pasttensevancouver

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Unpublished draft #2: Here were have an illustrated invoice for Diamond Cabs, owned and operated by Eagle-Time Delivery Co. Ltd., 1019 Seymour Street, and dated 1942. This invoice implies a pretty ritzy lifestyle, with a 1938 Cadillac taxi in front of a cafe/club, complete with uniformed doormen and men in top hats and tails! This particular artifact was found at Antiquarius books, courtesy of Tom Carter. Antiquarius is a great repository of our local history, and although they’ve relocated to Falkland, BC, I’ve purchased numerous bits of obscure ephemera from them. Special thanks to the tireless work of their proprietor, and all independent used book sellers!

You might recognize that 1019 Seymour Street is the address for the Penthouse Night Club, and it was in fact Joe Filippone who started out with a company called Eagle Time Delivery. He then expanded his operation to Diamond Cabs, and eventually, the Penthouse. In fact, MA 2111 also becomes the number of the Penthouse years later, as seen in a program from the Avon Theatre from 1954. More from Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street by Keith McKellar:

Joe Filippone gets The Eagle-Time Delivery service going with bicycles in 1934. He delivers a parcel up to 15 pounds and collects C.O.D.s — all for 8¢. The delivery boy gets 4¢. He buys the house on Seymour Street in 1938 and moves into the upstairs suite. Along with brothers Ross, Jimmy and Mickey, the family opens a supper club, The Steak Loft, in 1941. They serve charcoal-cooked steaks on wooden platters. The delivery service advances to motorcycles with sidecars, and then trucks. Eagle-Time Trucking Company is born. Joe buys Sid Cann’s three-car Diamond Cab Company that works from Birk’s Clock stand up the street…The Filippone’s have, apparently, a lark — a thing about keeping their Diamond Cab drivers in a supply of fresh diamond socks. “I’ll take all the diamond socks you can get…I need them for my drivers…but nothing else!” It’s a class act.

Forbidden Vancouver still offers the occasional tour of the Penthouse; you can check out their website for the latest. And of course, by now you’ve all got your copy of Aaron Chapman’s book Liquor, Lust and the Law published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2013, with a revised edition that came out for the Penthouse’s 70th anniversary in 2017. If you don’t already have a copy, time to call Taxi! Take me to the nearest bookstore!

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Retired Province photographer John Denniston captured this image of Dunlevy Street near Powell in 1974.

Those are wood block pavers and this is what we mean when we say that Vancouver used to be a mill town.

More on wooden cobbles at James Johnstone’s blog: When An Old House Whispers.

[pasttensevancouver]

Isabel Sweeny (1889-1974) was born in Vancouver and, in this audio clip, recalls seeing the Kitsilano First Nation being displaced to Squamish in the earliest years of the 20th century.

Source: Voices of British Columbia: Stories From Our Frontier by Robert Budd

Photo source: BC Archives PNO8924

Public artwork by Digital Natives appears on the electronic billboard beside the Burrard Street Bridge. In 2002, the Squamish Nation regained control of part of its former reserve and in 2009 erected the 21-metre tall sign in defiance of Vancouver bylaws.

Photo by Barbara Cole

Idle No More photo source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Photographer: David P. Ball

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Bill Haley and the Comets, 28 June 1956

Local experts weigh in on Vancouver’s first rock and roll concert at the Kerrisdale Arena.

Source: Vancouver News-Herald

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Guitar players with the 6th Field Co. Corp of Engineers

Somewhere in Vancouver between 1915 and 1917. I so wonder what they sounded like (though their audience doesn’t look too impressed, or maybe they’re just spellbound). Twangy Hawaiian slide guitar spread in popularity during WWI and was a major influence on both blues (slide guitar) and country (steel guitar) music. Jazz was just becoming popular in 1917, but at that time the banjo was the main string rhythm instrument.

Photo by Stuart Thomson, City of Vancouver Archives #99-735

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Vancouver’s Sherlock Holmes, Wednesday 21 March 1934 

John F.C.B. Vance was a scientist hired by the City of Vancouver in 1905 as an analyst. His early work for the City was pretty mundane, things like testing milk and water quality. But at some point the Vancouver Police started calling on Vance for his scientific expertise, and he was on his way to carving out a niche as a pioneer in police forensics. Before long he was given the honorary title of Police Inspector.

Inspector Vance solved numerous cases in his lab (where the Police Museum is today) using techniques that are now fairly routine, at least on CSI, like ballistics testing and, in at least one case, matching the dust on a suspected yegg’s clothing to dust from a blown safe. Vance was proud to point out that his work more often decisively exonerated suspects who would otherwise have to live under a cloud of suspicion even if they were acquitted in court.

Vance occasionally helped solve cases in other jurisdictions and became a well known expert in the field who was often referred to as a “modern Sherlock Holmes.” His work brought considerable positive publicity to the VPD, though he wasn’t always appreciated by his bosses, who were more concerned with politics than crime fighting in the 1930s. After National Home Monthly Magazine did a feature article on Vance in their September 1935 issue, Chief Constable Foster issued a memo:

In the attached paper is an article upon the work of Inspector Vance.  The publication of such articles by those outside the Department is of course beyond control, but I think it should be generally understood that where reference is made to anything concerning the work of this Department by active members of the Force, approval should first be obtained.

This is not a matter for General Order so much as a little talk on the subject so that the general policy may be understood.

Herbert Darling, a PR savvy RCMP superintendent who was helping the inexperienced Foster restructure the police force, thought Foster’s memo didn’t go nearly far enough. “A General Order should be published,” Darling wrote to Foster,

to the effect that under no circumstances should any person in any way connected with the Vancouver City Police Department give information or material to the press, magazine publishers or broadcasting agencies except on the authority of the Chief Constable.

In the next police budget, Vance was only given $4000 for new equipment instead of the $10,000 he requested. 

One gauge of Inspector Vance’s effectiveness was that six attempts were made on his life in the 30s, including mail bombs, car bombs, and an attacker that threw acid on him.

J.F.C.B. Vance retired in 1942, but he continued working on his longtime pet project of developing a method of criminal identification using scent, based on the idea that everyone emits an odour that is as unique as their fingerprints, but which can’t be easily covered with gloves.

Sources: Image: Drummondville Spokesman; police memos: City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver police fonds, series #197, 75-E-7, file 9; National Home Monthly, September 1935  

[pasttensevancouver]

Stay vigorous at 70, Saturday 22 May 1915.

I googled to see if this was the cereal Kellogg’s, but no, that was JH and WK Kellogg. However they were all in Battle Creek, Michigan, so I imagine FJ is related. FJ Kellogg Co. was nailed for making fraudulent medical claims about its products on more than one occasion.

Source: Vancouver Daily World

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Juke Box

East Hastings Street, 1970s, by Greg Girard, from his book Under Vancouver: 1972-1982 and exhibition showing now at the Monte Clark Gallery.

Source: The Tyee

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Fake news, 14 April 1912

105 years ago today.

Source: Vancouver Daily World, 15 April 1912.

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This guy knows what to do when he sees a camera.

Fader Bros. Sash & Door Manufacturing Co., north side of False Creek, east of Granville Street, ca. 1889.

Source: City of Vancouver Archives #Bu P139 (cropped)

[pasttensevancouver]

Burnt houses, 1000 block West 7th Avenue, Wednesday 14 July 1971

The Fairview Slopes area used to be filled with old wooden houses like this. At the time, a lot of them were being bought up and replaced with low-rise apartment buildings. A number of mysterious fires helped clear the way.

Source: Photo by Ernie H Reksten, City of Vancouver Archives #2010-006.194

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East Hastings looking west from Dunlevy, ca. 1950

Source: City of Richmond Archives #1999 4 3 495

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Beatty Lane, 1921

I wrote a post over at Forbidden Vancouver on some of Vancouver’s more interesting alleys. One of them, Beatty Lane, first came to my attention when I mapped out where black folks lived based on data from the 1911 census. Beatty Lane was between the 500 blocks of Cambie and Beatty streets, but addresses in the lane were the 100 block. 

The most significant address was 534 Cambie Street. This is the only photo I could find of it, captured in a 1921 panorama photo by WJ Moore. The house was the family home of Martha Scurry after her husband Hiram died. They were one of Vancouver’s original black families that were here before the city incorporated. Joe Fortes considered the Scurrys family, and lived with them before he moved into his cabin on English Bay. Martha’s granddaughter, BC Sports Hall of Famer Barbara Howard, passed away this January at the age of 96. Martha’s son, Lige Scurry, was another interesting Vancouver character who also lived at 534 Cambie.  

Beatty Lane disappears from the directories in 1914, and the Scurry/Howard family are gone by 1918. The house was replaced by a two-story office building in 1925 that’s still there. The taller Victorian house to the left of 534 Cambie in the above photo was demolished sometime after 1981. Here’s how it appeared on 27 May 1974: 

By looking at the 1912 Goad’s fire insurance map, it appears that that house was already sandwiched between two brick buildings back then, or perhaps built on top. Looking there today, it seems that the house was knocked down to make one continuous and extremely bland building on the site.

Source: Top photo by WJ Moore (cropped), City of Vancouver Archives #N220B; colour photo: City of Vancouver Archives #778-55 (cropped).

[pasttensevancouver]

The Three Marx Bros. and Company, Saturday 12 August 1911

Source: Vancouver Daily World

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Opium den, Saturday 10 October 1908

This image is was drawn for a horribly racist article in Saturday Sunset magazine, illustrating the the thinking that saw Canada’s first drug law introduced a few months earlier. Essentially, the argument was that the “wily” Chinese used opium to enslave white women. In reality, the drug law banning the retail selling of opium was introduced by Mackenzie King after the Chinese Anti-Opium League in Vancouver lobbied him to do something about the drug traffic and took him on a tour of opium dens and factories in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Linking the Chinese to the drug issue was crucial in vilifying them in the lead up that led to a complete ban of Chinese immigrants in 1923. 

At the time of this article’s publication, Canada’s first drug prosecution was before the courts. Two white women “of the underworld” from Victoria were found in a drug den (perhaps this one) in Market Alley. The Chinese operator was sentenced to twelve months hard labour.

The following is from the accompanying article:

The Saturday Sunset artist has drawn it from the life. Many men and perhaps a few respectable women in Vancouver have witnessed similar scenes in this and other Western cities. The white woman was taken out of the Chinese opium hell in a police raid the night following the artist’s visit. At regular intervals women are taken from these dens by the police. A regular traffic in women is conducted by the Chinese in this city. The Chinese are the most persistent criminals against the person of women and the most inveterate gamblers of any class of people in this country. Their gambling joints ruin more young men than all the other gambling agencies in Vancouver put together. They defy the police and the law. If a negro population were guilty of half the atrocities against white women in a southern city that the Chinese are in this city their warrens would long ago have gone up in smoke and a substantial proportion of them would have been swung up to trees and shot full of holes.

Source: Saturday Sunset, 10 October 1908

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CPR observation car passengers, ca. 1905

Taken at the old Canadian Pacific Railway depot at the foot of Granville Street.

Source: City of Vancouver Archives #371-1045

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Female Opium Fiend, Friday 14 October 1892

Dupont Street was the two blocks of East Pender between Main and Carrall. At the time, it was the city’s red light district.

Source: Vancouver Daily World