![Terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver, B.C. [CVA 1376-375.52]](https://vancouverhistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/0bdee023-eafa-43d6-8488-3ab9f10d9e26-A71380-800x445.jpg)
April 26, 2021, marks Vancouver’s 135th birthday. On that day 135 years earlier, the little sawmill community of Granville was reborn as the brand new city of Vancouver.
The story has often been told how the Canadian Pacific Railway chose to locate its Pacific terminus at Granville instead of Port Moody in return for a large land grant from the provincial government.
Vancouver’s Robert Watt, a stained-glass enthusiast, says that if you stand in Holy Trinity Cathedral in New Westminster on a clear, early morning you will see the three great stained glass windows there on the east wall behind and above the altar begin to glow. “The window on the left as you face the altar is a memorial to the late Dr. A. W. Sillitoe…
Read More![Chinatown [Image: Vancouver Courier]](https://vancouverhistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/chinatown-800x445.jpg)
Largely forgotten since his death in 1971, Wong Foon Sien was perhaps the most influential person in Vancouver’s Chinatown, if not in Canada, in the easing of restrictions of the immigration laws. In the late 1940s, the Chinese in Canada were allowed to bring in from China their spouses, unmarried children under 21…
Read More
The late actor Victor McLaglen (an Oscar winner for The Informer, and an unforgettable foe of John Wayne in The Quiet Man) was once a professional boxer. In fact, he once fought world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in a bout in Vancouver!
Read More
It turns out there are lots of performers, past and present, born in Metropolitan Vancouver, who have made their mark on TV and in the movies. (One of B.C.’s most famous names is Pamela Anderson, but she was born in Ladysmith, on Vancouver Island, so she doesn’t qualify for this list.
Read More