Author: Vancouver History

Why is an elementary school in Vancouver named for the Australian aviator Charles Kingsford-Smith, the first man to fly across the Pacific Ocean, and the first to fly across both the Pacific and the Atlantic? The answer: he and his family once lived in Vancouver.

Even when Vancouver was very young and very small, famous people began to drop by. Sometimes they weren’t famous yet: on May 8, 1911, when Fred Karno’s entertainment troupe from England began a week-long engagement at the Orpheum Theatre (not the present one) at Pender and Howe Streets, one of the performers was a hugely gifted 22-year-old Charlie Chaplin.

It’s not widely known, but three or four chunks of land in Metropolitan Vancouver were once owned by the famous English writer, Rudyard Kipling.

When Kipling first visited Vancouver in June 1889, (during a tour of North America), he was, at 23, just beginning to be famous.

On September 27, 1979 street photographer Foncie Pulice took his last picture. Foncie and his Electric-Photo camera had been a familiar sight on city streets for a jaw-dropping 45 years. He’d begun as a 20-year-old away back in 1934…