One of the most remarkable people in Vancouver history, Charles Allen Crane, who died in 1965, was both blind and deaf. He couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t hear anything. Yet he attended UBC for two years, worked as a reporter for the Ubyssey, wrote for the Province, became a star varsity wrestler and worked as a “translator”…

In 1977 Leonard Schein decided to buy a movie theatre. Schein has made himself part of Vancouver’s entertainment history with his years-long dedication to bringing us good movies. He arrived here in 1973 from Los Angeles after a two-year detour through Saskatchewan, where he studied at the University of Saskatchewan

Walter Mulligan, who got to be Vancouver’s chief of police on January 27, 1947, looked like a cop. He was six foot two, beefy at 230 pounds, tough, seasoned and confident. He sounded like a cop. Even his name was a perfect cop name: Mulligan…..

English music hall queen Marie Lloyd’s reputation for doing “blue” material was well established by the time she got to Vancouver. It got her into trouble here. From Ivan Ackery’s book of reminiscences, Fifty Years on Theatre Row, he quotes an oldtimer, Teddy Jamieson, who recalled a visit to the (old) Orpheum Theatre…

A letter many years ago from Canon Stanley Higgs, the well-known (and since deceased) Anglican priest, set me off on the trail of the late J. Williams Ogden (1858-1936). “There are some old paintings at Fairview Baptist Church in Vancouver,” Canon Higgs had written. “I think you might be interested in them.”