The Pier ‘D’ fire of July 27, 1938 was the
largest and most famous of Vancouver’s
many large waterfront fires
Chronology Continued
[1757
- 1884] [1885 - 1891] [1892
- 1899]
[1900 - 1905] [1906
- 1908] [1909] [1910]
[1911] [1912]
[1913] [1914]
[1915] [1916]
[1917] [1918]
[1919] [1920]
[1921] [1922]
[1923] [1924]
[1925] [1926]
[1927] [1928]
[1929] [1930]
[1931] [1932]
[1933] [1934]
[1935] [1936]
[1937] [1938] [1939]
[1940]
[1941] [1942]
[1943] [1944]
[1945] [1946]
[1947] [1948]
[1949] [1950]
[1951] [1952]
[1953] [1954]
[1955] [1956]
[1957] [1958]
[1959] [1960]
[1961] [1962]
[1963] [1964]
[1965]
[1966] [1967]
[1968]
[1969] [1970]
[1971] [1972]
[1973] [1974]
[1975] [1976]
[1977] [1978]
[1979] [1980]
[1981] [1982]
[1983] [1984]
[1985] [1986]
[1987] [1988]
[1989] [1990]
[1991] [1992]
[1993] [1994]
1938
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January 5 Railway executive and former alderman
William Ferriman Salsbury died in Victoria. Salsbury came to Canada
from Surrey, England in 1870. He was a manager of the Grand Trunk
Railway of Canada until 1881, when he joined the CPR. He arrived
locally on July 4, 1886, aboard the first train to Port Moody. He
was, for 35 years (1886-1921) treasurer of the CPR’s Pacific
Division. A prominent Vancouver figure, he served as alderman for
Ward 1 (1893-94). Salsbury was an advocate and a charter board member
of Vancouver General Hospital (1901). A street in Vancouver is named
for him.
January 7 Fogs were more frequent and thicker
in Vancouver in the 1930s and '40s. The Province printed
a cartoon today depicting a lady lost in dense Vancouver fog. The
lady: (peering at a dim figure) “Is this Yew?” A gentleman:
“Your guess is as good as mine, lady, but I think it's me —
how about yourself?”
January 12 Annie Charlotte Dalton, poet, died
in Vancouver, aged 72. She was born December 9, 1865 in Birkby,
Huddersfield, Eng. She arrived in B.C. in 1904 from Huddersfield
with her husband, Willie Dalton. The Dalton home became a meeting
place for writers and readers. She was president of the Vancouver
Poetry Club. Left partially deaf by a childhood illness, Annie Dalton
was known as "The Poet Laureate of the Deaf" for her work
on their behalf. She was made a Member, Order of the British Empire,
in 1935, the only woman poet honored at the time. Her books include
The Marriage of Music; Flame and Adventure and Lilies
and Leopards.
January 28 Broadcaster Bill Phillips was born.
See this
site.
February 12 Businessman Nelson Skalbania was
born.
February 19 A mysterious big bang was heard
in Vancouver. It woke thousands of people, yet no cause was ever
found.
March 10 Carlisle Street (near Renfrew and
Hastings) was named for retired fire chief J.H. Carlisle. Says fire
department historian Alex Matches: “It is one of very few streets
in the city which has no addresses, only the backs of buildings
on adjacent streets.”
April 17 The demolition of the English Bay
pier was completed.
April 18 St. James Anglican Church at Gore
and Cordova was consecrated. It was the Sunday after Easter.
May 2 Vancouver greeted the returning Dominion
Basketball champions.
May 12 Juvenile court judge Helen Gregory
MacGill, the first woman judge in B.C., became the first woman to
receive an honorary LL.D from UBC.
June 12 Bob (Robert Errol) Bouchette, Sun
columnist, died. He wrote the column Lend me your ears. Bouchette
harangued the 1930s establishment to do more about poverty, joblessness
and relief camps. “The champion of the underdog . . . a shining
knight out of time in the harsh world of the Depression.” A
victim of his own depression, he drowned himself off Second Beach.
June 19 It came to be called “Bloody
Sunday.” Vancouver police evicted unemployed men from the Post
Office (now Sinclair Centre). The building had been occupied for
six weeks by 700 unemployed workers, led by Steve Brodie, demanding
federal relief. Rioting by more than 5,000 demonstrators caused
considerable damage. Eventually, the invaders were ousted by police
with clubs and tear gas; 39 people were injured and 22 arrested.
Protesting B.C.'s decision to stop relief payments, groups of unemployed
men also occupied the Art Gallery and Hotel Georgia.
July 1 The 1st Avenue Viaduct opened to traffic.
 July 21 Frederick Buscombe, former mayor,
died, aged 75. He was born September 2, 1862 in Bodmin, England.
“A glassware merchant,” Donna Jean McKinnon writes, “Buscombe
was a resident of the working class neighborhood of Mount Pleasant.
It was a time when neighborhood as well as downtown commercial development
in the city was flourishing. The expansion of streetcar lines to
outlying communities allowed working class families to own homes
while working downtown. Low water pressure in neighborhoods on the
south slopes of False Creek was a hot topic on the campaign trail
in these years and Buscombe left his mark on the city by fostering
the development of The Greater Vancouver Water Board. As the construction
boom escalated, white-skinned workers were in short supply, and
resentment of Asian workers led to ugly incidents of racism. During
Buscombe's second term as mayor, council passed a motion asking
the federal government to suspend the immigration of East Indians
into Canada.”
July 27 Alex Matches, the appropriately named
historian of the Vancouver Fire Department, has written an account
of the largest and most famous of Vancouver’s many large waterfront
fires, the Pier ‘D’ fire of July 27, 1938. Here, with
Alex’s permission, is his account of that event:
The first alarm came in at 1:46 p.m. for a fire at
the northeast corner of the harbour end of the pier. When the first-in
companies arrived it appeared obvious that the pier was doomed,
but hose lines were laid and an offensive attack was taken, but
not for long.
CPR engines working the area removed many boxcars
so firemen could have better access. One engine was seen removing
12 boxcars along the tracks that ran inside the pier. By the time
it got clear, the last two boxcars were on fire.
At 1:50 p.m. the SS Princess Charlotte, preparing
for an Alaskan cruise, was backed away from the pier and escaped
certain destruction.
A second alarm was put in at 1:53, followed by a
third at 1:56. Four minutes later more than half of the pier was
involved and a fourth alarm was called at 2:02 p.m. At this time,
four firemen on hose lines who were fighting the fire from the wharf
deck were forced by the intense heat to jump into the harbour to
save their lives. They were pulled from the water by a tugboat crew.
One of these men was Ralph Jacks, who would later become the department’s
ninth fire chief . . .
At 2:14 the fireboat J.H. Carlisle was ordered
to respond to the fire from False Creek. She would arrive on the
scene at 2:57.
By 2:20 p.m. the last of the many employees attempting
to save papers and records were forced from the building as most
of the pier was now ablaze. Firemen and apparatus were being forced
to move to safety because the fire had now ignited the viaduct leading
to the pier . . .
When No. 12 Hose Wagon, which had responded on the
third alarm, arrived on scene the crew was instructed by the chief’s
driver . . . to lay hose lines up to the front door of the pier.
The lines were laid and soon operating, but it was a fruitless effort
as the fire was now destroying the front of the building. The heat
and smoke forced the fire fighters to abandon their lines, then,
as if it was an act of defiance, the fire allowed the smoke to clear
for a moment around the big PIER D sign and façade. The front
of the building then came crashing down, burying No. 12's hose wagon,
the old 1913 American-LaFrance, under tons of debris.
The driver of the rig, Fireman George Black, was
one day short of 10 years service on the VFD that day. Nobody kidded
the big ex-coal miner when he lost his rig, at least not to his
face, as firemen are wont to do to each other . . .
The fire was ‘struck out’ at 4:52 p.m.,
but for the next four days crews were on the scene overhauling the
site to ensure there was no rekindle . . .
In 1978, one of the nozzles lost in the fire that
day was recovered during dredging operations. Resting on a mass
of melted brass it was still in the ‘open’ position, showing
that whoever was using it had had to drop it and run.”
July 29 QUEEN ANNE SETS OUT TO SEA. That was
the headline on a Province report on Annabelle Mundigel,
“a frequent participant in the Polar Bear swim,” who made
the paper’s Page One with a bold venture: to swim from Vancouver
to Snug Cove, Bowen Island. The 19-year-old Annabelle was “clad
in black trunks and a light woollen, apple-green singlet, well greased,
with ears plugged . . . and slipped off the boat-house float at
English Bay at nine in the morning.” She was not alone on the
17-mile (27-kilometre) swim: her brother Jack, armed with a chart
especially prepared for him by the Union Steamship Company, guided
her to the best currents, and her parents were in another boat.
The time of the swim: 7 hours, 15 minutes. Her nourishment: one
chocolate bar. What that 1938 story didn’t reveal, and what
Ann Mundigel (who became Mrs. Ann Meraw of Maple Ridge) told us
a few years ago, was that a few metres off shore she tugged off
her swimsuit, handed it to her mother in the escorting rowboat,
and did the rest of the 38-kilometre swim clad only in lard. Just
outside Snug Cove, she struggled back into the swimsuit and was
met by a small, but cheering, crowd.
August 6 Broadcaster and politician Jim Nielsen
was born.
August 17 A restaurant called C. K. Chop Suey
at 123B East Pender in Vancouver was in the news for defying a civic
licence cancellation order issued two days earlier. The reason for
the cancellation: The restaurant employed two white waitresses.
The owner, Charlie Ting, told officials the waitresses were employed
in the cafe when he took it over in May and he wasn’t aware
of an agreement between the city’s mayor, George Miller, and
Chinatown restaurants not to employ white help.
August 19 The Ballet Russe sailed from London
today bound for Australia and, the Province reported, with
the troupe went Alexandra Denisova, “one of the youngest, yet
one of the most talented of the famous dancers.” The local
angle was that the 15-year-old Denisova was, in truth, a Vancouver
girl named Pat Meyers. Because world opinion at the time was that
the best dancers came from Russia, it was a tradition to give the
ballerinas Russian names. Young Pat, who lived in Dunbar, “practiced
dancing for eight hours each day." In the past four months
she had danced in several European capitals, to great acclaim. "Her
greatest success has come through her performances of the role of
the spinning top in the new modern ballet, Jeux d’Enfants.”
Like many local dancers, Meyers (and her 16-year-old sailing mate
Rosemary Deveson—a.k.a. Natasha Sobinova) was a student of
Vancouver teacher June Roper, and was among the first of more than
60 dancers that Roper would send from Vancouver to international
ballet companies and to Hollywood.
August 21 Frank Burd, president of the Province,
was named a Good Citizen.
Also August 21 The Province published
a letter to the editor from one signed Waterfront: “Sir:
Why is there all this fuss and trouble about the garbage dump on
False Creek Flats? I fail to see how anyone can approve discharge
of refuse in the heart of the city, even if it is in an industrial
area. There are thousands of people living close to the flats and
this ill-smelling property is at their very back doors. Why does
Vancouver fail to follow the example of many large eastern cities
which tow their garbage out to sea and dump it? . . . Let’s
see if our garbage can’t be dumped far out in the Gulf of Georgia.
That’s where it belongs.”
August 30 A monument to the 29th Battalion
is unveiled at Hastings Park.
September 3 New Brunswick-born Roy W. Brown,
about 58, was appointed the editorial director and vice president
of the Vancouver Sun. He had been editor of the Province.
(At 11, Brown had been the youngest pupil ever to enrol in Vancouver
High School.)
September 24 Railway builder and World War
One general John William Stewart died in Vancouver. Born in 1862
in Sutherlandshire, Scotland, Stewart arrived in Canada in 1882.
He was a partner in Foley, Welch and Stewart, the largest North
American railway contracting firm. They built much of the Grand
Trunk Pacific line, began the Pacific Great Eastern and parts of
the CNR. In World War I, General Stewart commanded 13 battalions,
organized railway troops and built railways in France. “Shy
and retiring . . . nevertheless one of the most powerful and wealthy
men in B.C.”
October 1 Air Travel Week began, proclaimed
to mark the establishment of Vancouver-to-Winnipeg airmail service
by Trans-Canada Airlines.
October 14 Capt. Charles Henry Cates died,
aged 78. He was born December 15, 1859 in Machias, Maine. He was
an older brother (by two years) of George Emery Cates. Charles hauled
stone from Gibson and Squamish quarries to help rebuild Vancouver
after the Great Fire of June 13, 1886. He built the first wharf
on the North Shore. In 1913, he formed C.H. Cates Towing, later
Charles H. Cates & Son (1921), one of the oldest and largest
towage and “lightering” firms on Burrard Inlet.
October 17 Lily Alice Lefevre, poet, hostess
and philanthropist, died in Vancouver, aged 85. She was born April
5, 1853 in Kingston, Ont. “As a girl,” Constance Brissenden
writes, “she won a medal for the best descriptive poem of a
Montreal carnival. She wrote many of her ‘loveliest verses’
about Vancouver. She organized the first IODE (Imperial Order of
Daughters of the Empire) chapter in Vancouver on the occasion of
Edward VII's coronation, August 9, 1902. She was a founder of the
Vancouver Art Gallery and an active member of the Canadian Authors'
Association. The Lefevre's home, Langaravine (6101 N.W. Marine
Drive), was a social centre for more than 50 years. In 1934 she
presented a $5,000 scholarship and a gold medal to UBC in her husband's
memory. Her books include The Lions' Gate (originally published
in 1895, and republished in 1936 to celebrate Vancouver's jubilee)
and A Garden by the Sea.”
October 22 Mart Kenney and his Western Gentlemen
instructed dancers at the Hotel Vancouver in a new dance craze,
the Lambeth Walk.
Also October 22 The Point Grey Chrysanthemum
Society declared it wanted to be “mum” capital of the
world.
November 12 At 8:50 a.m. the Lions Gate Bridge
was opened to pedestrian traffic. The first “civilian”
to cross the bridge appears to have been one R.F. Hearns of Caulfeild
in West Vancouver. Hearns, called a “bespectacled but sprightly”
retiree by the Province, wasn't supposed to get on to the
bridge until the official opening time of 9 a.m., but a soft-hearted
gateman heeded his plea that there was snow on the ground and it
was awfully cold, and let him pass. Hearns held ticket No. 2, cost
five cents. Ticket No. 1 was possessed by 75-year-old Mary Sutton,
who had risen at 6 a.m. and walked to the bridge through the snow
from her home at 1665 West 7th. “When I was halfway across
Granville bridge,” she told Province reporter Stuart
Keate, “a young fellow came along and gave me a lift. I arrived
at the Lions Gate at a quarter to eight.” She didn't set out
to walk across the bridge until exactly 9, so, after solemn deliberation
we have to give the palm to Mr. Hearns. (He told Keate he had also
bought the first B.C. Electric ticket on the interurban railway
out to Burnaby Lake.)
The two pioneers likely nodded to each other as they
passed, Ms. Sutton walking north, Mr. Hearns walking south.
Some 6,950 pedestrians crossed the bridge on the
weekend before cars were allowed over.
Negotiations to build this beautiful span had gone
on for 10 years. A lot of people hated the idea of a busy road through
the heart of Stanley Park, but it was the Depression and the bridge
was just too powerful an economic idea to quash. Vancouver engineer
W.G. Swan played a significant role in the design and construction
of the bridge, as he had done with the Pattullo in 1937. Bridge
historian Robert Harris writes: “First Narrows is formed by
the delta gravels of Capilano River spreading towards Prospect Point
in Stanley Park. The point makes a good high south end to the bridge,
but the low flat delta land to the north required the extensive
North Viaduct.” The north end, by the way, crosses above Capilano
Indian Reserve No. 5.
The bridge cost the Guinness brewing interests about
$6 million to build, an investment they thought worth the price
because it would spur development of their British Properties lands
on the North Shore. When the bridge opened, there were just two
lanes. It wasn't long before that was changed to three, with the
middle lane reserved for passing. In 1963 the W.A.C. Bennett government
bought the bridge for $6 million and soon removed the tolls that
had been imposed from the beginning. Overhead lane-control signals
enabled traffic in the centre lane to be reversed at will.
The first “civilian” to drive over
the bridge — it was November 14, 1938 — was, again, a
North Shore resident. He was C.H. Chamberlain of Lower Capilano,
who got to the toll gate on the north side at 4 a.m. “Bound
to be the first to cross, you know,” he said. The bridge brought
an immediate boost to the fortunes of the North Shore.
It was officially opened May 26, 1939 by Their Majesties,
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
Today, more than 52,000 vehicles cross the bridge
on a typical weekday.
November 13 A BBC broadcasting official who
happened to be in Toronto heard the Vancouver-based Mart Kenney
orchestra there, and liked it so much he arranged to have it heard
on a world-wide broadcast. NBC's Blue Network would also feature
the program, to be heard the next day. “Kenney will play a
special programme of English and Canadian songs, featuring the work
of Noel Coward, Ray Noble and other English composers.”
November 14 Members of the Vancouver Board
of Trade were taken on an inspection tour of the soon-to-open brand-new
Hotel Vancouver (the present one).
November 17 Singer-composer Gordon Lightfoot
was born.
November 23 Vancouver city council lost its
bid to change the city charter. They wanted to limit Oriental business
licences.
December 9 The BC Legislature voted to encourage
the federal government to pass the Oriental Exclusion Act.
December 15 “Vancouver's smart set,”
the Province reported, “will ‘go underground’
this evening, when to the strains of Earl Hill's orchestra, the
Cave Cabaret opens in Vancouver at 9 o'clock. Opening night visitors
will step into a realistic replica of a cavern, complete with stalactites,
subdued lighting and pirate treasure. They will dance on a gleaming
floor constructed to the most scientific methods. . . .” The
Cave was the spot for Vancouver night life for many years,
and the constant haunt of the Sun's self-described “saloon
columnist,” Jack Wasserman. The club's story is told in the
book Remember the Cave: 1937 to 1981, by Claire Hurley.
December 17 Henry Torkington “Harry”
Devine, photographer, died in Vancouver, aged 73. He was born July
28, 1865 in Manchester, Eng. His father, John Devine, was Vancouver’s
first city auditor. Harry started his career in photography in Brandon,
Man., in 1884 in partnership with J.A. Brock. He moved to Vancouver
in 1886. After the Great Fire of June 13, he photographed the first
city council and first police department in front of a tent. His
partnership with Brock ended in 1887. He worked again as a photographer
from 1895 to 1897, then went into other work.
December 30 The Province's music critic,
R.J. (Rhynd Jamieson), an acknowledged hater of "swing"
music, agreed to take part in a mock trial of the genre on CBC Radio's
National Forum. The radio audience was to be the jury. R.J. was
the prosecutor, while appearing for the defence were Graham MacInnes,
art critic of Toronto Saturday Night, and CBC conductor Percy Faith.
Swing, said R.J., was “a menace to real musical development
in its true sense.” Take that, Tommy Dorsey!
Also in 1938
Coquitlam opened its first high school. Students
no longer had to travel to New Westminster.
William F. Davidson began his teaching career in
Surrey. After Second World War service in the RCAF he became a principal,
supervisor, and then Director of Instruction. He retired in 1976.
An elementary school in Surrey is named for him.
The population of New Westminster was about 20,000.
Brothers-in-law John G. Prentice and L.L.G. “Poldi”
Bentley, mere months after arriving in Vancouver from Austria, formed
a furniture and paneling veneer company called Pacific Veneer. They
built a small mill, which employed 28 people, on the Fraser River
in New Westminster. By 1939 they will be employing 1,000 workers.
Today the firm is known as Canfor, which in 2004 had 8,410 employees
and revenues of $4.3 billion. There is a good history here.
W.A. Akhurst established Akhurst Machinery in Vancouver.
“What started as a family-run enterprise,” says the company’s
website,
“operating from a one-room office in Vancouver, has steadily
grown over the years.” Headquartered in Delta today, the company
employs about 80 people, and sells and services machinery in the
woodworking and metalworking industries.
The Teahouse at Ferguson Point in Stanley Park was
built as an officers’ mess for a military defense garrison
at Ferguson Point. Military historian Peter Moogk writes: “Canadian
resources during the Great Depression permitted only a beginning
in 1938 on the Ferguson Point Battery in Stanley Park, which was
to cover detained vessels anchored in English Bay and to provide
close-in defence. A three-gun counter-bombardment battery was to
be located on Point Grey and close-defence guns were to cover the
First Narrows, where a boom with net was to act as the harbor's
gate. Aircraft patrols would provide an early warning of attack.
Ten searchlights along the shoreline would furnish night-time illumination
of the maritime approaches. The local Field Brigade, Royal Canadian
Artillery, (established in 1920) was converted to a coast artillery
regiment to man the guns here and on Yorke Island, at the head of
the Inside Passage.”
After the war, the city operated it as a summer teahouse.
(In 1978 a young entrepreneur named Brent Davies came along and
leased the building from the Parks Board. Today, it’s called
the Sequoia Grill, named for a rare sequoia tree that guards the
entrance to Ferguson Point.)
The Ford Motor Company built an assembly plant in
Burnaby. During World War II it produced military vehicles. It was
demolished in 1988 to make way for Station Square.
Shaughnessy’s Angus Street gained the reputation
this year of being a lovers’ lane, but city electrician Thomas
Martin complained that “Cupid is breaking more street lights
than hearts.” Remedies and suggestions ranged from “No
Necking” signs to “a street reserved for spooning.”
Another city street made the news this year, and
an old one at that: Macdonald Street. It was shown on an 1886 map
of the city. But a mini-controversy developed this year over the
spelling of the name, with many claiming it should be “McDonald.”
The question was soon settled: the street was originally named for
Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald.
The 1904 bridge at New Westminster, a $1 million
doubledeck span, and the first crossing of the lower Fraser River,
was sold by the province to Public Works Canada. It is now maintained
and operated by CNR. It runs near to and parallel to the Pattullo
Bridge.
Thomas Carlyle Hebb, a Professor of Physics at UBC
since 1916, retired. The Hebb Building, opened October 24, 1963,
is named for him, was built as a teaching addition to the Physics
Department. At a cost of $1.4 million, the building houses tutorial
rooms, laboratories and the second largest lecture theatre on campus,
seating 450 students.
UBC’s Alma Mater Society began a low-power radio
station, CITR.
The British Columbia Psychological Association, the
oldest such group in Canada, was established. The Association is
distinct from the regulatory body (The College of Psychologists
of British Columbia). There are more than 400 members.
An anonymous $50,000 donation allowed the BC Cancer
Foundation to establish a treatment centre, the British Columbia
Cancer Institute, where 288 patients were treated in the first year.
The first chairman of the Board of Governors was former mayor W.
H. Malkin, who served until 1945. Dr. A. Maxwell Evans was named
head of the institute, and stayed for 33 years. (One wonders if
the anonymous donor was W.H. Malkin himself, who was a very prosperous
grocery wholesaler and jam maker.)
Vancouver's first Neighborhood House grew out of
the Alexandra Orphanage in Kitsilano, one of the province's first
non-profit societies. Incorporated in 1894, it was the 36th non-profit
society in B.C. By the 1930s the orphanage was in decline as the
trend was clearly toward foster homes in place of orphanages. In
1938 they closed down the facility to re-open a couple of months
later as the Alexandra Neighborhood House.
Runway lights were installed at Vancouver Airport,
seven years after it opened.
“The classic water taxi Tymac No. 2,”
writes Rob Morris, “was built by Sam Tyson and Alex McKenzie
(Tymac Launch Services) and in the 1940s and ’50s ran passengers
from the foot of Columbia Street to Britannia Mines and church camps
and summer resorts around Howe Sound. The teak (estimated to be
200 years old) used for the boat's doors, windows and trim was from
the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Japan. Fully-restored
by Tymac Launch, the Tymac No. 2 has continued to earn her
keep carrying 24 passengers as a False Creek ferry in 1984; a Vancouver
Harbour tour boat 1986-89; and a tour boat out of Steveston in 1991.”
In the wake of a scandal involving fraudulent assay
results from a listed mining company trading at the Vancouver Stock
Exchange collapsed to 30 million shares from 120 million the year
before. The Second World War will further damage the Exchange.
The provincial government passed the Credit Union
Act in the fall of 1938, allowing for the official designation of
chartered credit unions throughout B.C.
The Vancouver Art Gallery board refused to buy an
Emily Carr picture, priced at $400, because, says art writer Tony
Robertson, “it wasn't art as they understood art. They were
eventually persuaded it was and paid up.”
Dorothy Somerset founded the UBC Summer School of
Theatre.
The CBC Vancouver Orchestra was founded, with John
Avison conducting. Today, it’s the largest and best known of
Vancouver's chamber ensembles, and the last of the many CBC in-house
orchestras that once thrived. The orchestra, now under the direction
of Mario Bernardi, annually plays a series of concerts at The Orpheum
called The Avison Series, named in honor of its first conductor.
Social leader and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra supporter
Mary Rogers wondered aloud why only 100 people in a city of 250,000
contributed to the VSO's financial well-being.
Writer, investigative journalist and teacher (SFU)
Donald Gutstein was born. His first book of investigative journalism,
Vancouver Ltd., (1975) examined the corporate structure of
Vancouver. In The New Landlords (1990) he examined Asian
investment in Canadian real estate. See this
site.
Writer and teacher W.H. New (William 'Bill' Herbert
New) was born in Vancouver. He took over as editor of Canadian Literature
in 1977 from George Woodcock, and has written on Woodcock. New has
taught English at UBC since 1965. See this
site.
Michael Yates, poet, writer and founder of Sono Nis
Press was born in Fulton, Missouri. He joined UBC's Creative Writing
faculty from 1966 to 1971. "He has written," writes Alan
Twigg of BC Bookworld, "many books of highly impenetrable poetry,
and prose works such as man in the glass octopus . . . Formerly
an SFU Ph.D candidate in Criminology, he worked in the 1980s as
a prison guard and wrote a well-received memoir, Line Screw
(1993)." See this
site.
The B.C. government began a two-year project to develop
a park on the Canadian side of the Peace Arch.
Poet Earle Alfred Birney earned a PhD at the University
of Toronto. See this
site or this
one for a look at his interesting life.
High Bluff, Manitoba-born Ira Dilworth, left his
job as a popular UBC associate professor of English to direct the
Bach Choir. He held that job to 1940, also worked for the CBC, starting
this year, and rose to direct the Corporation’s English radio
network. See
this site.
Albert O. Koch, the “father” of Congregation
Beth Israel, who had been the founder and second president (1933
to 1934) was appointed president again this year, and would hold
the post until 1951.
The provincial government granted money for road
access to the ski areas on Mount Seymour.
The New Haven Borstal School for Young Offenders
was established in Vancouver.
Harold Winch, the CCF M.L.A. for Vancouver East,
became the leader of the party in B.C.
The Surrey Fairgrounds, which had been at Surrey
Centre, moved to Cloverdale. (The Cloverdale Rodeo will begin there
in 1945, become professional in 1948.)
1938 Rolls Royce Phantom III
Continued.....
[1757
- 1884] [1885 - 1891] [1892
- 1899]
[1900 - 1905] [1906
- 1908] [1909] [1910]
[1911] [1912]
[1913] [1914]
[1915] [1916]
[1917] [1918]
[1919] [1920]
[1921] [1922]
[1923] [1924]
[1925] [1926]
[1927] [1928]
[1929] [1930]
[1931] [1932]
[1933] [1934]
[1935] [1936]
[1937] [1938] [1939]
[1940]
[1941] [1942]
[1943] [1944]
[1945] [1946]
[1947] [1948]
[1949] [1950]
[1951] [1952]
[1953] [1954]
[1955] [1956]
[1957] [1958]
[1959] [1960]
[1961] [1962]
[1963] [1964]
[1965]
[1966] [1967]
[1968]
[1969] [1970]
[1971] [1972]
[1973] [1974]
[1975] [1976]
[1977] [1978]
[1979] [1980]
[1981] [1982]
[1983] [1984]
[1985] [1986]
[1987] [1988]
[1989] [1990]
[1991] [1992]
[1993] [1994]
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