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]
1962
This year is sponsored.
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You'll note that this year includes events listed under “Also
in . . .“ These are events for which we don't have a specific
date. If YOU know the
specific date of an event shown there, please
notify us . . . and cite the source! Many thanks!
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January 6 Frank (Francis James) Burd, newspaper
publisher, died in Vancouver, one day short of his 92nd birthday.
“He was born,” writes Constance Brissenden, “January
7, 1870, in Muskegon, Michigan. At age 13 he was selling newspapers
in Winnipeg, working days as an apprentice printer. At 18 he was
hired as circulation manager of the Winnipeg Free Press.
In 1899 Burd moved to Vancouver but, unable to find work, he moved
to Yukon with his brother Richard Burde (sic) and, working out of
a tent, began to publish the Whitehorse Tribune. After eight months
he returned to Vancouver. He was hired by Frank Carter-Cotton at
the News-Advertiser. He later joined the Vancouver Province
as its circulation manager with a $2.50 raise, bringing his salary
to $27.50 per week. He rose in the ranks and in 1933 was named president
of the Province, retiring in 1935. He was a founder in 1917
of Canadian Press.”
February 26 The Queen Elizabeth Playhouse
opened.
February 28 Actress Rae Dawn Chong was born
in Vancouver.
March 1 The first Vancouver International
Amateur Film Festival opened.
March 30 BC Hydro took over operations of
the BC Electric Railway. See
this website.
May 30 There was a near riot at the Forum
as Prime Minister John Diefenbaker addressed a rowdy crowd at an
election rally.
June 17 Bob (Robert Paul) Brown, baseball
promoter, died in Vancouver, aged 85. Brown was born July 5, 1876
in Glencoe, Iowa. He was known here as “Mr. Baseball,”
and his career spanned 60 years. “A successful athlete at Notre
Dame in the 1890s,” Constance Brissenden writes, “he was
a pro ball player (1900-09) in Montana, Oregon and Washington state,
leading the Spokane Indians to a PCL pennant win in 1908. A shoestring
operator and shrewd promoter, Brown built Athletic Park (opened
April 18, 1913) on land leased from CPR. He was the owner/manager
of the Vancouver Beavers (renamed Vancouver Canadians). He introduced
Canada's first night games played under lights. Brown was the first
inductee into the B.C. Baseball Hall of Fame.”
June 18 Native people in Greater Vancouver
voted in their first federal election after Parliament extended
the franchise to them in 1960.
Also June 18 The original Grouse Mountain
Chalet, opened in November 1926, burned down.
June 22 Actor Nicholas Lea (X-Files,
others) was born in New Westminster.
June 25 The Haida section of Totem Park opened
at UBC. It included a 19th century large family dwelling and a smaller
mortuary house. There are ten totem poles here, and works by many
contemporary First Nations artists of the Northwest Coast: Bill
Reid, Douglas Cranmer, Norman Tait, Mungo Martin and others.
June 29 Kosaburo Shimizu, United Church minister,
died in Winnipeg, aged 68. He was born September 13, 1893 in Tsuchida,
Shiga-ken, Japan. He came to B.C. about 1906. At Royal City High
School in New Westminster (1910-11), he won a gold medal for attaining
the highest average of a first-year student. He attended UBC (1915-19),
in 1924 earned an MA at Harvard. Shimizu was ordained by the United
Church (1927), serving Vancouver. He was committed to bridging first
and second generation Japanese-Canadians and Anglo-Saxons. During
the Second World War he was relocated to an internment camp at Kaslo,
BC. In 1945 he was transferred to Toronto and organized Japanese
United Church work there. He received a DD from Union College (now
the Vancouver School of Theology). Shimizu died while chairing a
conference of Japanese ministers.
June Arthur Laing, 57, former MLA and BC Liberal
Party leader, who had left politics in 1959, emerged from retirement
to run federally. Laing was one of only two B.C. members in Lester
Pearson's cabinet after the 1962 election. The Arthur Laing Bridge
is named for him.
Also June Bob Prittie was elected MP for Burnaby/Richmond.
He would serve to 1968, then become Burnaby’s mayor in 1969.
July 21 This appeared as a photo caption in
the Sun: “On a lonely hillside seven miles north of
Agassiz stands the new federal maximum security jail that will house
convicted Sons of Freedom Doukhobor terrorists. 49 inmates will
be transferred to the $300,000 prison next month from New Westminster
penitentiary.”
July 30 The 7,821-kilometre-long Trans-Canada
Highway, the longest national highway in the world, was opened to
traffic at Rogers Pass in the Rockies. It had taken 12 years to
build, and more than 3,000 km were still to be paved, but it was
now possible to drive right across the country on one highway. See
the September 3 entry.
Also July 30 Comic Lenny Bruce (author of
How to Talk Dirty and Influence People) opened to a packed
house at Isy's Supper Club. In the next day's Vancouver Sun
Jack Wasserman attacked Bruce's caustic performance. That evening
the Morality Squad showed up at Isy's, and after the show informed
Bruce and club owner Isy Walters the show was finished, citing a
bylaw which did “prohibit or prevent any lewd or immoral performance
or exhibition.”
A (tame) sample line: “If something about the
human body disgusts you, complain to the manufacturer.”
Walters was told his operating licence would be suspended
unless Bruce was cancelled, and he killed the balance of the engagement.
The operator of the Inquisition Coffee House stepped forward with
an offer to present the remainder of the performances. Bruce agreed,
but the city's licensing boss announced the Inquisition's licence
would be lifted if he performed. Bruce, who would be remembered
as a hugely influential, ground-breaking comic, finally threw up
his hands and vowed never again to perform in Vancouver.
Bruce died August 3, 1966.
July Agassiz's Mountain Institution opened.
Designed to house special inmates, the facility serves as an incarceration
centre for a high percentage of sex offenders. At one time many
of the Doukhobors convicted of arson and terrorism in the 1960s
were interned at this prison.
August 5 Actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead
of an overdose of sleeping pills.
August 12 Buda Hosmer Brown (née Jenkins),
MLA, died in Vancouver, aged 68. She was born June 10, 1894 in Bellingham,
Washington. She taught school in Washington state, later married
Donald C. Brown. In 1958 she was elected Social Credit MLA for Vancouver-Point
Grey. In 1960 she entered Premier W.A.C. Bennett's cabinet as minister
at large, the first woman in a Bennett cabinet since Tilly Rolston.
Her interests included traffic safety and youth fields. A parks
commissioner, Buda Brown was the first woman president of the International
Northwest Parks Association.
August 17 David Stadnyk, sports owner and
executive, was born in Abbotsford. In August 2000 he would buy the
86ers soccer club. During his tenure as owner the name of the team
reverted to the Whitecaps. In 2003 he would relinquish ownership,
citing severe financial losses. Stadnyk also launched the Vancouver
Breakers women’s team during his term. See
this site. He was an early investor in the Ravens, a
lacrosse team, but they were a short-lived phenomenon, lasting only
three seasons, and Stadnyk would drop out before they began play.
September 3 The Trans-Canada Highway, open
to traffic since July 30, was officially opened. CBC-TV has a clip
from the ceremony at Rogers Pass, narrated by Ted Reynolds and presided
over by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker . . . who hoped the new
road would never hear “the warlike tramp of marching feet.”
See
this site.
September 28 Randy Stoltmann, environmentalist,
was born in Vancouver. He would conduct an exhaustive exploration
of mountain country within 200 kms of Vancouver. In April 1994 Stoltmann
drew up a formal proposal to preserve the Elaho-Upper Lillooet wilderness
under the B.C. government's protected area strategy. The 260,000-hectare
roadless area is known today as the Randy Stoltmann Wilderness.
He was killed May 22, 1994 in an avalanche while skiing through
remote ranges west of the Kitlope River. He wrote Written by
the Wind, a description of wilderness hiking in Kyuquot Sound.
And see
this site.
October 4 In 1956, UBC took over the responsibility
for training B.C.’s teachers, but there was no central facility
for instruction. Today the hoped-for education building opened.
There would be additions and renovations in 1965, 1972 and 1996.
In 1973 the building would be renamed to honor Neville V. Scarfe,
former dean of the faculty.
October 12 (and continuing into the early
hours of October 13) Hurricane Frieda wreaked enormous damage in
Greater Vancouver. Gusts reached 78 mph (125 k/ph) at the Sea Island
Weather Station. Windows of downtown department stores were shattered,
and 3,000 trees blew down in Stanley Park. One person was killed
when a falling tree crushed her car. There were five other deaths
in BC. Trees on the back nine at the Vancouver Golf Club in Coquitlam
“fell like matchsticks.” More than 1,500 trees were lost
on the course, making VGC the hardest hit by far of all local courses.
The storm lasted about four hours. The Lower Mainland was darkened
from Horseshoe Bay to Hope.
Terri Clark of the Vancouver Park Board has written
a description of what the storm did to Stanley Park at this
site, which is also the source of the image to the right.
Sometimes it’s called “Hurricane Frieda”
(68 hits on Google), sometimes "Typhoon Frieda" (73 hits).
Thanks to CKNW’s Jack Gordon, an engineer with more than the
usual helping of smarts, that station was the only one on the coast
north of California to stay on the air during the crisis. (Long
before the storm, Gordon had created an emergency broadcast system.)
CKNW became a coordination and information centre.
Across the border this is called the “Columbus
Day Storm,” and it did even more damage! As this web
site explains, the dying remnants of Frieda combined
with another storm and suddenly strengthened it, dealing smashing
blows to Washington, Oregon and California.
Was it a hurricane, or was it a typhoon? We put that
question to Sylvain Boutot of the Meteorological Service of Canada,
who sent this response: “There was indeed a hurricane called
Frieda that hit Vancouver on October 12, 1962. You'll hear some
folks refer to Frieda as a typhoon and others as a hurricane and
both terms are a little right and a little wrong. As storm aficionados
are aware, the term ‘hurricane’ refers to severe Atlantic
weather systems and those in the eastern Pacific. The term ‘typhoon’
is the designation for Pacific storms west of the International
Date Line. Frieda had the distinction of starting as a typhoon and
then moving east (instead of west which is the usual pattern for
typhoons) and becoming a hurricane while merging with another tropical
storm. Weather professionals like to call her an extra-tropical
storm and she proved her strength when she slammed into the coastal
cities of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.
October 19 UBC students protested closure
of the Hotel Georgia pub, a favored hangout.
October 22 Scuba divers found the drive shaft
of the SS Beaver, sunk off Stanley Park more than 70 years
earlier.
November 1 Bob Smith interviewed Duke Ellington
at the Georgian Towers Hotel. See
this site.
November 17 A new Surrey Municipal Hall was
opened on Highway 10.
November 23 Ira Dilworth, scholar and broadcast
executive, died in Vancouver, aged 68. “He was born,”
Constance Brissenden writes, “March 25, 1894 in High Bluff,
Manitoba, came to the Okanagan as a boy. From 1915 to 1934 he taught
English at Victoria High School, became the principal in 1926. A
poetry expert, Dilworth was a popular UBC associate professor of
English from 1934 to 1938. From 1938 to 1940 he directed the Bach
Choir. He was the first president of the Vancouver Community Arts
Council (1945), the first of its kind in North America. From 1938
onward, Dilworth rose in CBC ranks to director of all CBC English
networks (1956).”
November 29 The Vancouver Mounties PCL baseball
club folded. They would return for the 1965 season.
November 30 Impresario Harry Schiel started
a series called Variety Follies at the Kitsilano Theatre.
December 9 Bill Rathie was elected mayor,
the first to have been born in Vancouver. See
this page.
December 10 The old Union Steamship hotel
on Bowen Island was demolished, and the resort closed.
Also in 1962
Highway 99 was completed, providing a continuous
link between the U.S. border and Vancouver through Richmond.
The Greater Vancouver Tourist Association changed
its name to the Greater Vancouver Visitors and Convention Bureau.
Vancouver’s G.P.V. Akrigg saw his Jacobean
Pageant: The Court of King James I named by the New York
Times as one of the 10 best books of 1962.
John B. MacDonald, the president of UBC, made a proposal
to build a system of community colleges across the provinces. BC
had a poor record in providing post-secondary training and educational
opportunities for British Columbians. The government began to act
on his recommendations.
Baltimore-born Alvin Balkind became curator of UBC’s
Gallery of Fine Arts. He would hold the post to 1973.
The building at the northeast corner of Main and
East 15th in Vancouver, originally Postal Station C, was vacated
by the Department of Agriculture (which had been there since 1922).
It would sit empty until 1965. (Today it’s known as Heritage
Hall.)
Gordon Shrum became the first chancellor of Simon
Fraser University. Shrum will push through the construction of “Berkeley
North” in 18 months. SFU will open for classes in 1965.
Mrs. Flora Bingham won the Order of Merit for Scouting
in Canada, after 20 consecutive years as Lady Cubmaster of the Cloverdale
Wolf Cub Pack.
A clamor from north shore residents began for a second
crossing over the First Narrows, “or the Lions Gate Bridge
will become the world's largest parking lot.” It hasn’t
happened yet.
Austrian ski area consultant Willy Schaeffler reported
favorably on Whistler's potential as a world-class ski area.
Trinity Junior College was opened in Langley by the
Evangelical Free Church of America, with 17 students. Its dorms
were portable housing units moved from a B. C. Hydro construction
project in B. C.'s interior. The dining hall was an old farmhouse;
the barn was converted into a gymnasium called the “barnasium.”
The University Women's Club purchased Hycroft (built
1909), one of Shaughnessy's premier homes. Inside and out, it is
one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, and they keep it
that way.
Fred Hume bought the Vancouver Canucks, then in the
WHL, and would own the team until his death in 1967.
R.M. Booth became Vancouver’s chief of police,
succeeding G.J. Archer (1956-62). Booth would serve to 1968.
The Surrey-based Danish Community Centre of B.C.
(DCC), began this year as an information co-ordinator and hall operator
for the Danish-Canadian community, and acts as an umbrella group
for members of the community in Greater Vancouver.
John B. MacDonald became president of UBC, succeeding
Norman MacKenzie (1944-1962). MacDonald would serve to 1967.
The King Edward Senior Matriculation and Continuing
Education Centre was established. In 1965 it will become part of
Vancouver City College.
Edward Cecil “Cece” Roper became the first
principal of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, which
would open in the spring of 1964. Roper came to BCIT from teaching
in the commerce department at UBC. He would serve to June, 1967.
Vancouver, a Bibliography appears. Compiled
by Katherine M. Freer from material in the Vancouver Public Library
and the Special Collections of the UBC Library.
The Great Northern Railroad abandoned its False Creek
station, which will be demolished in 1965. Using the CN terminal
next door, the American railway continued to operate a Vancouver-Seattle
train service until 1977.
The Vancouver Stock Exchange traded more than 100
million shares this year, the first time it had done that since
1937. A mining assay scandal and the Second World War combined to
keep the exchange quiet for many years.
As head of the Vancouver Tourist Association (precursor
to Tourism Vancouver) Harold Merilees founded the Sea Festival.
Seattle held a World’s Fair. Many Lower Mainland
residents attended. See
this site.
CP Hotels, unwilling to spend more money on a hotel
it didn't own, decided not to renew its Hotel Vancouver management
contract with CN. CN contracted the hotel's management to Hilton.
It would resume sole management in 1983. (And, in 1988, the hotel's
ownership would come full circle as Canadian Pacific Hotels once
again acquired the Hotel Vancouver.)
Frank Panvin, who had opened the Commodore Lanes
on September 7, 1930, and who owned several other bowling alleys,
died. In the 1920s bowling was almost exclusively a male sport.
Panvin changed that. He introduced a promotion that allowed women
to bowl free in the mornings. He was also the first to rent out
shoes.
The Japanese Friendship Garden was created in New
Westminster as a tribute to its sister city, Mariguchi, Japan. One
hundred ornamental flowering cherry trees have been planted in this
informal Japanese-style garden. Waterfalls, ponds and streams add
to its charm.
Attendance at the PNE passed the one million mark
this year. It has rarely dropped below that since.
The Abbotsford International Air Show was born. Forty
enthusiastic members of the Abbotsford Flying Club passed the hat
and came up with $700 to put on the first one. Since then the show
has become one of the world's premium flying and aviation-technology
extravaganzas, attracting more participants and bigger audiences
each year. The 1962 event attracted 15,000 spectators. In recent
years averages of between 250,000 and 300,000 have turned out during
the show's three-day run at Abbotsford International Airport, 80
kms east of Vancouver. Since 1970 it has officially been Canada's
National Air Show.
Mungo Martin died, aged about 83. He was born in
Fort Rupert, BC in 1879. “He was the most influential Kwakiutl
master carver,” writes Tony Robertson, “noted for his
massive totem poles. Martin devoted most of his working life to
preserving by copying the best examples of earlier tribal totems
before they were lost. As a teacher he trained successive generations
of carvers such as the Hunts and Bill Reid, and did much to interpret
his culture and its traditions to those interested in learning about
them.” See
this site.
A mural in the form of a canvas collage was installed
by artist Toni Onley at the brand-new Queen Elizabeth Playhouse.
Something about this big work sparked controversy when it was installed,
with one outraged citizen claiming it was “a Communist plot”
in a letter to The Province.
The Metropolitan Theatre Co-operative, an organization
of various local community theatre companies, opened its first theatre
on 4th Avenue in Kitsilano. Now known as Metro Theatre, they would
move in 1963 to a new home at 1370 SW Marine Drive where they've
been located ever since.
Sidney, Australia-born (1924) James Clavell’s
first novel appeared. King Rat would be made into a movie
in 1965.
Writer and poet Michael Turner (Hard Core Logo
among others) was born in North Vancouver.
Judge Alexander Campbell Des Brisay was appointed
head of a one-man royal commission on workmen's compensation. When
he died November 30, 1963 he had produced 6,000 pages of transcripts
for the as-yet unfinished enquiry. (His wife, Ella Helen, died the
following morning (Dec. 1, 1963) of a heart attack.)
Hugh Keenleyside won the Vanier Medal.
Bob Smith, jazz broadcaster, began a column on jazz
in The Vancouver Sun.
1962 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible
[Photo: www.dyna.co.za]
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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