraveWisdom
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.
I should have known that! The Maritime Labour Centre mural has been on my todo list forever!
Greer House, a sketch by a grade 7 student at Lord Selkirk Elementary School. Thanks again for your submissions, Sid!
Images of Vancouver, an Ian McLeod poster, one of a series of vintage Vancouver posters offered on ebay, three of which I have already featured here at Illustrated Vancouver.
