We had a busy, lively and highly productive meeting on Thursday last.
- The Centenary Birthday House project: We are still exploring options for permanent signs for the Centenary House campaign. These will be offered to those houses that were celebrated in 2012. We followed up on our walk for the 2013 campaign, and will finish off the second half of our potentials list on Sunday. We will be meeting at Continental Coffee at 10am if anyone cares to join us.
- There was a fascinating discussion about the plans for preserving the Shelly’s 6X sign on Via Tevere’s wall. We discussed the pros and cons (and possible availabilities) of various funding sources for the estimated $3,000 cost, including neighbourhood grants, foundations, paint companies, and other. We will be exploring these options over the next few weeks. Michael Kluckner will also supervise a small test patch to confirm the methods we hope to use to preserve the sign. We also discussed the potential for various tie-ins to the project, including the Rose/Lily annual block party, St. Francis Church, and a historical tour.
- We looked at a number of relevant events that are upcoming:
- Michael Kluckner is organizing an Art Mob to help save the Mac-Blo building at Van Dusen Gardens. This starts at noon on Saturday 23rd.
- The Grandview Woodland Community Plan is holding a workshop on housing on Wednesday 27th from 6pm at the WISE Hall. This is a workshop that has obvious implications for heritage in the neighbourhood.
- Eric is attending the Heritage Foundation’s Old School workshop on plastering on Saturday 2nd March.
- Also on 2nd March, the Rio Theatre is showing the excellent documentary called “The Hollow Tree” about the efforts to save an iconic relic in Stanley Park. It features our own Bruce Macdonald.
- On Monday 4th March at 7pm, the monthly GWAC Meeting will include a presentation by the Commercial Drive BIA on their Vision Report for the Drive. This again has strong relevance to heritage.
- Finally, on Saturday 23rd March, Penny Street will be presenting her workshop on researching the history of a house. We will write a detailed post about this at the beginning of March, but we suggest you pencil in that afternoon in your date book.
- It was noted that Spank on the Drive is looking for vintage photographs. This led to a discussion about venues where we could display some of the heritage images of Grandview.
- Eric has offered to present at our March meeting a talk on heritage electrical systems. His offer was enthusiatically approved. We’ll have more information on this in a later posting.
- Bruce Macdonald presented the first draft of a booklet he is preparing on the early history of the Cedar Cove district of Grandview.
- Jak noted that he is now formally at work on the second volume of his history of Commercial Drive and he is looking to schedule interviews with those who lived or worked on the Drive (and neighbourhood) between 1955 and 2000.
Many thanks to those who came along on Thursday night and helped the conversation.
grandviewheritagegroup.ca 