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June 6, 1944
D-Day, on June 6, 1944—61 years ago today—is a date
virtually everyone knows: it marked the invasion at Normandy. More
than a thousand planes and gliders began dropping paratroopers into
Normandy in the dark hours before dawn. The push to recapture the
Nazi-occupied continent was under way.
And on the home front that same day? The Orpheum
Theatre was showing a movie musical, Broadway Rhythm with
Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra. Manager Ivan Ackery had arranged
for Dal Richards' 20-piece orchestra from the Hotel Vancouver to
appear on the Orpheum's stage to accompany, in person, the singer
Adriana Caselotti. Caselotti had been the voice of Snow White in
Walt Disney's great 1937 feature-length cartoon. (Disney publicists
said she was 17 when she sang in that film; she was actually 21,
born May 16, 1916.) Ackery took her, and actors dressed as Pluto,
Grumpy and Goofy, to perform for the veterans at Shaughnessy Military
Hospital and they loved her.
Here's a bit of arcane trivia: remember the brilliant
two-minute cartoon titled Bambi Meets Godzilla that Vancouver
animator Marv Newland made in 1969? When Newland made that cartoon
he was living in Los Angeles in a room rented from . . . Adriana
Caselotti!
June 13, 1886
It was June 13, 1886, a Sunday, 119 years ago today.
A small crew of Canadian Pacific Railway men was keeping an eye
on clearing fires set the day before. “The fire started between
Hamilton and Granville streets,” a volunteer fireman told the city
archivist in 1931. “The CPR were clearing the land, and the
fire got away from them.”
The reason it got away was a freakish squall, a
sudden blast of wind from the west. The wind blew flames and burning
debris from the clearing fires right into the sprawling tinder-dry
collection of homely wooden buildings that was the City of Vancouver,
just two months old.
A city of about 1,000 wooden buildings was destroyed
in less than 45 minutes, some say as little as 20. “The city
did not burn,” 21-year-old W.H. Gallagher (a future alderman) recalled.
“It was consumed by flame. The buildings simply melted before
the fiery blast. The fire went down the sidewalk on old Hastings
Road, past our office, so rapidly that people flying before it had
to leave the burning sidewalk and take to the road; the fire travelled
down that wooden sidewalk faster than a man could run.”
The wind was strong enough to take the coal hulk
Robert Kerr, anchored off Deadman's Island, and push her,
dragging her anchor, down to the Hastings Sawmill at the foot of
Dunlevy Street. (There, providentially enough, the Kerr served
as a refuge for people jumping into the inlet to escape the fury
of the fire.)
The death toll was uncertain; at a minimum, eight
died.
And while the embers were still warm, we started to rebuild.
June 20, 1969
You will have read recently that a wave of alarm
over the physical condition of today's elementary school students
in BC has led to calls for daily sessions in school gymnasiums.
Come back now to June 20, 1969—36 years ago today—to read: School
Kids To Face Daily Gym.
Writing for the Vancouver Express (with The
Vancouver Sun and The Province out on strike) Karenn
Krangle reported that AChildren in all BC elementary schools soon
will be required to take daily physical education classes. The Express
has learned that the provincial education and health ministries
and the provincial secretary's office will announce the PE program
later this month . . . Although a handful of schools already offer
the daily classes, most elementary students get only two or three
20-minute PE sessions a week.”
Krangle quotes Dr. Shirley Rushton of the BC Medical
Association, “Who has been actively pushing for daily PE classes,”
as saying, “If we start with healthier children, they will
grow into healthier adults and we will have less heart disease and
high blood pressure and maybe less smoking.”
Hmm, wonder if that campaign worked?
June 27, 1956
Vancouver's first rock 'n roll concert happened—brace
yourself—June 27, 1956. That's 49 years ago today. Deejay Red Robinson
emceed as Bill Haley and the Comets, who had had three monster hits
in a row (Shake, Rattle and Roll; Rip It Up, and Rock
Around the Clock) blew 'em away at Kerrisdale Arena. An estimated
6,000 fans screamed for more. “Rock'n roll,” wrote The Vancouver
Sun's John Kirkwood, “a jarring, jolting combination of
primitive jungle rhythm and hillbilly blues, struck like a discordant
cyclone blowing in from across the border . . .”
The Sun's music critic Stanley Bligh wasn't
as calm. He described the show as “the ultimate in musical
depravity . . . a cacophonous noise that might cause permanent harm
to not fully developed adolescent minds.”
And who was it that brought this hugely popular
mind-damaging musical depravity to Vancouver? Jack Cullen. “And
Murray Goldman, the clothier, put up the money,” Robinson said.
But after the show Haley told Red that the Comets' day was just
about over. “There's a very handsome young singer down in Memphis
. . . He's got the looks, he's got the talent and he's young. We're
finished.”
There was one consolation for music lovers. The
Sun assured its readers that rock 'n roll was just a fad.
June 28, 1971
The old Georgia Viaduct, which had been dropping
chunks of concrete onto the roadway below for much of its 56 years,
was finally demolished to be replaced by the present viaduct. The
one you drive over today opened June 28, 1971—33 years ago
today—in a ceremony presided over by Vancouver mayor Tom Campbell.
Its Dunsmuir twin opened the following November. Cost for the two:
$11 million.
Curiously, the old viaduct—opened July 1,
1915 to extend Georgia Street over the CPR's Beatty Street yards—was
named the Hart McHarg Bridge for a First World War hero, but the
name never caught on. During the Depression, the viaduct provided
some shelter from the elements for large “hobo jungles”
beneath.
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