Luke Judge

Dolls House Miniatures dollhouses miniatures

In 1936, Vancouver city hall opened. The ceiling on the second floor of the rotunda was covered with gold leaf from several B.C. mines.

In 1936, on April 25, Vancouver retailer Charles Woodward, said: “My prediction is that within 40, at the outside 50, years Vancouver will be the largest city in Canada.” Not yet.

In 1946, Mayor L.D. Taylor, who was once briefly married to two women at the same time, died. [See the Daniel Francis book, L.D. Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver for details.]

In 1910, Vancouver’s Cedar Cottage neighbourhood got its name from an Interurban train stop there. The station, in turn, was named for the Cedar Cottage Brewery.

In 1931, on Aug. 2, the Province newspaper had this startling lead to a story: “One person in every 300 in British Columbia is insane.”

In 1930, Vancouver got its first shipment of “Lillybet” dolls, modelled after five-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who is Queen Elizabeth today.)

In 1927, a Wurlitzer pipe organ, with 13 sets of pipes, was shipped

Vancouver Sun archives

from the Wurlitzer factory in North Tonawanda, N.Y., to Vancouver for use in the brand-new Orpheum Theatre. It’s still there, the only pipe organ in Canada still in the theatre in which it was originally installed.

In 1937, sliced bread came to Vancouver.

In 1946, when the parking meter came to Vancouver the fee was five cents for one hour’s parking.

In 1922, visiting vaudeville entertainer Benny Kubelsky, performing at the (old) Orpheum Theatre, met a young Vancouver girl named Sadie Marks. They met again in Seattle in 1926 and were married. We know them better as Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone.

In 1912, a group of Vancouver businessmen conceived a plan to build a 15-metre-high dam across the Second Narrows. Port Moody, which would have been flooded, protested. Picky, picky.

In 1932, when the Burrard Bridge opened in 1932, Cedar Street disappeared. When the bridge went in, it connected to Cedar Street south of the bridge. The name Burrard was simply extended and Cedar disappeared.

In 1912, an English revue company called Karno’s Comedians performed in Vancouver. Included in the cast: Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Their real fame would come later.

The 1937 movie The Great Barrier was an adventure based on the CPR’s crossing of the Rocky Mountains. The locomotive used in the movie that brings the first train in was No. 374, the actual locomotive that came into Vancouver in 1887, and which is now on display in the Roundhouse in Yaletown.

In wartime 1943, Kitsilano Beach was used for rehearsing commando beach assaults.

In 1928, on Jan. 1, 16-year-old Ivy Granstrom made her first entry into the chilly waters of English Bay in the Polar Bear Swim. Granstrom, blind from birth, would go on to appear at 77 consecutive polar bear events. In 1918, RAF pilot Lieut. Victor Bishop crashed his little H-2 “flying boat” onto the roof of a West End doctor. He stepped out of the plane into the upstairs hallway of the house and, with the assistance of one of the residents, walked down the stairs to the front door and outside through a gathered crowd to a waiting ambulance.

Dolls House Miniatures orpheum theatre, vancouver city hall