Author: Vancouver History

On April 23, 1944 Jack Benny did his famous NBC radio show live from Vancouver to be broadcast all over North America. He brought his regular cast up from New York: Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Rochester, Dennis Day and announcer Don Wilson. What made the show particularly notable was that Mary Livingstone (real name Sadie Marks), although born in Seattle, had grown up in Vancouver.

The big new Golden Ears Bridge, connecting Surrey and the south shore of the Fraser to Maple Ridge, opened to vehicular traffic on June 16 and my wife Edna and I drove over it that day just to say we had. It’s a big, handsome structure, a kilometre long, and cost $800 million. We stopped for an ice cream treat on the north shore, then turned back.

1937 was an active year in Vancouver: the Vancouver Sun was burned out of its 125 West Pender headquarters and moved across the street…, we elected our first woman alderman (Helena Gutteridge), the Pattullo Bridge opened, construction started on the Lions Gate Bridge, we celebrated the coronation of King George VI, the Cave Supper Club began and the Lougheed Highway was opened to traffic. But all of these events pale into insignificance compared to the introduction of . . . wait for it! Sliced bread.

The novel Tobacco Road had been out for 21 years, a play based on it ran on Broadway for 3,182 performances, and a movie had appeared in 1941, but when the stage production of the book by Erskine Caldwell on life in the southern USA hit Vancouver in 1953 there was one hell-thumpin’ ruckus in these here parts.

In 1930 Paul Whiteman’s band was a very big deal. A Vancouver Sun story April 2 on his impending arrival from the States to play in the Vancouver Theatre referred to the April 4 visit as an “epoch . . . one of the outstanding events of Vancouver’s musical history.” The visit “is being looked forward to by thousands of lovers of music. Booking is going ahead merrily at the box office . . .” . . . Alas, it was not to be. . .