I'm back and so are my tours! I am starting up my regular East End (Strathcona) tours on Saturday, May 19th.
EAST END (NORTH OF HASTINGS) HISTORY WALK
10am Departure from 611 Alexander
The largely industrialized area of
the Strathcona North of Hastings is the oldest part of the city of Vancouver.
Here was the first European settlement on the south side of Burrard Inlet, a
small village that grew up around the Hastings Sawmill, Vancouver’s first
industry.
The sawmill manager, R. H. Alexander
and Vancouver’s Bell-Irving family had their first stately homes on the 300
block of Alexander Street. 30 years later the 500 and 600 blocks of Alexander
was Vancouver’s Red Light District. There are still some original bordellos
standing.
Vancouver’s first Mayor, Malcolm A.
MacLean, as well as world-renowned theoretical physicist Shuichi
Kusaka, a protégé of Albert Einstein both lived on the 300-block of
East Cordova Street. One of the oldest houses still standing in Vancouver, the
Thomas Dunn house, is on the south side of the same block.
Though the massive forced
dislocation of Vancouver’s Nikkei (Japanese) community in 1942 changed the
neighbourhood forever, there are still many physical reminders of the time when
Powell Street was a vibrant, flourishing neighbourhood called “Little Tokyo”.
Oppenheimer Park, the site of the annual Powell Street Festival was once known
as Vancouver’s Hyde Park.
It was the scene of many labour demonstrations, and Pssst! Communists were
known to meet and plot at the World Hotel at Powell and Dunlevy.
Though many of the physical
reminders are now gone this neighbourhood, the oldest part of Strathcona and Vancouver,
is very rich in history.
Come for a two-hour walk as see what
is left. You will be amazed. Like my other tours, I will bring a binder filled
with old archival images of houses, buildings and people from days gone by.
This tour starts at 611 Alexander lasts approximately 2 hours and costs $20..
EAST
END (SOUTH OF HASTINGS) HISTORY WALK
2pm Departure from 696 Easy Hastings
The
route is a culmination of years of researching over 250 homes in the East End.
Although architecture is a theme in the tour, my focus is more on the social
history—the ebb and flow of different waves of immigrants who established
themselves here before moving on to other parts of the city. Most people know about
Little Italy, Hogan’s Alley, the East End’s early Jewish Community, and
Japantown, but did you know that there were whole blocks of Newfoundlanders and
a sizable Syrian colony here as well in the early 1900s?
The
tour touches on the impact and influences of portside industries (BC Sugar,
shipyards, etc.) prohibition, (the proliferation of bootlegging), the Oriental
Exclusion Act (bachelor rooming houses, etc.), the Japanese Canadian
internment, as well as the City Planning Department’s attempts to wipe out
“urban blight”. It also gives participants the chance to see the locations of
the previous homes of well-known East End residents, like pioneer female
aviator Tosca Trasolini, premier Dave Barrett, champion boxers Jimmy McLarnin
and Felice Di Palma (Di Palma boxed under the name Phil Palmer), Rabbi Nathan
Meyer Pastinsky, award-winning authors Paul Yee and Wayson Choy, Ross and Nora
Hendrix (Jimi’s grandparents), community activists Mary Lee Chan and Shirley
Chan, community leader and BC Supreme Court Judge Angelo Branca, as well as
k.d. lang.
From
sports heroes to gun-toting anti heroes, from bootleggers to humanitarians,
from hobo camps to labour activists, the East End has been home to them all.
Every house in this neighbourhood has its stories waiting to be discovered.
Come and hear some of them and see for yourself why Vancouver's first
neighbourhood is also its most fascinating.
This
tour leaves from the Heatley Block at 696 East Hastings (at Heatley), lasts approximately 2 hours and costs $20.
People
interested in doing both tours the same day get a special price of $30
per person. There are great lunch opportunities nearby, including the
very popular Au petit chavignol beside Les amis de fromage at 845 East
Hastings.
The reserve a space on either or both of these tours, e-mail me at historywalks@gmail.com
