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Vancouver Was Awesome: Moon Glow Cabaret, 1966
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. The Moon Glow was already closed for a few years when this photo was taken, but in the late 1950s and early 60s, it was an R&B club. Tommy...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Greer’s Beach, 1861 and 1908
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. According to City Archivist Major Matthews, the top image is the first known portrayal of what’s now Vancouver. It’s a copy of a watercolour...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: The O’Brien Sisters, 1935
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. The On-To-Ottawa Trek began as a two month-long protest in Vancouver by a couple thousand unemployed men on strike from the relief camps that...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: The Supremes, 1965
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Poster for the Supremes at the legendary Cave Supper Club. I’m not positive what year this was, but if it was 1965, the Supremes (sans Diana)...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Bob Bouchette and the Birds’ Paradise, 1934
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Bob Bouchette was the Vancouver Sun’s most popular journalist in the 1930s. His colleague at the paper, Pierre Berton, described Bouchette as...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Granville, 1884
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. David H Nelson arrived in Gastown in 1881. Years later he described his arrival in the young settlement: I came from Wiarton, Ont., when I was...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Gas Mask demo, 1940s
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Here’s one that speaks for itself. It was the most popular 2012 post over at our tumblr blog, and it is pretty awesome. Source: Dominion Photo...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Hollywood Hospital, 1959
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Before the hippies discovered LSD, an eccentric and enigmatic millionaire, “Doctor” Al Hubbard, was giving it out like candy to influential...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Queer Ducks, 1977
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Stanley Park zoo staff noticed something was up with the ducks in Lost Lagoon back in the swingin’ seventies. “Something has to be done,” zoo...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: St Valentine’s Day Massacre Wall, 1971-1976
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. In 1971, an American showbiz entrepreneur named George Patey opened a 1920s-themed restaurant and club called the Banjo Palace at 157...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Don’t Argue, 1920s
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Con Jones came to Vancouver from Australia in the early 1900s. He opened a chain of billiard halls/tobacco shops using this brand as his...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: The Pigeon Park Story
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. A big headache for early Vancouver commuters was the CPR’s right-of-way that cut a diagonal line from Burrard Inlet to False Creek and created...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Charlie Chaplin, 1911 and 1912
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Charlie Chaplin came to Vancouver twice for week long engagements at the Orpheum Theatre with the Fred Karno London Company, first in May 1911...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Archives of the Planet, 1926
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Albert Kahn was a stinking rich French photographer when he discovered colour photography not long after the Lumière brothers made their...
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Arsenal Pulp Press to publish VANCOUVER *WAS* AWESOME history book
Big news for us! We’ve penned a deal with Arsenal Pulp Press and our resident historian, Lani Russwurm, is currently working on a history book called VANCOUVER WAS AWESOME! Releasing this October, it...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Woodsmen of the West, 1908
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. After graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1896, Martin Grainger trekked out to the Klondike gold fields, served in the Boer War,...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: The Human Fly, 1918
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Harry Gardiner was a stunt man who earned his living climbing tall buildings in North America and Europe, with no special gear aside from his...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: On the Waterfront, 1918
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. After James Woodsworth was fired from his government research job in 1917 for opposing conscription, he left Winnipeg and headed west to...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: The Big Paint-In, 1966
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. When the BC government decided to install a fountain at the court house (today’s VAG), the premier insisted that the work be kept secret until...
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Vancouver Was Awesome: Ada Bricktop Smith, 1920
A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense. Ada “Bricktop” Smith was a singer and dancer from Chicago who spent 1919 and 1920 in Vancouver with the house band at the Patricia Café....
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