Panorama Shot of the NE and SE corners of Franklin and Woodland

City of Vancouver Archives Photo Pan N144

I am in the midst of preparing for a walking tour of Strathcona, north of Hastings Street. This is a fundraiser for Heritage Vancouver Society and starts at 10pm Saturday, August 14th. I was doing a search of the City of Vancouver Archives photos page when I came across this stunning panorama shot of the corner of Albert Street (now Franklin) and Woodland Drive.

Though technically outside the area my tour is concerned with, I was elated to find some information on a streetscape I have been interested in for a long time. Some of you know that I work part time at The Gourmet Warehouse at 1340 East Hastings. I actually began working at The Gourmet Warehouse back in 2002 after the repercussions of September 11th lost me my consulting contract with JTB International (Canada) Ltd., a Japanese travel company I had been working for in various capacities since 1983.

Eight years ago, The Gourmet Warehouse was located off the back alley behind Continental Importers at 1856 Pandora. For about three years I would walk to work taking various routes but would often follow Franklin Street east to Salsbury Drive, then north on Salsbury to the alley and then on to work. There are a number of interesting old houses and buildings along the route including a great old house built on a foundation of concrete bricks that look like stones... and there are some great old apartment blocks along Franklin and Woodland, some which you can see in this picture. I never knew before today that they were the Ontario Apartments.

Today, the Ontario Apartments on the SE corner of Franklin and Woodland Drive stands mostly empty. There are a number of ground level units being used as studio spaces, and a small business or two, but most of the building looks derelict.

Little did I know until I saw this picture, what a vibrant streetscape it once had. I have not done any research into any of the buildings yet, but the Buddhist Church looks like it might have been a Christian Church at one time, but who knows. I seem to remember that at some time in the early 1900s that the city attempted to move Chinatown to Albert Street (today's Franklin Street). A quick look at the 1914 city directory shows that around the time of World War I at least, these blocks of Albert Street were mostly occupied by Chinese businesses. I just looked back a little further at it would seem that the Buddhist Temple was in fact built as such, and was not a Christian Church. From what I can tell from the directories I looked at, it would seem that the neighbourhood transitioned to a mostly Chinese neighbourhood around 1913 or so.

Anyway, a whole new world opened up to me when I found this picture. I hope I can devote some time to doing some more research in the area.

But now I best get back to work. There is still lots to research to do for my upcoming tour of Strathcona North of Hastings. I understand there are still some spaces left. For those of you who are interested, you can buy tickets by paypal online via the Heritage Vancouver website.

Later that afternoon, I will be doing another one of my East End History Walks. This one starts at 2pm at 696 East Hastings Street. I hope to see some of you on Saturday, be it in the morning or the afternoon. Thanks for following my blog. For the latest news on my house history projects, walking tours or speaking engagements, follow me on Twitter. Or, you can always come down and talk to me at the Gourmet Warehouse on Sundays between 11 and 5. Cheers!

93 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK IN THE EAST END - AN INFAMOUS SHOOT OUT

This Saturday marks the 93rd anniversary of a shooting that took place not far from where I live. On the evening of March 20, 1917,  for over four hours, a large squad of Vancouver City Police officers led by their PEI-born Chief, Malcolm MacLennan traded shots with an American-born Black man named Bob Tait. In the course of the gun battle Chief Malcolm MacLennan, as well as an eight year old boy named George Robb, was killed.

To quote the front page article describing the event in the March 21st Daily World Newspaper, "Some four hours after the opening scenes of the tragedy, Tait who had held the entire force at bay for that time, put the climax to the most terrible 'gun' affray in the annals of crime in Vancouver by blowing his brains out with a shotgun." The lurid headlines of the four city papers, the Vancouver Sun, the Daily News Advertiser, the Vancouver Daily World, and the Vancouver Province verged on the hysterical. (Remember you can enlarge the images by clicking on them).

The tragic event and the subsequent trial of Bob Tait's girlfriend Frankie Russell--who miraculously survived the firefight--were a newspaper seller's dream. The sensationalism and overt racism of the articles may surprize some, but remember this was a Vancouver in the throes of the Great War... a city that only seven years prior had a mob of thousands of its upstanding white citizens rampage through Vancouver's Chinatown and attempt to attack Japantown. Seven years after that riot A Japanese coal carrier, the Komagata Maru, with 376 Indian would-be immigrants aboard was refused permission to dock and after months of tense standoff was later forced to return to Asia with its frustrated human cargo.

The following are articles from the March 21st edition of the Vancouver Daily World.

This event was of course a convergance of many different stories... The newspapers were filled with articles extolling the virtues of Chief Malcolm MacLennan, who from all accounts was a rather remarkable human being...  and stories about the little eight year old boy, Greg Robb, the "innocent victim of blood lust of Negro" as the following article put it. Needless to say this tragedy was a great blow and had terrible repercussions for Vancouver's Black Community. By the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan were active in Vancouver and were headquartered in Glen Brae, the Shaughnessy Mansion which now houses the Canuck Place Children's Hospice. At the time, Vancouver membership in the Klan was rumoured to be in the thousands.

This event caught--one could almost say 'hijacked'--the imagination of Vancouver's white population, those living outside of the East End anyway, and cemented in the minds of white West Side Vancouver the image of the East End as a dark, drug-ridden, dangerous place.

In all the articles in the books I read about this event, the story was always told from this perspective... from the outside... it was black and white... The tragedy was that of the death of the heroic police chief, killed in the line of duty, and the death of an innocent eight year-old boy, killed while crossing the street to buy candy... 

Until recently, no one bothered to examine the story from the other perspective, those of Bob Tait and Frankie Russell, until recently. Here is a link to a fascinating essay by Vancouver historian Lani Russwurm.

http://pasttensevancouver.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/what-frankie-said/ I hope you will take the time to read it and to delve into his many other postings on his blog http://pasttensevancouver.wordpress.com/

This Saturday is the 93rd Anniversary of the shoot out between Bob Tait and the Vancouver City Police in the 500 block of East Georgia. I realized this two weeks ago when I was doing another of my East End Tours. 

To mark this anniversary, I will be escorting two 2-hour East End History Walking Tours this Saturday: one at 10am and the other at 2pm, both departing from the Heatley Block (696 East Hastings).

Besides my usual binder of archival photos, I will have copies of the newspaper articles shown in this blog and articles from three other newspapers of the day. I will focus on the Vancouver and the East End of 1917.

People interested in coming on the tour are encouraged to e-mail me at househistorian@yahoo.ca to reserve a spot, or just turn up at the Heatley Block at the appointed times. The tour is $15.00 per person. Help from those who have pull in the weather department would be very much appreciated.

      

Panorama Shot of Nelson Street in 1908

I am in the midst of doing research for my upcoming West End History Walking Tour. I have the route all mapped out. If everything goes well I will have a tour set up that will start from the Listel Hotel Vancouver in the morning and arrive at the Sylvia Hotel around noon. Then around 2pm I will take another group from the Sylvia Hotel, zigzag through the West End and end up at the Listel Hotel Vancouver. Not quite sure how often I will be offering these... all those details still need to be worked out, but I am really excited about it.

Just like my East End History Walking Tours, I plan to have a binder of archival photos with me so people can see exactly how certain sections of the streets they are walking on looked 100 years ago.

To that end, I have been searching through the City of Vancouver Archives and Vancouver Public Library Special Collections database for photos of the West End. I found lots of great photos, but my heart almost stopped when I came across this one. This is City of Vancouver Archives photo PAN P103, taken in 1908. The photographer is unknown. Wow! (Remember to click on the photo to enlarge it).

This panoramic view shows 2075 Nelson Street, 2045 Nelson Street, 2001 Nelson Street, 2040 Nelson Street, 2000 Nelson Street, 1966 Nelson Street and 901 Chilco Street, 2010 Barclay Street and 2005 Comox Street in the background. I don't know anything about the houses yet. My tour doesn't even take in this section of Nelson Street... It's all very different now.

This is the neighbourhood that Vancouver's elite abandoned for Shaughnessy Heights about three to four years later. These large houses were converted to rooming houses, and later demolished to make way for apartments and highrises...  

821 Keefer - The House That Harvie Built

You never know what you are going to find when you embark on the wonderful journey of house history research. Every house has a story. Some have secrets. And some, when you do the work, provide you with treasure of sorts.

A while back, some good friends of mine moved into the little red house at 821 Keefer Street. It was a charming little house with a nice back yard, with plenty of potential for a garden. My friends had plans to convert part of the main floor into a studio; one of them was an artist.

To help celebrate their move, I undertook a study of the history of their old house and gave it took them as a housewarming gift. There were about ten houses included in the study. Later, there was an opportunity to be interviewed about my work by the Vancouver Courier and I asked a number of clients and house history recipients if they would mind being interviewed. My artist friend was one of those who said yes.

Some weeks after the Courier article came out, my friend was contacted by Norah M., the great niece of Harvie Robertson, the carpenter who built the house. I was thrilled to know that there was family still around and asked my friend to ask if there might be any photos of the builder and his family. Norah very kindly invited me over to her home on the North Shore. There she showed me a number of photos of the builder and his strikingly beautiful wife, Hattie. She even showed me pictures of Harvie’s old carpentry tools. Her brother owned them. Norah and I talked about how those tools might have actually been used by Harvie to build his house at 821 Keefer.

Over the next weeks Norah was able to send me scans of the photos I had seen, and here’s the treasure part I alluded to earlier. Norah told me that her brother was not attached to the tools in the photo and that he had expressed interest in selling them, possibly at a garage sale. He heart leapt in my throat. I croaked, “How much does he want for them? I am interested if I can afford them.” Long story short, a few weeks later, I was the very proud and awed owner of a set of beautifully made hand-crafted carpenter’s planes of a variety of sizes.

I treasure these tools. They are a tangible link to the pioneer folk who built my neighbourhood. Over the years clients have given me an antique whiskey bottle found under the floors of a miner’s cabin on the 800-block of Dunlevy. I was even given a cleaver and a nasty looking tool with many nails sticking out of it used by Chinese butchers to move pig carcasses hanging on tracks downstairs at a sausage factory on the 700 block of East Pender. But Harvie’s tools will always have a special place in my heart.

Over the last month or so, I have guided a number of history walking tours through my neighbourhood, Vancouver’s old East End. And whenever the tour stops in front of 821 Keefer, I take out the two largest of Harvie’s planes and show them to the group. I think Harvie would be pleased with the looks of awe and admiration his tools receive from the people on the tour. I know I am.

An Overview of the History of 821 Keefer.
Ontario-born carpenter Harvie Robertson built 821 Keefer in 1900 shortly after he moved to Vancouver from Ontario via the United States in. He built the house without a proper cement foundation. Like many house builders in the neighbourhood at the time, he laid out logs in a row on the ground, trimmed them, and built the house on top of them.
The 1901 Canada census indicates that Harvie made $600.00 a year working as a carpenter. Prior to that he had owned a business in the unit block of East Cordova Street where he and his partner sold tents and awnings to prospectors leaving for the Klondyke Gold Rush. (See photo above). By the time Harvie got around to building his Keefer Street home most of the lots in the immediate vicinity had already been developed. The occupants of the neighbouring houses were mostly British or Canadian born, but included a sprinkling of Newfoundlanders, Americans, and a bit later, some Scandinavians.

In 1910, a Japanese family moved in to 828 Keefer, across the street, and in 1911 a Russian family moved into 800 Keefer. The first Italian family to move in to the immediate neighbourhood arrived in 1915. It’s interesting to see that even in the boom years of 1908 through 1910 that the house next door at 827 Keefer stood empty for a full three years.

Harvie and his wife Hattie continued to live at 821 Keefer until 1912, when a single woman named Mary Ann Trainor moved into the house. Mary Ann Trainor was originally from Ireland. She only lived at 821 Keefer for a year or so. Municipal laborer John A. McLeod followed her in 1914. Then in 1915, the family of metalworker Alex Robertson moved in—Alex was in the army at the time—and lived there until 1918.

During the war years the demographics of the neighbourhood began to change. Maronite Catholic Arabs from the former Ottoman Empire, Ukrainians from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russian Jews mix in with the resident Scots, Irish and English. By the early 1920s a few Chinese families make their appearance. Victoria-born vegetable vendor Gow Yuen, who eventually ends up living in 821 Keefer from the late 1920s lives at 828 Keefer in 1921 and in 800 Keefer in 1923. The house that existed at 526 Hawks was listed as vacant from 1918 to 1920, and then seems to have been demolished around 1921.

In 1920, Scottish-born Vancouver School Board Assistant Attendance Officer Andrew Borland and his wife Annie move to 821 Keefer and live there until 1926. From 1927 on, the house is home to a Chinese family, possibly that of aforementioned vegetable salesman, Gow Yuen, who is officially listed from 1935. Although Gow and his wife Rose are officially listed as living at 821 Keefer from 1935 to 1945, they may have lived there from earlier on.

With the late 1920s came another shift in the demographics of the immediate neighbourhood with more Chinese, Jewish, Ukrainian, Yugoslav, and Italian families moving to Keefer Street. It is unfortunate that the information gathering customs of the time prevented the city directories from listing the name of the Chinese family that lived there from 1927 to 1934.

The immediate neighbourhood of 821 Keefer remained a pretty interesting social and cultural mix through the 1940s. Chinese, Jews, Italians, Poles, Croats, Swedes, Scots and Germans lived side by side. In 1946, the Wong family took over 821 Keefer from the Yuen family. Although Mrs. Kim Chow Wong is the only person listed, one can be sure that the house was home to a larger family. Perhaps a more careful checking of the Wong listings for each year will turn up more family information. The same year the Wongs moved in, the vacant lot on the Northeast corner of Keefer and Hawks became the site of the Western Cartage Company. It was the Western Cartage building that eventually became the better-remembered Koo’s Garage.

Even during the 1950s this section of the block maintained its social and cultural mix. During the mid-1950s a Japanese family moved into 827 Keefer and some Chinese families moved into 812, and 817. For a number of years 817 Keefer was home to the Priest serving the Good Shepherd Anglican Chinese Mission on the 700-block of Keefer.

There were changes though. 1955 saw the closing of the corner Montreal Bakery. Its old owners, the Zanon family continued to live at 800 Keefer and operated a corner grocery at the front of the house. In 1956, Austrian-born Willy Taferner opened Willy’s Bakery at the back of 800 Keefer.

While the sixties brought major disruption to other parts of the old East End, this section of Keefer enjoyed a period of stability. A number of newer Chinese families moved in but they stayed long term. Willy’s Bakery at 800 Keefer closed in 1967 and was succeeded by a series of food companies then was turned into suites in 1974. At 821 Keefer the Yuen family was followed by the Sam family, then by the Ng’s and then the Wu family. The city directories list Kam Lun Lum at 821 Keefer from 1971 to 1992.

In 1970 Western Cartage’s premises were taken over by Dave’s Auto Repairs. In 1973 Gordon Koo took over and ran Koo’s Automotive at 803 Keefer from 1973 up until the recent turn of the century.

After the Lum family moved away in 1992 it looks like the house at 821 Keefer was subdivided into smaller suites. This may have actually happened earlier, but the 1993 directory shows that there were at least four tenants in the house.

The 1990s brought new changes to the neighbourhood. The original commercial spaces at 800 Keefer were transformed into the Paneficio artists’ studios. One of the neighbourhood artists sharing studio space at Paneficio dreamed of having a studio of her very own—a studio that was spacious, art inspiring, garden surrounded, peaceful, and most importantly, her own…

In Memory of Diana Kemble

History Walking Tours in Vancouver's Old East End

Some months back I was approached by Heritage Vancouver Society, to do a history walking tour of my neighbourhood, Vancouver's old East End, now known as Strathcona. Though I have researched hundreds of houses in the neighbourhood and have a background in tourism, at first I resisted. There were already a number of people and organizations offering tours in the neighbourhood: John Atkin, author of a number of great books, including Strathcona: Vancouver's First Neighbourhood, the UBC Department of Urban Geography, the Architectural Insitute of BC, the BC Jewish Museum and Archives, and even the Vancouver Police Museum. Ultimately, I realized that all of these people and groups have a different focus, and each of them show and talk about different aspects of this fascinating neighbourhood.

My route, first offered on August 15th to an oversold crowd of 44 people is the culmination of years of researching over 250 homes in the East End. Although architecture is a minor theme in the tour, my focus is more on the social history—the ebb and flow of different waves of immigrants who established themselves here before moving on to other parts of the city. Most people know about Little Italy, Hogan’s Alley, the East End’s early Jewish Community, and Japantown, but did you know that there were whole blocks of Newfoundlanders and a sizable Syrian colony here as well in the early 1900s?

The tour touches on the impact and influences of portside industries (BC Sugar, shipyards, etc.) prohibition, (the proliferation of bootlegging), the Oriental Exclusion Act (bachelor rooming houses, etc.), the Japanese Canadian internment, as well as the City Planning Department’s attempts to wipe out “urban blight”. It also gives participants the chance to see the locations of the previous homes of well-known East End residents, like pioneer female aviator Tosca Trasolini, premier Dave Barrett, champion boxers Jimmy McLarnin and Felice Di Palma (Di Palma boxed under the name Phil Palmer), Rabbi Nathan Meyer Pastinsky, award-winning authors Paul Yee and Wayson Choy, Ross and Nora Hendrix (Jimi’s grandparents), community activists Mary Lee Chan and Shirley Chan, and BC Supreme Court Judge, community leader Angelo Branca, and k.d. lang.

Even with 250 houses under my belt there is still so much I don't know and want to know about my neighbourhood. In an attempt to better prepare for a second set of tours offered on September 5th to two smaller groups I looked up some houses on a street I was researching in the census records and stumbled on a second house with a Hendrix family connection. Ross and Nora Hendrix don't actually appear in the directory listings for the year the census was taken so no one knew about this Hendrix house before. I introduced the house as a special surprise treat at the end of my tour.

I happen to know the owners of the house, and when I e-mailed them to let them know the exciting news, they were of course delighted, but more importantly, they told me another important pice of history associated with the house. The same house that the Hendrix family lived in earlier in the century was home to Charles Yip Quong and Nellie Towers, the first mixed Chinese/Caucasian married couple in Vancouver. Apparently Nellie was a well-known and much loved midwife in the neighbourhood. Here is a link to a Parks Canada page on Nellie Yip Quong.
http://www.pc.gc.ca/culture/ppa-ahp/itm3-/page02_e.asp

So there you have it. Piece by piece, this neighbourhood's lost history gets revealed and shared by happenstance and amazing coincidences. And I am sure that there is so much more to discover.

For information about my upcoming History Walks in Vancouver click this link.

Private tours are also available in English, Japanese and Italian for groups of 5 people or more, or a minimum cost of $100 per tour for groups of smaller size. For more information on my History Walks or to book a tour, e-mail me at historywalks@gmail.com.

Cost $20

Thanks to Lucille Mars, Gary McDonald, Emidio De Julius, and Norah McLaren respectively for the first, second, third and fifth photos above. The fourth photo is City of Vancouver Archives Photo Port N3.1 showing two portraits of Hogan's Alley resident Field William Spotts.