. Louis Toban was born in 1901 in Lithuania to a Jewish family. His father, Samuel Toban, came to Vancouver in 1910. The following year, Samuel’s wife and six children joined him and they were all naturalized as Canadian citizens in 1914.i It took a while for the Toban family to settle down; between 1914 … Continue reading Louis Toban: Drug Store Tycoon and Philanthropist
. The Bufton family opened a store on Commercial Drive in the early 1920s. By the time they closed their business in the 1980s, they had become Drive royalty, both as a result of their corporate longevity and also because of their active involvement in so many of the issues that faced Grandview in those … Continue reading The Buftons of Commercial Drive: A Biographical Sketch
. The boom for building in Grandview was in the decade before the First World War, and by 1914, the neighbourhood was filling out and thriving. Unfortunately, the impact of the War and the business downturns immediately after, left the Drive without much opportunity for further development and expansion. These difficulties were exacerbated a decade … Continue reading The Viaduct That Saved Grandview (1938)
. It was during 1950 that the Grandview Chamber of Commerce took up the issue of a lack of a library in Grandview. The need for a library in the district had been recognized as far back as the 1920s, and a site on the northwest corner of 3rd and Commercial was selected and purchased … Continue reading The 50 Year Struggle To Get A Library in Grandview
One hundred years ago today, 3rd June, 1922, there was an auction of household contents at 1549 E. 2nd in Grandview. The 6-room wooden house had been owned and occupied for some time by Albert Cameron and his wife, Susannah. Albert is listed in the census of the previous year as a carpenter in a … Continue reading House Contents, 1922
. At the last monthly meeting of the Grandview Heritage Group, Jak presented his research on an early church in Grandview. The following is a version of that presentation (1). This story began with a mystery. In the 1905 Vancouver City Directory, there are just a few listings for Park Drive, the original name of … Continue reading A Church, Lost and Found
The one-and-a-half storey house at 1761 Grant was built under a $2,250 building permit issued to W.H. Creitz at the beginning of January 1910. By May it was on the market, described as having seven rooms “with every up-to-date convenience built in.” It was “not an ordinary house; come and see it; if you see it, … Continue reading Drugs and Booze: The Rowdy History of 1761 Grant Street
An innovation of the 1921 Canada Census was to ask detailed questions regarding those who rented, how much rent they paid, and how many rooms they occupied. According to the 1921 Census counts, in the core district of Grandview, there were: 4,547 people living in rental accommodation, or 44.27% of the Census population; They were … Continue reading The Rental Market in 1921 Grandview
Further to my previous post about the geographic distribution of population in Grandview in 1921, the following map illustrates the same using the 1911 Census returns (For a description of the block system used to map these results, please see here.): The 1911 Census showed a population count of 7,356 compared to the population in … Continue reading Population Growth in Grandview: 1911-1921
When the suburb of Grandview was first surveyed and laid out for planning, the area within the core boundaries of Clark Drive (west), Hastings Street (north), Nanaimo Street (east), and Broadway (south) was divided into surveyors' blocks, each with a unique legal designation. Grandview, at that time on the very edge of the new Vancouver, … Continue reading Population Distribution in Grandview
In the most recent Changes On The Drive, I reported that the building at 1301 Commercial, which most of us these days know as the Wonderbucks Building, is now for sale after lying empty for more than a year. The building has a fascinating history which I thought I might relate here. The Fraser family … Continue reading The Wonderbucks Building
I have been doing more work on the 1921 Census for Grandview and have discovered that the north side of the 2000-block Venables Street was missed by the enumerator. The south side of the block (house numbers: 2012, 2030, 2036, 2052, 2056, 2062 and 2076) is captured on pages 4, 5 and 6 of district … Continue reading Missing Block in 1921 Census
Some while ago, I produced a Census Finding Aid for the 1911 Canada Census. Now that the 1921 Census data is available, I have made the same kind of aid for that series. The purpose here is to allow researchers looking for specific addresses or specific streetscapes to find the data they require more easily … Continue reading Census Finding Aid 1921
We had another great meeting last Thursday evening. We covered quite a lot of ground: It was noted that the 1921 Census of Canada is now available for scholars. At the moment it is made available via Ancestry.ca and a subsription membership is required. The current search engine dies not allow searches via addresses. Bruce … Continue reading Meeting Notes: August 2013
A group of us were at Zawa's the other night, after the Heritage Awards, relaxing over food and beers, when the conversation turned to the short one-storey flat-roofed building that sat at Commercial & Venables until it burned down at the end of the 1990s. It seemed that most of us had memories of one … Continue reading The 900-Block Commercial east side
On Thursday evening last, Fr. Eugenio, pastor of the St. Francis of Assisi parish in Grandview, very kindly invited a group of GHG members and friends to the Church on Napier Street where he took us on a tour of both the church and the rectory where he lives. In the early 1920s, Franciscan monks … Continue reading Tour of St. Francis Church and Rectory
Just the other day I was standing on Commercial Drive looking across at two of my favourite buildings which are in the centre of the east side of the 1600-block. The building on the left is the Odlin Block and the building on the right is the Rodway Block. My interest was piqued because these … Continue reading The Wealthy Barber and The Tin Man
The renovation of the old York Theatre at Commercial and E. Georgia is moving ahead quite quickly. As a result of the stripping of stucco from the south wall we now have another "ghost" sign: this one for the Little Theatre. It is not so easy to see, especially with the scaffolding still in place, … Continue reading York Theatre Renovation
(This is an excerpt from the recently published Vanishing Vancouver: The Last 25 Years [Whitecap Books]. The photographs are from The History of Saint Francis Parish, Vancouver, published in 1959) The Franciscan Monastery, its front porch closed in, on Semlin at Napier in the 1950s There are just a handful of places in … Continue reading St. Francis of Assisi church and the Italian community
In honour of International Women's Day, I thought I'd write a short piece on one of the most dynamic women ever to grace Grandview and Commercial Drive. Catherine Bufton (nee Drake) was born in Gloucester, England, in 1881. She emigrated to Manitoba where she met and married Hubert Bufton. After Hubert's service in World War … Continue reading International Women’s Day: Catherine Bufton
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