Grouse Mountain is as much a summer playground as it is a snowy winter destination. The Grouse Grind tests endurance, performances at the peak entertain, ziplines thrill, the resident grizzly bears awake from their cold season slumber, and the views of the South Coast mesmerize. For today’s roundup of photos from the Vancouver Archives, I [...]

I was having a hard time figuring out what I would feature this week from the Vancouver Archives and Vancouver Library until I stepped onto my balcony. The thermometer is rising past 15 degrees, flip flops are out in full force, and there’s only one thing that’s coming to my mind this afternoon: ice cream. [...]

Playland is opening for 2012 this weekend so a look through the City of Vancouver Archives to find old amusement park photos seemed in order. 1939 – Fair rides. Archives item# CVA 99 – 3131. Photographer: Stuart Thomson. 1936 – Canadian Pacific Exhibition. Archives item# CVA 260-503. Photographer: James Crookall. 1936 – Children’s rides. Archives [...]

99 years ago, on April 17, 1913, Athletic Park was dedicated on Hemlock and West 6th. 1915 – Opening Day vs Victoria by the City of Vancouver Archives on Flickr. Archives item# PAN N14B. Photographer: WJ Moore. Chuck Davis writes: “The park was built by Bob Brown, who would come to be known as Mr. [...]

I love stepping under the canopy of Stanley Park‘s forest trails, detouring from the concrete paths of the Sea Wall and surrounding thoroughfares. A few years ago I profiled the origins of several Stanley Park Trail Names including Merilees, Rawlings, Tatlow, Thompson, and Tisdall. Tourism Vancouver recently launched their ultimate guide to Stanley Park (useful [...]

Look at an image of Vancouver before the 1990s and you’ll notice a very different landscape. Apartment towers have sprouted up at a rate of 3,000 units per year, which is 1,000 more annually than twenty years ago. Moving away from brick and stone, transforming into a city of glass. Apartment-dwellers outnumber those in row [...]

Vancouver is only going on 126 years old but despite its infancy compared to most other world-class cities, it had a community that supported the arts right off the bat. I dug around the Vancouver Archives to find evidence of everything from Vancouver’s vibrant vaudeville days to its fanatical film-going culture, in neighbourhood theatres to [...]

It was on March 10th 1870 the settlement know locally as Gastown was given its official name: Granville Townsite. Lord Granville was the Colonial Secretary at the time and the Granville Townsite was selected as the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway. It wasn’t until 1886 that the townsite was renamed, when it incorporated, as [...]