Author: Vancouver History

On April 3, 1956 there was an attempted bank holdup on North Road in which the bad guys used a machine gun for the first time in Greater Vancouver crime history….

It’s one of the great houses in the city, a fixture on Point Grey Road for more than 90 years. But Brock House began as the Gilman house, named for Philip Gilman, a mining engineer who bought two-and-a-half acres on the Point Grey waterfront, had noted architect Samuel Maclure design the home (with eight fireplaces), and moved in with his wife and two sons…

D-Day, on June 6, 1944 is a date virtually everyone knows: it marked the invasion at Normandy. More than a thousand planes and gliders began dropping paratroopers into Normandy in the dark hours before dawn. The push to recapture the Nazi-occupied continent was under way….

Interurban streetcar service on the line between Vancouver and Steveston in Richmond began July 4, 1905. One of the cars that served that route from opening day—No. 1207, and still with us— was built in the BC Electric Railway’s own shops at the south end of 12th Street in New Westminster….

On August 1, 1936 the Olympic Games began in Berlin. Covering the event for The Vancouver Sun was 28-year-old Erwin Swangard. Sitting in the stands observing the activities: German Chancellor Adolf Hitler….