Summaries of Talks and Field Trips - 2024
Glimpses of the Past through description, related books and internet connections
You've Got Trouble!"
The waterfront. The word conjures images of pleasure ships, dangerous dark alleys, ferryboat daytrips, crime, grime, and rats. In Vancouver – a globally oriented port town since colonists first arrived – it has always been the economic heart and the cancerous soul of the city. A place where fortunes were built and immigrants monitored if not barred, the docks were also where generations of Vancouverites in their thousands found work … legitimate and otherwise.
Madison Heslop has been studying waterfronts of the Pacific Northwest not as separate and isolated, but as connected by water, money, and people.
She uses the case of a 1913 murder to map out the social geography of the urban waterfront and break down how
the city’s colonial history and institutions shaped the lives of ordinary people working and living there
Incorporation Day Luncheon
Apr. 07, 2024 VC Michael Kluckner
The Vancouver Historical Society co-hosted with the Vancouver Club this very special event to mark Vancouver’s 138th birthday.
It included a tour of the 1914 Sharp & Thompson building, an illustrated talk by writer/historian/artist Michael Kluckner on the history of the club and its neighbourhood and the kind of society Vancouver was at its founding in 1891, five years after the City itself incorporated. This was followed by a delicious lunch in the beautiful Vancouver Club Ballroom.
“Little Othoa”: The Gleam O’Hope Princess and the founding of the Vancouver Crippled Children’s Hospital
Othoa Scott got a rough start in life. An accidental fall and spinal tuberculosis left her bed-ridden and isolated at the age of eight years. Relentless advocating by her stepmother mobilized the Women’s Institutes of BC and thus sowed the seeds of the Crippled Children’s Hospital in Vancouver and the Queen Alexandra Solarium for Crippled Children on Vancouver Island.
This presentation told the tale of Othoa’s voyage from Hornby Island shut-in to the cheerful face of disability: the “Gleam O’ Hope Princess.”
This is a story which brings together the BC Women’s Institutes, the Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver’s Crippled Children’s Hospital and the Queen Alexandra Solarium for Crippled Children on Vancouver Island. Othoa, the “Gleam O’ Hope Princess,” connects them all.
The two presenters brought their combined expertise to bear on Othoa’s story. Tamara Myers specializes in histories of childhood. She has published extensively on the historic plight of children in vulnerable circumstances.
Megan Davies last presented to the VHS in May 2021. Her topic “A Mad Moment in Vancouver’s History” was one of the first delivered via Zoom in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
Lost Streams of Still Creek
Heritage activist and community historian Laura Saimoto gave a lecture and lead a discussion on the History of the Rupert-Renfrew neighbourhood of East Vancouver, a new district boundary that merges part of the Renfrew-Collingwood and Hastings-Sunrise areas.
This fascinating look at a working-class corner of Vancouver explored its natural features including Still Creek, and the postwar subdivision officially known as Renfrew Heights but remembered as “Diaper Hill.”
It was a deep dive into the rich layers of an area which reveal a rich history woven by the culture of waves of immigrants who built over the now “Lost Streams of Still Creek.”
From its densely forested begin-nings, laced with creeks and marshes, to a working-class suburb called Hastings Townsite, home to the fist intentional 600 unit subsidized federal housing projects in Vancouver built for returning veterans, the area tells the largely unknown story of how Vancouver grew as a city.
Humble Roots, Deep Roots: A Look at a Quintessential Chinese Canadian Family
Elwin Xie’s presentation included government-created family documents: the CI 44 mandatory registration of 1923 as well as CI 30 Travel Documents and CI 45 for locally born Chinese Children. There were two short videos: a family genealogical video and his very funny shadow puppets video of life at the laundry.
Elwin grew up in a laundry on Union Street, on the edge of Chinatown, and is a museum guide at the Chinese Canadian Museum and has worked as a museum interpreter at the Burnaby Village Museum since 2009. He is also the familiar face at our lectures, recording them and crafting them into the finished videos on our YouTube channel.
Defying Convention: the life of Helen Gregory MacGill
In Helen Gregory MacGill (1864-1947), Ontario’s elite produced a New Woman who startled contemporaries. A pioneering co-ed at the University of Toronto and a bohemian journalist, she took a younger man as a husband after a week’s courtship and expressed sympathies with Asian migrants. A feminist in politics and in print, she spotlighted BC’s need for a revolution in the legal rights of women and children and served as a feminist juvenile court judge. Helen challenged expectations forgender and class throughout her influential life and bridged two feminist generations (from her activist mother to her aeronautical engineer daughter, Elsie Gregory MacGill). Although her legal career is often recalled, her passionate, sometimes scandalous, early life and wider efforts as a Vancouver feminist activist are the focus of this evening’s presentation.
A Tour of the Orpheum Theatre
This special tour, arranged by Bill Allman of the Entertainment Hall of Fame, revealed secrets of the theatre’s history. It included a visit to its Wurlitzer organ conducted by Tom Carter, VHS Treasurer, who surprised us with an impromtu performance. [Click on button below to view video]
The Orpheum Theatre was opened in 1927 as a movie theatre palace and vaudeville house. The Orpheum was designed by Seattle-based Scottish architect Benjamin Marcus Priteca in a “conservative Spanish Renaissance” style and financed by Vancouver businessman Joseph Langer for $1.25 million. Following the end of vaudeville’s heyday in the early 1930s, the Orpheum became primarily a movie house under Famous Players’ ownership, although it continued to host live events. In 1973, for economic reasons, Famous Players decided to gut the inside of the Orpheum and convert it into a multiplex. A “Save the Orpheum” public protest and fundraising campaign was launched, and the Orpheum was saved. On March 19, 1974, the City of Vancouver bought the theatre for $7.1 million, with $3.1 million coming from the city itself and $1.5 million from each provincial and federal government. The Orpheum closed on November 23, 1975, and the renovation and restoration was done by the architectural company Thomson, Berwick, Pratt and Partners. It re-opened on April 2, 1977, and has since been the permanent home of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Tony Heinsbergen, a U.S. designer who originally chose the colour scheme for the interior (ivory, moss green, gold and burgundy), was brought back fifty years later for the renovation.
Bill Allman is president of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, owner of Famous Artist Limited and a “recovering Vancouver lawyer”. Having worked as an entertainment lawyer and associate producer on an array of television projects, as well as holding a position as an adjunct professor of law at UBC, Bill has also found time in the last 25 years to be a concert promoter, theatre manager (the Vogue) and president of Vancouver’s legendary Theatre Under the Stars.
Artist Tom Carter, based in Vancouver Canada, is best known for his work exploring sombre and gritty working-class urban environments that reveal glimpses of hope and warmth.
Dressed for History at the MoV: Why Costume Collections Matter
A special tour with curator Ivan Sayers of the costume exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver, concluded with coffee and cookies in the MoV boardroom.
Four local collectors have recognized the importance of preserving costumes to document the past and inspire the future. Ivan Sayers, Claus Jahnke, Melanie Talkington and the members of the BC Society for the Museum of Original Costume (SMOC) are fashion historians with significant collections that feature some of the rarest garments and fabrics in the world.
The Museum of Vancouver has invited these collectors to share their knowledge of costume history by showcasing pieces from their collections. Dressed for History: Why Costume Collections Matter posits that fashion is an enduring expression of personal identity and social change. This exhibition confirms Vancouver as home to world-class costume historians.
Ivan Sayers is a fashion historian who specializes in the study of women’s, men’s, and children’s fashions from 1700 to the present. He has collected period costumes for over 50 years and now has one of the largest and most comprehensive private collections of historical clothing in Canada.