1935
Above:Mr. and Mrs. Gerry McGeer and Rt. Hon. R.B. Bennett riding in touring car at Brockton Point during Dominion Day celebration.
[Image: Vancouver City Archives AM54-S4-: Port N157.1
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You’ll note that these years include events listed under “Also in . . .” These are events for which we don’t have a specific date. If YOU know the specific date of an event shown there, please notify us . . . and cite the source! Many thanks!
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January 2 Gerry McGeer took office as mayor of Vancouver. “McGeer,” wrote Donna Jean McKinnon in The Greater Vancouver Book, “was voted into office on a mandate to fight crime, and to do away with slot machines, gambling, book-making, white slavery and corruption in the police force. True to his promise, McGeer confiscated 1,000 slot machines in his first week. His extraordinarily zealous and vigorous management style led many to call him a megalomaniac. He was both praised and vilified for his reading of the riot act, putting down a strike by 2,000 workers from federal government camps and calling in police to arrest the leaders. In April 1935 unemployed men from the camps converged on Vancouver, marched to Victory Square and demanded financial assistance from the city. A delegation paid a call to the mayor. The mayor had them arrested and then went to Victory Square and read the Riot Act, calling on the crowd to disperse. That night, police raided worker headquarters, a riot ensued and police on horseback were called out to control it. This led to a serious fracture in the population, with Mayor McGeer firmly entrenched on the side of the moneyed interests of the city fearful of communist takeover, while alienating many would-be supporters who sympathized with the strikers. Meanwhile, his proposal to float baby bonds to finance a new city hall opened him to charges of extravagance and corruption, further alienating him from more voters in the city. He won his choice of Strathcona Park at 12th Avenue and Cambie for the city hall.”
January 3 At the first meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners under Mayor Gerry McGeer the board appointed Col. W.W. “Billy” Foster, DSO as the city’s chief constable, succeeding John Cameron.
January 11 Aviator Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.
January 21 Vancouver got 43 centimetres (17 inches) of snow, still the 24-hour record for snowfall. One result: the roof of the Hastings Park Forum collapsed. There were no injuries.
January A severe snow and ice storm, together with flooding, hit the Fraser Valley, cutting communication and transportation links and causing much other damage.
February 4 West Vancouver No. 5 ferry sinks after colliding with the CPR Princess Alice off Prospect Point. A woman passenger loses her life.
March 1 In Burnaby, the B.C. Provincial Police took over from the municipal police. They will enforce the law there until August, 1950 when the RCMP take over.
March 11 The Bank of Canada was founded. Its first home in Vancouver was in Page House at 330 West Pender Street, famous for its stained-glass ceiling. “Back then,” Robin Ajello has written, “bank robberies were a popular craze, so the bank had a machine gun installed to defend the enlarged vault that at one time held all of the bank’s B.C. assets. Cash was safely lugged in and out along a since-walled-off tunnel that ran underground to West Hastings Street.”
March 19 Thomas Owen Townley, former Vancouver mayor, died in Florida at age 72. He was born August 18, 1862 in Newmarket, Ontario. In Mayor Townley’s year in office, 1901, the largely British population of Vancouver joined commonwealth nations around the world to mourn the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 after 63 years as monarch. Later that year, when the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York came to Vancouver as part of the Empire Tour, Mayor Townley was said to have been a gracious host to the couple on behalf of the city. After losing in a bid for a second term he became registrar of land titles in Vancouver, a position he had held previously in New Westminster. He is also remembered as the commander of Vancouver’s first militia.
March 21 John Grove, lighthouse keeper, died. He was about 71. He was born in 1864 in London, Eng. Grove served as lighthouse keeper at Prospect Point, later at Brockton Point (1895-1930). From 1888 he lived in a cottage on the rocks until the station was electrified in January 1926. “One of the lowest paid workers in Vancouver,” Constance Brissenden writes, “he received $25 per month but his station was coveted for its free housing and use of two acres in Stanley Park. To make extra money, Grove ran a lemonade stand for tourists until the park board complained and it was closed down.”
March 23 The Gregory Tire and Rubber Company of Port Coquitlam, which had gone into receivership in 1933, was purchased by Huntington Rubber Mills of Canada.
March 28 F.M. Rattenbury, 67, the architect who gave Vancouver the courthouse now occupied by the Vancouver Art Gallery, was murdered. Francis Mawson Rattenbury, born October 11, 1867 in Leeds, England came to B.C. at 25 and was quickly commissioned to design the provincial legislature, then the Empress Hotel, later the Vancouver courthouse. But then commissions began drying up, and “Ratz” got into real trouble when he began an affair with a married woman named Alma Pakenham. They both divorced and fled to England where the 19-year-old family chauffeur, who had started getting it on with Alma, bashed in Rattenbury’s head with a mallet.
March Standard Oil purchased 55 acres of land at the north foot of Willingdon in Burnaby for a refinery. The company’s entry into B.C. had been launched in a two-room suite of the Hotel Vancouver. The company moved quickly, purchased local oil distribution companies, acquired service stations, established dealerships, started a new refinery (processing California crude oil) and acquired a tanker, the B.C. Standard. The present-day company that inherited the Standard Oil mantle in this part of the world: Chevron.
April 15 A Grand Rally of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides at Hastings Park welcomed Lord and Lady Baden-Powell.
April 23 Relief camp men parade and demonstrate in the Hudson’s Bay Store. Mayor McGeer reads the Riot Act in Victory Square, police disperse the protesters.
May 4 Frank William Hart, theatre entrepreneur, died in Prince Rupert, aged 78. He was born June 1, 1856 in Rock Island or Galesburg, Ill. Hart’s Swedish family came here from the US. “In December 1887,” Constance Brissenden wrote in The Greater Vancouver Book, “he built Vancouver’s first theatre, Hart’s Opera House on Carrall Street, presenting amateur shows, touring companies, variety and vaudeville. Dubbed ‘the skating rink,’ the 15-metre by 40-metre arena housed 800 theatregoers or 250 roller skaters. When the Imperial Opera House opened in April 1889 Hart’s closed. The building became a furniture warehouse. By 1912 Hart had moved to Prince Rupert and began selling furniture.”
Also May 4 Edward Faraday Odlum, author and scientist, died in Vancouver, aged 84. He was born November 27, 1850 in Tullamore, Ont., became a teacher. He taught in Ontario, in 1886 became the president of a college with 600 students. He came to Vancouver April 15, 1889. Odlum built the first electric arc light used here (used for football games) and first public telephone. He owned extensive lands. In 1892 he was elected alderman in Vancouver. He was author of A History of British Columbia (1906). President, Arts and Science Association of Vancouver. He was the father of Victor Odlum, soldier and publisher.
May 5 Writer Jan Drabek was born in Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia. See this site.
May 10 The Vancouver Sun reported today, via Canadian Press, that Alma Rattenbury, widow of the recently murdered architect Francis Rattenbury (see the March 28th item above), had been cited in his will.
“Datelined Bournemouth, Eng., May 10 To his handsome young wife, who is shortly to be tried on a charge of murdering him, Francis Rattenbury bequeathed his jewelry and personal effects, and an allowance of $350 a month, probate of the will revealed today.
“Rattenbury, distinguished 67-year-old architect, who spent many years on Canada’s Pacific Coast, directed the monthly allowance should continue during his wife’s lifetime. The rest of his property, subject to his wife’s interest, was bequeathed to his two adult children, now in Canada. The value of the English estate was only $2,500, but it was understood the bulk of his property was in Canada and elsewhere.
“Mrs. Alma Rattenbury, 31, and her chauffeur, George Stoner, 19, have been committed for trial at the Old Bailey on a charge of murder of Rattenbury, who died four days after receiving head wounds in his villa here. Mr. Rattenbury’s two children in Canada are Francis Burgoyne Rattenbury, 36, of Vancouver, and Mary, now Mrs. Eric Burton of Victoria. These children were by his marriage to the former Miss Florence Eleanor Nunn of Victoria.”
May 19 T.E. Lawrence, also known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” died in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.
May 26 Twins Pat and Jim Carney were born in Shanghai. Pat became a journalist, a business consultant and eventually a Canadian senator, Jim went into radio production and was with the CBC for many years.
May Sponsored by the CCF the Burns and Le Tourneau Circus Company delighted audiences in Burnaby.
May Vancouver boxer Jimmy McLarnin lost his world welterweight boxing title again, this time for good. In 1933 he’d won the welterweight championship, kayoing Young Corbett. Then he lost the championship to Barney Ross in May, 1934, regained it from Ross in September, 1934, and lost it, again to Ross, in May, 1935.
June 3 One thousand unemployed men boarded freight cars in Vancouver to begin the “On to Ottawa” trek protesting conditions for the unemployed. They were turned back at Regina.
June 4 From Page One of the Province: “A total of 6,255 single men were in relief camps in British Columbia last December 31, and 3,536 last April 30, according to a return tabled in the House of Commons. Since the date of inception of relief camps in the province in October, 1932, until last September, the average government expenditure for each man per day was $1.30, the return showed.”
June 6 Joy Kogawa, daughter of an Anglican minister, was born Joy Nozonie Nokayama in Vancouver. (Her superb award-winning 1981 novel Obasan is a memoir of Japanese-Canadian internment.)
June 11 First issue of “baby bonds” for funding the building of Vancouver’s city hall.
June 18 Wearing his Victoria Cross and Military Medal and carrying the Union Jack, James [Mickey] O’Rourke led a parade of 1,000 striking waterfront workers in what has come to be known as the Battle of Ballantyne pier. Visit this site.
July 6 The Dalai Lama was born.
July 20 Public tennis courts were opened opposite Exhibition Park.
July 26 The Lyric Theatre on Granville Street opened to feature movies. It had opened in 1891 as the Vancouver Opera House, later (1913) became the Orpheum—not the present one—with vaudeville acts. The Lyric will close in December of 1960 before being demolished for development of Pacific Centre.
July 29 Poet Pat (Patricia Louise) Lowther was born in Vancouver.
July 31 Tragedy at Alta Lake when a Boeing flying boat piloted by W.R. McCluskey, manager of Pioneer Airways, crashed while attempting a take-off from the lake. The pilot didn’t have enough lift to clear the trees at the end of the lake, and in attempting to turn the plane to re-land on the lake side-slipped and plunged to the earth. Aboard were three passengers, UBC Dean Reginald W. Brock and his wife Mildred and a David Sloan. McCluskey and Brock, who were sitting in the cockpit, were killed upon impact. Mrs. Brock and Mr. Sloan were not killed in the crash but were severely injured; Mrs. Brock died en route to hospital, Sloan died 10 days later in hospital. Making the crash particularly sad was the fact that two of the Brocks’ sons, David and Tommy, witnessed it. (David Brock (1910-1978) is the prominent writer and broadcaster.)
Reginald Brock was one of Canada’s leading geologists. He graduated from Queens with an MA in geology, and worked as a geologist with the Dawson Survey of B.C. (1897). He was chair of the geology department at Queens from 1902 to 1907, became Director of the Geological Survey of Canada from 1907 to 1914. Brock was one of the first four teachers hired by UBC president Frank Wesbrook. He was named dean of applied science but served in WWI before resuming his duties.
August 3 Future politician and house speaker Claude Richmond was born.
August 10 Visiting author Will Durant spoke at the Auditorium.
August 13 Broadcaster and actor Norm Grohmann was born in Vermilion, Alberta.
Summer The re-opening of the Second Narrows Bridge in 1934 had come too late for William Shelly’s company, Grouse Mountain Highway and Scenic Resort Limited. By the summer of 1935, even though 8,000 people were coming up the mountain every month, the company was unable to pay its bills. The property and everything on it—road, chalet, light and power lines, water and sewage systems, still-unfinished buildings and all—reverted to the District of North Vancouver for non-payment of $20,000 in taxes.
The road up Grouse Mountain was ordered closed. It would stay closed for many years.
Summer The Kitsilano Showboat started, a forum for amateur talent that continues to this day.
September 5 Charlotte Acres became the first Canadian girl to win a world professional swimming championship. This photo of Charlotte was taken at the 1935 Canadian National Exhibition, where she won the five-mile swimming championship.
September 20 George Henry Cowan, lawyer, author and public speaker, died in Vancouver. He was born in 1858 in Watford, Canada West, arrived in Vancouver in 1893. He practiced law, was appointed Queen’s Counsel for the Dominion Government in 1896, King’s Counsel for the B.C. government in 1905. An anti-Asiatic, he drafted the Chinese Head Tax law. He was the author of Better Terms for British Columbians (1904). Cowan was a founder of Vancouver’s Conservative Association, and MP for Vancouver from 1908 to 1911, when he chose not to seek re-election. He bought 1,000 acres of land on Bowen Island (Point Cowan), built cottages for visitors and ran a 12-acre farm raising purebred Ayrshires.
September 30 Porgy and Bess premiered on Broadway.
Also September 30 Singer Johnny Mathis was born.
September A horseshoe pitch opened in Burnaby’s Central Park. It had been built by residents on relief, or working out delinquent taxes.
October 5 Ground was broken at Strathcona Park to mark the beginning of construction of the new city hall, the city’s sixth. The silver spade used in the ceremony to start the digging was presented by Alderman Halford Wilson to a beaming Mayor Gerry McGeer.
Just a few months into his first term in 1935 McGeer led the fight to place a new city hall for Vancouver in the block bounded by Cambie Street, West 12th Avenue, Yukon and West 11th, then occupied by Strathcona Park. A squabble over the building’s location had been going on for a decade. McGeer also led the decision to accept the design submitted by the architectural firm of Townley Matheson.
That design was not greeted with unanimous cries of admiration.
One letter to McGeer read: “Have you no eye for beauty? Why put up an eyesore and . . . a pile of concrete like that modernistic monstrosity pictured in the local papers? It looks just like Nelson’s Laundry. It is a crime to put up a filthy looking structure like that . . . On such a beautiful site it is doubly bad.”
Architectural historian Harold Kalman, in his invaluable book on the city’s buildings, Exploring Vancouver, says of Vancouver’s city hall: “The hard-edged classicism of the austere white walls and column-like shafts appears in government buildings of the 1930s from Munich to Moscow.”
The Strathcona Park site was favored by McGeer for several reasons. It was high, so the building would be seen from many parts of the city, and would itself provide good views. The land was already owned by the city, and there would be lots of room for the building and landscaped grounds around it. (2005: But not for parking!) It would spark an extension of the Cambie streetcar line and that, in turn, would spur development of the area.
In addition, the canny McGeer wanted to cement links with the recently (1929) annexed municipalities of South Vancouver, the northern boundary of which had been just four blocks to the south on 16th Avenue, and of Point Grey.
A special bond issue was announced to raise money for the $1 million building, but it ran into severe opposition from local businessmen. Most of the opposition to the Strathcona site had come from the business community. It wanted city hall downtown so they wouldn’t have to go so far to get to it.
The city archives files yield, for example, a June 25, 1935 letter to McGeer from the Vancouver Real Estate Exchange Board, saying “the Strathcona Park site is not, from many points of view, the best site for the new city hall.” An unnamed member of the Board of Trade scrawled across the back of a form appealing for bond purchases that “the location selected is a most unpopular choice, and many would-be subscribers have withheld their subscriptions on that account.”
Still another letter harrumphed, “We do not relish the idea of going some two-and-a-half miles from the centre of the business section of this city to do business in this proposed new city ‘pile.’ Change your location to the Central School site, and we do not think you will have too much trouble selling your bonds.”
If those businessmen had prevailed, city hall today would be in that “Central School site,” the block bounded by Pender and Dunsmuir, Cambie and Hamilton, and immediately north of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
October 8 CKNW newscaster John McKitrick was born.
October 14 Federal election. William Lyon Mackenzie King became prime minister. H.H. Stevens won the sole seat for his Reconstruction Party, out of 174 candidates.
October Work starts on the Pattullo Bridge (it will open November 15, 1937)
November 6 Aviator Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith went down somewhere in or near “the shark-infested Bay of Bengal.” He had been on a mail flight from Allahabad, India to Singapore, an over-water distance of 1,360 miles (2,188 km). Stories of Kingsford-Smith’s disappearance dominated newspapers in late 1935. He was never found. At the suggestion of then Vancouver city archivist Major J. S. Matthews, an elementary school at 6901 Elliott in Vancouver was named for Kingsford-Smith. In June of 1959 a portrait of the flyer by Australian artist William Dargie was presented to the school.
November 8 The Province had an interesting Page One story: a 15-year-old local kid had left home in 1932 to go swimming in the Fraser River. He never returned. His parents had reconciled themselves to the fact he drowned. He showed up three years later, said he’d been working on a farm in Toronto.
Also November 8 The City of Vancouver Archives received a gift from the CPR: an inch of the rail from Craigellachie, site of The Last Spike.
November 11 The cornerstone for St. James Anglican Church at Gore and Cordova streets was laid on Remembrance Day, with the ceremony conducted by the Most Rev. A.U. dePencier, Archbishop of New Westminster. “Prominent citizens, representatives of boy scout and girl guide troops took part in the service,”a newspaper report ran, “and the Salvation Army band provided musical accompaniment.” The church’s architect was Adrian Gilbert Scott, and it’s said he was influenced by a building he had seen in Cairo, Egypt! Architect Arthur Erickson says this is the most successful building in Vancouver.
November 14 King Hussein of Jordan was born.
November 15 A young schoolboy named John Cullen buys (for 35 cents) his first record, a song called Don’t Give Up the Ship, warbled by Dick Powell. In future years “Boy Disc Jockey” Jack Cullen’s collection of records, transcriptions and discs will become one of the world’s largest, and his late-night CKNW show, The Owl Prowl, will be hugely successful.
November 17 Writer/broadcaster Chuck Davis was born in Winnipeg. He came to Vancouver in 1944. See this site.
Also November 17 Author Audrey Thomas was born in Binghamton, New York. She came to Vancouver in 1969. See this site.
November 22 James Ramsay, biscuit maker, died in Vancouver, aged 68. He was born December 16, 1866 in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In 1891 (or 1892) he moved to Vancouver, began Ramsay Bros. & Co., manufacturer of biscuits, candies and syrup. The factory bought out the four-storey Imperial Syrup Factory at 998 West Powell Street. Ramsay’s three brothers and one sister worked with him. He was a Vancouver alderman and an MLA (Vancouver), retiring from the latter post after four years because of ill health. Ramsay was chair of the Vancouver School Board for ten years, a president of the YMCA and served on the board of Vancouver General Hospital. His many activities included a term as president of the Canadian and the B.C. Manufacturer’s Associations.
December 1 Author and poet George Bowering was born.
December 18 A U.S. plan for the “invasion” of Canada was, it is said, prepared in 1935 at the US Army War College, G-2 intelligence division, and submitted December 18. Rather than direct you to a site that outlines the “invasion,” we suggest you go to a search engine, enter “invasion of Canada -1935” and take your pick of the many sites that discuss it.
December 21 Future Governor General Ed Schreyer was born.
December 23 Commercial artist Stan Buchanan was born. He created the cartoon pooch that was CKNW’s logo for many years.
December 25 Entertainer Little Richard was born.
December J.S. Ross, the first editor of the Vancouver Daily News (1886), died.
December Ottawa was reported to be considering raising unemployment insurance to $10 per week. This would give clients the same income as old age pensioners.
December The Highland Association (An Cumunn Gaidhealch) held the B.C. Gaelic Mod, the first annual Gaelic-language music and literary festival outside of the British Isles. Affiliated with the National Mod in Scotland, the B.C. version regularly attracted entrants from all over North America.
December Vancouver voters decided to end the ward system. We’re grateful to site visitor Lani Russwurm for this note on that event. She quotes a 1981 MA thesis by UBC student Andrea Barbara Smith, titled “The Origins of the NPA: A Study in Vancouver Politics 1930-1940.” From Page 46: “Vancouver citizens voted in favour of change in December 1935. Turnout for the plebiscite was low—only 19 per-cent—but the average percentage of voters in favour varied little from ward to ward with a high city-wide average of 69 percent supporting the introduction of an at-large electoral system. In March 1936, the provincial government amended the Charter to abolish wards.”
In a footnote on page 53, Ms. Smith quotes City Clerk Fred Howlett from a Vancouver Sun story December 11, 1935 on the low voter turnout: “[I]nterest in the election seemed slacker than he had ever seen in his experience dating back to 1910, including 24 previous contests.’ Explanations offered: ‘no popular public issue’ and ‘light rain.’”
Also in 1935
A. McDiarmid became chief of the Vancouver Fire Department. He succeeded C.W. Thompson. McDiarmid will serve as chief until 1941.
Jack Wasserman, future columnist, came to Vancouver from Winnipeg with his family. He was about eight years old.
The appropriation for the Vancouver Public Library was nine cents more than it had been the year before.
Ivan Ackery became manager of the Orpheum Theatre. He would hold that title until 1969.
Architect Thomas Hooper died in Vancouver. Some of his work includes the Winch Building (now part of Sinclair Centre), the Spencer Building on Cordova, and the rear addition (Robson Street side) to the Vancouver Court House. A number of well-known architects apprenticed in his office, including J.Y. McCarter, architect of Vancouver’s Marine Building. There is an excellent article by Gudrun Will of the Courier here, a conversation with architectural historian Don Luxton, that has good detail on Hooper.
England’s Joyce Wethered, 34, considered by many the best female golfer ever, broke the course record at Jericho with a 73. (An indication of her skill: the great golfer Bobby Jones said: “I have never played against anyone and felt so outclassed.”)
The Terminal City Lawn Bowling Club was built at 1650 West 14th Avenue. It’s a heritage structure today.
The BC Archives has substantial holdings of radio broadcast recordings from privately-owned radio stations in Vancouver, Victoria and the BC interior, as well as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. These include acetate disc recordings from the period 1935 to 1960.
The Fraserview Golf Course, the first public golf course in Vancouver, opened. (In the early 1950s a residential development was built to the west of the course, and called Fraserview after it. The development’s curved streets would be named after famous golf courses of the world.)
The Quilchena Golf Club gave up its land and the CPR’s Land Department subdivided it, naming streets to commemorate the following: Brackenridge (former city engineer), Edgar (Civic Zoning Appeal Board member), Haggart (former building inspector), McMullen (former CPR solicitor), McBain (CPR land agent), and Townley (first land registrar).
The first provincial curling championship was held. Joe Dundas of Vancouver won.
George H. Cowan died, aged about 77. Born in 1858, he was a Vancouver lawyer who, in 1896, while campaigning for the Liberal-Conservative party by boat to represent Burrard in the federal election, was impressed by the southeast tip of Bowen Island. He bought 114 acres of it in 1899, and by 1917 had 1,000 acres, on which he built cottages for family and friends. Cowan Road on Bowen Island is named for him.
There was serious flooding in Pitt Meadows.
Three officers of the Vancouver Police Department are assigned to the Safety Patrol Program, which got its start in Vancouver in 1935 as the School Boy Patrol, and is believed to have been the first in North America.
W.W. Foster became Chief Constable of the Vancouver Police Department, succeeding John Cameron. Foster will serve to 1939.
A Croatian Cultural Hall was built in Vancouver, but it closed in 1946.
Forest Lawn Memorial Park at 3789 Royal Oak Avenue in Burnaby was started by Albert F. Arnold.
Viscount Byng of Vimy, who had been Governor General of Canada from 1921 to 1926, died. Lord Byng School is named for him.
A special committee of the BC Medical Association was formed to investigate what could be done about an increasing incidence of cancer and lack of treatment facilities. The committee worked with the Vancouver Board of Trade and the Greater Vancouver Health League. The first meeting was chaired by T.S. Dixon, president of the Board of Trade. Dr. C.W. Proud, a pioneer in treatment and research in cancer, set the objective of forming a cancer institute. The British Columbia Cancer Foundation was incorporated under the Canadian Societies Act. Borrowed funds were used to purchase 3.5 grams of radium, a precious commodity. The Hon. Eric Hamber, Lt.-Gov. of B.C., agreed to pay the interest on the loan for two years.
Beta Sigma Phi, an international woman’s organization founded in Abilene, Texas in 1931, established its first Canadian Chapter in Vancouver.
Sounding Board, a publication of the Vancouver Board of Trade, began. It appears 11 times a year.
The Blue Cab taxi company was founded by A. Pashos. By April of 1960 it had grown to operate 48 cars and merged with the 62-car Black Top fleet under the latter name.
The Vancouver Sun began to campaign for a convention bureau. Said Alderman J.J. McRae: “Our merchants need the business that conventions bring, and our city can stand a little of the cheer that throngs of visitors bring to the city.”
Bandleader Mart Kenney and his Western Gentlemen gain national renown with a series of CBC radio programs, notably the Sunday night favorite Sweet and Low. That show began this year, broadcast live and heard right across the country from the original Hotel Vancouver’s ritzy Spanish Grill. (In later years Kenney will again perform in the Spanish Grill, this time in the present Hotel Vancouver. That dining room is now called Griffins.)
The Fairleigh family built the Hollywood Theatre, and began to run it.
John M. Buchanan was appointed general manager of B.C. Packers.
Vancouver’s Annie Charlotte Dalton, poet, was named a Member, Order of the British Empire, the only woman poet so honored at the time.
Stuart Keate, future publisher of The Vancouver Sun, graduated from UBC. While at university he had worked on The Ubyssey, the student newspaper.
Vancouver’s Pearl Steen, who had been President of the National Council of Women, Vancouver Council of Women and Vancouver Women’s Canadian Club, became president of the Canadian Federation of Professional and Business Women’s Club.
Eileen Underhill, who had been four times B.C. mixed doubles champions (1928-31) did it again this year.
