The Sinking of The Greenhill Park is one of my favourite tracks off The Matinee’s latest album We Swore We’d See the Sunrise. It’s a beautiful and haunting song with a very real — and very tragic — event behind its name. An event that took place 69 years ago (tomorrow) in Vancouver’s harbour. March […]

The Academy Awards (Oscars) are taking place on Sunday, March 2, 2014 and when I was browsing the City of Vancouver Archives recently, I found the iconic statuette in a most unusual place: perched outside a building on Burrard and Georgia. Zoomed in. May 1955: Photograph by Walter E. Frost. Archives# CVA 447-330 Oscar’s Steakhouse […]

Over the last few of years I have featured themed collections of photos from the City of Vancouver Archives on my site. However, this month I thought I would change things up a bit and issue a challenge to my readers and local photographers. The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create […]

The Lower Mainland received a healthy dose of snowman-worthy snow over the last few days and although much didn’t stick downtown, I found evidence in the Vancouver Archives that such wasn’t always the case. Downtown Vancouver has definitely seen its share of snow days over the last century: Vancouver Snow Photos 1937: Courthouse (now Vancouver […]

A little while ago I shared a collection of historic/archive photos with the Robson Street Business Association and today they returned the courtesy by sending me this awesome Robson Street Video from 1964. From BC History on YouTube: Robson Street Stores (B&W, sil.) aired on the CBUT (CBC Vancouver) show Town Crier, July 1964. “When […]