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!

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.

It’s a cold misty morning in November 1936. On the tarmac at Vancouver airport sits a motley collection of small aircraft—a couple of Fairchild biplanes, a Golden Eagle, two Fleets, two Gypsy Moths. Standing by them, shivering in the coolness and looking up into the sky, seven women wait.

Lauchlan Hamilton was the CPR land commissioner who, starting in 1885 as a young man of 33, surveyed much of Vancouver and named many of its streets. (A plaque commemorating his work is on the building at the southwest corner of Hamilton and Hastings, once a bank.)….

What an astonishing life he led. We can be absolutely sure of just a handful of facts. He was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia on June 20, 1909 and died in Vancouver October 14, 1959. He claimed to have been, in his life before film, a police constable, sanitation engineer, treasure hunter, sheep castrator, shipmaster for hire, fisherman and soldier.