Some odd stuff has happened in Vancouver's past. Here's a sampling (click to view):

· 1792 to 1899
· 1900 to 1922
· 1923 to 1930
· 1931 to 1935
· 1936 to 1940
· 1941 to 1946
· 1947 to 1954
· 1955 to 1960
· 1961 to 1965

From 1900 to 1922

For more details on these items see the Chronology for the year cited.

• In 1900 the Canadian Pacific Railway financed a film to promote Canadian immigration to the west. It took two years to film because the film-makers weren’t allowed to show snow.
• In 1901, on June 23, there was snow in South Vancouver.
• In 1902 movie goers in Vancouver were informed they could see THE ERUPTION OF MOUNT PELEE—BY ELECTRICITY at the Electric Theatre on Cordova Street. (This was a reconstruction, in a studio, of the actual 1902 Mount Pelee disaster. The film makers used a table-top model with flour bursting out of it.)
• In 1903 W.S. Holland shot and killed a timber wolf at the corner of Burnaby and Cardero Streets in the West End.
• In 1905 the first auto club race around Stanley Park was held. Eleven cars started, five finished. All the finishers were Oldsmobiles.
• In 1908 “Jeff, the Boxing Kangaroo” amused big crowds in Vancouver at the Pantages Theatre.
• In 1909 world heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson fought an exhibition bout in Vancouver with boxer Victor McLaglen, who would later become an Oscar-winning movie actor.
• In 1909 Vancouver took its first mechanized ambulance out for a test drive and ran over and killed an American tourist.
• All the grey squirrels in Stanley Park today are the offspring of a gift of eight pairs from New York City in 1909.
• In 1910 a man in Surrey was fined $10 for speeding in his 1907 Marion car. He was travelling at 12 miles per hour.
• In 1910 Vancouver’s Cedar Cottage neighborhood got its name from an Interurban train stop there. The station, in turn, was named for the Cedar Cottage Brewery.
• In 1910 a young English actor named William Pratt arrived in Vancouver, got work as a carpenter helping to build what became the PNE. Later he moved to Hollywood and changed his name to Boris Karloff.
• 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.
• In 1912 an English revue company called Karno’s Comedians performed in Vancouver. Included in the cast: Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.
• In 1914 the mayor of Vancouver banned performances by visiting English music-hall performer Marie Lloyd. At one point in her show she had lifted her floor-length gown up two inches to reveal a watch on her ankle. The shameless hussy!
• In 1917 the Province reported that BC women had now won the right to vote. The story was located deep within a report from the legislature, preceded by some news on agricultural matters.
• In 1917, during a business trip to Portland, Vancouver businessman Alvo von Alvensleben was arrested. It seems British intelligence officials had sent a list of "dangerous German spies" to the U.S. Justice Department, and Alvensleben’s name topped the list!
• In 1918 RAF pilot Lt. Victor Bishop crashed his little H-2 “flying boat” down 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.
• In 1919 more than two thousand pieces of Vancouver property were listed in the newspapers for sale by auction. They had been seized for non-payment of taxes, some for amounts less than $10.
• In 1920, in November, construction on the Peace Arch was stopped to allow time for the concrete to set. It would not resume until June, 1921.
• In 1920, in Surrey, loggers found an eagle’s nest so big it was too large for a farm wagon to haul away.
• In 1920, in Port Coquitlam, a fire destroyed the firehall and half the buildings in the downtown. The fire had started in the fire chief’s kitchen above the firehall.
• In 1921, Henry Green, musical director of an orchestra that became the genesis of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, skipped town, with the orchestra’s money, never to be heard from again.
• The statue (erected in 1921) in front of Vancouver’s CPR station of the angel bearing a fallen soldier heavenward is an exact replica of statues in Winnipeg and Montreal.
• In 1922 Joe Fortes, celebrated English Bay lifeguard, died, aged about 57. His funeral at Holy Rosary Cathedral was the most heavily attended in Vancouver history to that time, with thousands outside the packed church.
• 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.

1923 to 1930 »