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 [...]

This morning it was announced that Sears was closing its downtown Vancouver location, along with others in Calgary and Ottawa, by October 31st [News1130]. While rumours are flying about what will move into the Pacific Centre Sears spot, which they took over from Eaton’s back in 1999, my immediately reaction was that now we can [...]

Painted on the sides of brick buildings that lined Hastings and other downtown thoroughfares that have existed for the better part of the last century, there was obviously a time when Vancouver’s ghost signs were just signs. Thanks to the Vancouver Archives, here’s a quick look at these painted adverts in their heyday. 1917 – [...]

On Wednesday I captured the progress of the demolition of two buildings at Robson and Granville which revealed a “ghost sign” on the side of the Charlie’s Music building. Immediately Jason Vanderhill and Robert White pointed out on Twitter that this was indeed a ghost sign – the shadow of an old painted advertisement. With [...]

Art Deco Chic, the latest exhibit from the Museum of Vancouver, opens March 7, 2012 and I am currently doing a ticket giveaway for opening night. In conjunction with this, I thought it would be fun to browse the Vancouver Archives and preview some historic style from Vancouver’s earlier years. (Left) 1916 – BC Sugar [...]

Flipping through the pages of Chuck Davis’ History of Metropolitan Vancouver I came across an image of a man with a mop standing on top of the Challenger Relief Map. Created by George Challenger, to this day it’s the largest map of its kind in the world. Since his arrival in British Columbia in 1896 [...]