. The Great War of 1914-1918 brought with it many changes to Canadian society. This brief essay looks at one such change; the move from full service grocers to the concept of self-service. During the war, and for some time thereafter, most retail businesses on the Drive were still stores rather than shops, with apron-clad … Continue reading Bringing Self-Service To Vancouver & The Drive, 1918-1926
. 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
The times they were a’changin’. The long recession that swamped Grandview from 1913 to the mid-1920s had merged into the Great Depression after just a few years of optimism and building. However, continued population pressures brought a steady growth of residents and the consequent continuation of trade for the kind of businesses that served the … Continue reading Lawn Bowling to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Leisure on the Drive, 1930-1965
. The northwest corner of First and Commercial must today be considered a prime retail location. For most residents of the neighbourhood, except for those with memories stretching back more than thirty years, that intersection is Il Mercato Mall with a VanCity credit union on the corner itself. But before the mid-1980s, when the Mall … Continue reading Battle For The School Site, 1940-1955
The first Isolation Hospital, known then as the pest house, in Vancouver was just a shack on the Inlet near where B.C. Sugar refinery would soon be built. However, when smallpox -- “the loathsome disease” -- struck in 1892, the shack was quickly abandoned, and infectious disease victims were shuffled off to a temporary camp … Continue reading Smallpox! Grandview’s Isolation Hospital
. In 1888, more than a dozen years before Grandview began any proper existence, a prosperous merchant, the Toronto-based E.J. Clark offered to give to the City of Vancouver seven acres of land he owned east of False Creek to be used for “athletic purposes”. This was not the simple philanthropic gesture that it may … Continue reading Grandview’s Parks to 1930
Visitors and locals alike often wonder why Commercial Drive south of First Avenue -- a wide arterial road -- is different than the northern half which is narrower and more intimate. The reason goes back more than 110 years and it all had to do with political intrigue in the Balkans. Like many streets in … Continue reading The Widening of Commercial Drive
It was the spring of 1949 and Commercial Drive -- after two long decades of Depression and War -- was reveling in the first flush of postwar prosperity: the stores were full and people finally had money to spend. No doubt, it was this very prosperity that drew Robert Harrison to the corner of First … Continue reading Shoot Out At First & Commercial
. 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
I wrote the following for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation in support of their Grandview Heritage Tour (see below). It has been published today in Spacing, along with photographs. * * * * For scores of generations, the wooded hills of Grandview were prime hunting and trapping land for First Nations. Once the Europeans arrived, Grandview … Continue reading A Very Short History of Grandview
We have today uploaded a new and updated version of the Grandview Database. This version incorporates several hundred new and amended data points since the previous release. Much of this update is based on a thorough review of the 1921 Census reruns which also led to these three articles: Population Distribution in Grandview, Population Growth in Grandview 1911-1921, and … Continue reading Grandview Database v.30
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
At the most recent GHG meeting, I presented some preliminary research on house prices in Grandview from 1918 to 1946. Select graph for a better view. The data is drawn from real estate ads in the "Vancouver Daily World", "Province" and "Sun" newspapers. The data was filtered to include only those ads that (1) related … Continue reading Historical House Prices in Grandview
In the late spring of 1939, as the political situation in Europe darkened and war with Germany became inevitable, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth toured Canada by train to meet their subjects and bolster the bonds of Empire From small-town whistle stops on the Prairies to bustling cities coast to coast, eager crowds cheered, … Continue reading When the King & Queen of England Came To Grandview
In the summer of 1913, the part of Commercial Drive south of First Avenue was being widened. This expansion took place after a number of major buildings had already been erected on that route since 1910, some of which were in the way of the new road. This inconvenient fact was not allowed to stand … Continue reading Moving A Building On Commercial Drive
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