1955

Above: Fairacres, the current home of the Burnaby Art Gallery.
[Image: City of Burnaby]

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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 10 An agreement ratified by the notaries society and the law society—they had had disputes in the past over who could handle what—stipulated that need for a notarial appointment would arise when a vacancy occurred through resignation, retirement or death. The agreement capped the number of notaries at 330, the number practising on January 31, 1955. The notaries’ seals now were anchored to designated districts. (Notaries in Greater Vancouver hold more than half the 322 notarial appointments permitted by statute in 81 notarial districts in British Columbia.)

February 3 CKLG AM 1070 signed on with 1000 watts in North Vancouver. The ‘LG’ stood for Lions Gate. The station was owned by the Gibson Brothers, the logging family. Up against booming 50-kilowatt KNX Los Angeles on the same frequency, CKLG’s signal didn’t go much past south Vancouver after dark.

February 27 Teddy (Thadeous Sylvester) Lyons, BCER conductor, died in Vancouver, aged about 66. He was born c. 1889 in Portage La Prairie, Man. He came to Vancouver as a boy, at age 14 left school and worked at odd jobs. In 1910 he was hired as a BCER conductor. Teddy served for 40 years, 39 of them as a “spieler” announcing Vancouver highlights aboard the open Observation Car #124. Someone once calculated Teddy had travelled more than 580,000 miles (928,000 k/m) around the city. In 1944 a wartime manpower and electric shortage caused BCER to halt operations for one summer. The tours ended in September 1950, and Teddy retired in 1951.

March 7 Margaret Jean Gee was the first woman of Chinese descent to be called to the British Columbia bar.

March 13 Broadcaster Jim Fraser was born.

March 15 The City of Langley was incorporated out of what had been the Langley Prairie area of the Township. “The City of Langley,” Bob Groeneveld writes in The Greater Vancouver Book, “was born of dissent. Township reeve (mayor) George Brooks’s adamant ‘Not a nickel for streetlights for Langley Prairie!’ in the early 1950s became the watchword for discontented businessmen who—some of them since the early 1930s—had been fighting to secede from the Township. The dissidents were upset that the political clout of the Langley Prairie community, quickly becoming the commercial and business centre of Langley, did not match its economic importance (Langley Prairie accounted for 20 per cent of Langley’s tax base). Rumblings had been heard as far back as the early ’30s, but a significant move toward Langley Prairie independence came Dec. 7th, 1950, when Langley Board of Trade president Richard Langdon publicly supported secession. A secessionist campaign was led by a committee of prominent residents and businessmen, who succeeded in drawing an 85 per cent vote of Langley Prairie’s approximately 900 taxpayer to their side on September 24, 1954. Brooks’s words, emphasizing the disparity between tax dollars collected and spent in Langley Prairie, had provided the final wedge to officially split four square miles, with a total population of 2,025, off Langley Township to create Langley City on March 15th, 1955.”

March Reporter Ray Munro, frustrated at the Province’s refusal to print his allegations about Vancouver’s police chief Walter Mulligan, quit that paper and became the “Vancouver editor” of Toronto-based scandal sheet Flash Weekly. See the June 15 and December entries below.

April 24 A new era in rail travel in Canada began April 24, 1955. The Canadian Pacific Railway introduced The Canadian, an “ultra-modern, lightweight, highly attractive stainless-steel streamlined train.” The train would offer the world’s longest dome ride: 2,881.2 miles from Vancouver to Montreal. (4,637 k/m).

For a fuller description of this unique service, see this article.

Also April 24 “Amidst flashbulbs and the tears of fans” the last streetcar ran in Vancouver (it was on the Hastings route), ending 65 years of street railway service. Now the trolley bus was king. One of the passengers on that final run was Henry Ewert, an English teacher, who would also ride the interurbans on their final day in 1958. Ewert has published several excellent books on public transit in this area. Especially appealing is 2003’s Vancouver’s Glory Years: Public Transit 1890-1915, wonderfully and profusely illustrated, and written with Heather Conn. See this site.

May 10 Tommy Burns died in Vancouver, aged 74. He was the only Canadian to have been world heavyweight boxing champion. BC sports writer Tom Hawthorn has written, in part: “Burns, who had been born Noah Brusso in Hanover, Ontario, found religion later in life in California. He denounced the brutality of the sweet science of bruising, and apologized publicly for having made racist comments to [heavyweight champion Jack] Johnson in the ring.”

After retiring from the ring, Burns operated a pub in London and a speakeasy in New York. Then, he renounced the sinful life and embarked upon the sawdust trail as an evangelist. On one of his evangelical tours, he took a side-trip to Vancouver to visit a friend, John Westway, and he died there of a heart attack. They found on his body a calling card that read, “Tom Burns, demonstrator of Universal Love.” He was buried in Plot 3, Grave 451 of the Balsam Section of Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby. Only four people attended the service—a boxing fan and his wife, plus two grave diggers. The grave had no marker for six years, until a sportswriter’s campaign financed a plaque. And see this article.

June 3 Canadian Pacific Airlines inaugurated the first service between Vancouver and Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, over the North Pole. The 4,825-mile (7,765 k/m) journey took 18 hours.

June 15 Flash Weekly hit the streets in Vancouver with sensational charges by Vancouver editor Ray Munro about illegal doings by the city’s police chief, Walter Mulligan. Anticipating heavy demand, Flash printed 10,000 extra copies. They were gone within hours.

June 24 Detective Sergeant Len Cuthbert, implicated in the Mulligan scandal, shot himself. He survived, and would later testify against Mulligan. Not much later, Police Superintendent Harry Whelan shot himself. Whelan, who didn’t survive, was to have testified at the Mulligan inquiry.

Len Cuthbert, still recovering from his self-inflicted gunshot wound, would shock the inquiry with a nervous recitation of bootleggers’ payoffs made and split with Mulligan. Equally devastating was the testimony of Detective Sergeant Bob Leatherdale, an honest cop who not only refused to go along with the payoff scheme, but reported it to the city prosecutor, a judge and McGeer’s successor as mayor, Charles Thompson—all of whom, according to Flash editor Ray Munro, sat on the report.

June 25 Dave Mowat, now CEO of VanCity Credit Union, was born in Calgary.

June 30 Joe Paopao, future BC Lions quarterback and coach, was born in Honolulu. He grew up in Oceanside, California, would start with the Lions in 1979.

July 2 George Albert McGuire, pioneer dentist and MLA, died in Vancouver, aged 84. He was born April 7, 1871 in Mount Forest, Ont. A graduate of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons (Toronto) and U. of Maryland (DDS, 1892), he came to Vancouver in 1892 and engaged in the practice of dentistry until his retirement in 1951. He was a member of the Provincial Dental Council in 1905 and in 1906 was President of the British Columbia Dental Association. Dr. McGuire was active in real estate and investments. In 1903 he was elected president of the BC section of the Conservative Association of Canada. In 1907 he was elected MLA for Vancouver, launching a long political career. As minister of education he influenced the creation of UBC.

July 10 Michael Saba, silk merchant, died in Los Angeles, aged about 94. He was born c. 1861 in Beirut, Lebanon. “The Saba family,” Constance Brissenden writes, “arrived in Nanaimo in 1888, then moved to Vancouver. Mike opened Saba Brothers on West Hastings with younger brother Alexander (born c. April 7, 1881 in Beirut, died in 1970 in Vancouver) in November 1903. Two years later, the store moved to the 500 block Granville. Mike retired in 1921, selling his shares to Alex. By 1940, Saba’s was the largest retail house in Western Canada specializing in silks. Although hit by shortages in WWII, the business survived. In 1942, there was a riot when 500 women stampeded the store to buy 300 pairs of nylon stockings (no one was hurt). In 1947, the company built a new five-storey $250,000 store at 622 Granville. In 1954 Saba’s opened a Victoria outlet. Alex’s three sons, Edgar, Clarence and Arnold, later managed the business.”

July 17 Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California. A six-mile-long traffic jam ensued.

Also July 17 The first suicide leap off the Granville Street Bridge, opened a year-and-a-half before. A 69-year-old American leaped to his death.

July 19 Judy Garland, 33, performed in Vancouver. A 12-year-old Vancouver girl, Connie Brent, was among the more than 5,000 fans in Exhibition Forum for the show, sponsored by B’nai B’rith. Connie met with the star after the show and told her she wanted to learn how to sing “just half as good as you.”

July 22 Annacis Island, the first industrial park in Canada, was officially opened. The 1,200-acre island had been owned since 1951 by Grosvenor International, owned in turn by the Duke of Westminster. More than 1,300 government, civic and business leaders were on hand. The duke died (July 19, 1953, aged 74) before Annacis got going, but Grosvenor Estates—run by Lt. Col. Gerald and Lt. Col. Robert Grosvenor, beneficiaries of the duke’s family trust—proceeded with the plans. The Vancouver Sun, for July 21 (Page 8) reported that one factory was under construction, “with the possibility of a number of other firms also moving in.”

Today, the island is home to a variety of industrial concerns and a major sewage treatment facility. Prior to industrial development, the island had been used for farming and fishing. It’s hard to tell it’s an island these days: the land is covered by buildings, warehouses, roads and bridges.

The Grosvenor brothers were heirs to a very long tradition. That 1955 Sun story goes on to say: “The organization goes back 900 years in British commercial history and has built holdings of vast commercial and residential estates. The Grosvenor Estates include 600 acres in the heart of London, the Mayfair Estate across from Hyde Park and the Belgravia Estate, across from Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace.”

July A recording by Bill Haley and the Comets, titled Rock Around the Clock, landed on CJOR disc jockey Red Robinson’s desk. You know the rest.

August 26 The Vancouver Tourist Association became the Greater Vancouver Tourist Association. Vancouver Sun Director R. Rowe Holland told the Tourist Association he was “astounded” to find that information centre attendants at Stanley Park knew “nothing whatever” about the background of historic sites in the Greater Vancouver area. The Sun story also noted that member Jim Hughes stressed the need for Vancouver to have a full-time convention bureau.

And the same story noted that the “question most frequently asked by visitors on tours of the city is: ‘Where are the Mounties?’”

September 21 Retired lumberman Leon J. Koerner set up the Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation with funding of nearly $1 million. The Foundation finances educational, cultural and charitable projects.

September The Raven, UBC’s literary magazine, first appeared.

Also September A plaque was installed near the southeast corner of Cambie and Smithe in Vancouver to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Imperial Oil. That site was chosen because it was the location of Canada’s first gas station, opened in or around 1907 by Imperial Oil. The plaque isn’t there now. We don’t know where it is. If you know, tell us here.

The city’s first automobile was a Stanley Steamer, which arrived in 1899. Its first internal combustion auto came in 1904. The growth in demand for the latter led to the need for the gas station.

In a speech delivered at the plaque’s unveiling, city archivist Major J.S. Matthews (who in 1907 was working for Imperial Oil) recalled how that station began: “There had arrived in Vancouver a queer-looking vehicle called an automobile. We had read about them in magazines. One day the telephone rang. The call came from the Hastings Sawmill and the speaker asked me if we had any gasoline which could be used in automobiles.

“The office boy replied that we had three kinds: one was ’74’-brand Baume gasoline and was supplied to drug stores, who sold it to ladies for cleaning their gloves; the second kind was deodorized stove gasoline, used in plumber’s firepots for heating soldering irons; and the third kind was benzine, used for dissolving lacquer in the salmon canneries along the Fraser to prevent the salmon cans from rusting.

“The office boy went to the warehouse and told the foreman, Bud Mulligan, to send a four-gallon can of ‘74′ down to John Hendry, manager of the mill. That can was the first gasoline ever sold in British Columbia for motorcar use . . .”

We haven’t found a specific day for the opening of the service station, but Major Matthews says it opened in or near 1907. Read the rest of the story here.

October 1 Tour guide extraordinaire Jeff Veniot (vee-no) was born.

October 3 Frank Mackenzie Ross was sworn in as B.C.’s lieutenant-governor, succeeding Clarence Wallace.

October 6 Won Alexander Cumyow, court interpreter, died in Vancouver, aged 94. “He was born,” Constance Brissenden writes, “March 27, 1861 in Fort Douglas on Harrison Lake, the first Chinese-Canadian born in Canada. He moved to New Westminster as a boy, and later studied law. He was appointed a court interpreter in 1888, and served as the official Vancouver City Police court interpreter from 1904 to 1936. Cumyow spoke several Chinese dialects, also Chinook. He was a community leader with the Chinese Empire Reform Association and other groups, and a president of the Chinese Benevolent Society. He cast his first vote in 1890. He saw the vote taken away from the Chinese, but lived to see it returned in 1947.”

October 24 Vancouver police chief Walter Mulligan asked to be relieved of his duties.

November 4 Kingsford-Smith Elementary School opened in Vancouver, named for Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, the Australian aviator who was the first to fly the Pacific. The school got its name at the suggestion of city archivist Major J.S. Matthews, who recalled that Kingsford-Smith briefly lived here as a child with his family. He was lost at sea in 1935.

November 26 The first Grey Cup game was played in Vancouver. The two competing teams were Doug Walker’s Montreal Alouettes and Frank ‘Pop’ Ivy’s Edmonton Eskimos. Edmonton won 34-19.

November 30 Robert Winters, federal works minister in the St. Laurent government, laid the cornerstone of the new post office on West Georgia. It will open March 14, 1958.

Also November 30 On St. Andrew’s Day in 1955, 21 Scottish Canadians groups finally opened the United Scottish Cultural Centre at Fir and 12th Avenue in Vancouver. (In July, 1986, the centre would move into a new home at 8886 Hudson in Marpole.)

December Ex-police chief Walter Mulligan left for the USA, while the commission of inquiry into his activities was still going on. He got a job as a limousine-bus dispatcher at Los Angeles airport. The last day of the Mulligan inquiry would be January 27, 1956. The findings will be reported on in the 1956 chronology.

Also in 1955

Lions Gate Bridge was sold to the provincial government for $6 million, about half its appraised value.

St. Andrew’s Hall was chartered by the Province of British Columbia as a theological college. Buildings were completed in 1957 on land close to the heart of the UBC campus that the university leased to the college for 999 years.

The Trinity Baptist Church was built at West 49th and Granville.

The BC Electric Building went up at Burrard Street, the first high-rise office building south of Georgia. “The dynamic collaboration between BC Electric chair Dal Grauer,” architectural historian Harold Kalman has written, “and forward-thinking architect Ned Pratt (ably assisted by Ron Thom and others in his office) produced a tapered, lozenge-shaped tower, whose plan placed every desk no farther than 15 feet from a window and natural light (a poor advertisement for the power utility!). The floors are cantilevered from the central concrete service core like branches from a tree, with only slender perimeter columns offering additional support. The blue, green, and black mosaic tiles (by B.C. Binning) are an integral part of the design.” It would later become the BC Hydro Building, is now a condo complex called Electra.

The Workmen’s Compensation Board opened a new $1.5 million Rehabilitation Centre next to its head office in Vancouver.

Lansdowne race track, which was sold to the B.C. Turf and Country Club in 1945, and which closed in 1949, opened again. It would permanently close in 1960.

The laying of gas pipes began in Surrey as B.C. Electric promised natural gas distribution for the Fraser Valley at Vancouver prices. At Port Mann B.C. Electric built the “largest gas turbine in the world” to generate electricity from natural gas.

Cloverdale changed over to dial telephones.

Fort Langley was established as a National Historic Park, and reconstruction began. The storehouse was the only surviving building and was restored as the trading store. It is possibly the oldest intact structure in B.C. (1840)

Andy Paul, Squamish native leader, was honored by Pope Pius XII for his contribution to the Catholic Church and to the native people of Canada.

George Adams, contractor, died. He built the Carnegie Library at Main and Hastings, early parts of the Vancouver General Hospital, and the W.H. Malkin warehouse, now the Old Spaghetti Factory. He bought lot 492 at Tunstall Bay, built a house and moved there with his family in 1939. In 1950 he built a summer camp for Vancouver Sun carriers on the property. It was named Camp Gates in honor of the Sun’s circulation manager Herb Gates.

The CPR announced a plan to create the Oakridge community. “In postwar Vancouver,” Michael Kluckner has written, “a new style of suburbia became fashionable—wider streets, open landscaping, and low-lying, wood-sided bungalows and split-levels. In the heyday of this style, the CPR planned to subdivide the 276 acres bounded by Oak, Cambie, 41st and 57th. The Oakridge community featured 80-foot-wide single-family housing lots, many on curving streets, and a small apartment area, next to which was proposed a large shopping mall with Woodward’s Department Store as the anchor tenant.” (That mall would become Oakridge, opened in 1959.)

“In 1942,” Ed Starkins has written, “wartime housing shortages prompted the federal government to issue an order in council allowing Shaughnessy homes to be split up into smaller units. In 1955, when the order in council expired, the Shaughnessy Heights Property Owners’ Association led the campaign to return to the pre-war period of single family homes. Eventually, the provincial government decided that it would not change the status of existing multiple family dwellings, but that any properties that lapsed into single family use for more than a month would be zoned that way permanently.”

The brothers of the Benedictine Order, who had resided since 1939 in Fairacres—built in 1910 by Grace and Henry Ceperley—left and moved to their present home at Westminster Abbey, Mission. (Fairacres has been the home since 1967 of the Burnaby Art Gallery.)

The Derwent Way Bridge (low-level, road/rail from New Westminster, Annacis Channel, Queensborough, Lulu Island) was built. The low-level bridge carried two highway lanes and a separate rail track.

The Italian weekly newspaper L’Eco d’Italia was founded.

UBC’s Alma Mater Society launched the Brock Hall Art Collection. This collection (some of the works of which had been stolen or vandalized) may now be found in the Student Union Building Art Gallery.

Writes Tom Hawthorn: “In 1955, the Rev. E.C. Pappert flipped through a copy of the [UBC student newspaper] Ubyssey before pronouncing it ‘the vilest rag you can imagine.’ Of course, the student staff of the offending journal merrily adopted the clergyman’s slur as a motto. To this day, it is used as a recruitment come-on.”

The Knights of Pythias Order began to financially assist organizations treating and fighting cerebral palsy in the lower mainland. They are contributors to the Pacific Riding for Developing Abilities organization. See this site.

Radio CKMO changed its call letters to C-FUN.

CBUT (the CBC’s two-year-old television station) presented its first televised drama, The Vise, a one-act tragedy (1910) by Pirandello. It starred Derek Ralston, Peter Mannering, Valerie Cooter and Rae Brown, who would later be one of the cast of the long-running CBC series The Beachcombers.

KCTS—an educational commercial-free station based in Seattle—began transmitting 20 hours of programming a week on Channel 9. (In 1966 KCTS would join 75 other stations, forming National Educational Television, later renamed the Public Broadcasting Service: PBS.)

The Princess Louise (II), built in 1921 for the CPR’s northern service by Wallace Shipyard, was sold to become a restaurant in Long Beach, California, where she sank in 1990.

The White Pass & Yukon Route, whose narrow-gauge railway connected Skagway, Alaska with Whitehorse in Yukon, became the first company in the world to build a specialized cellular container ship and custom-designed rail cars to handle containers. The concept had been developed in the railway’s Vancouver office. The Clifford J. Rogers, the world’s first container ship, left Vancouver with her first shipment, bound for the Yukon.

Says a web site that looks at the history of the WP&YR: “The first containers designed and built by the White Pass wouldn’t meet today’s standards. In fact the White Pass ‘test container—the first one built—had ‘bugs.’ The doors became wedged against each other, and at the end of its first test trip it had to be opened with a cutting torch.” See this site.

Vancouver-based West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. began operations with the purchase by three brothers—Henry, William and Samuel Ketcham—of a small planer mill in Quesnel, B.C. Today, the company owns 19 sawmills, three plywood plants, two veneer plants, four pulp mills, two MDF plants and has approximately 7,500 employees. It logs mainly in Alberta and BC, but also has US logging operations in Louisiana and Arkansas. The company planted its 300 millionth tree in 2000. They have an excellent web site here, featuring an illustrated company timeline.

Quilchena Golf Course was obliterated for construction of Prince of Wales High School and housing.

Stan Leonard, 40, BC’s greatest golfer, belatedly joined the PGA tour full time. Born February 2, 1915, by the late 1920s Leonard was caddying at Shaughnessy Heights for 50 cents. (This was before the 14-club limit when at least 20 clubs was not uncommon.) By 1932, at age 17, Leonard was B.C. Amateur champion. He would win a total of 44 tournaments during his career.

Vienna-born forest products executive John Prentice, who had a deep passion for chess, became president of the Chess Federation of Canada. He would hold the post to 1971, but continue his involvement with the game into the 1980s. Prentice’s financial support and organizational ability led him to be called Canada’s Mr. Chess. He died in 1987.

Video and performance artist Paul Wong was born.

Journalist and author Rick Ouston was born. See this site.

Award-winning humorist, poet, columnist and CBC radio host Bill Richardson was born in Winnipeg. See this site.

With the inclusion of Richmond, the Fraser Valley Regional Library district covered an area of 4,000 square miles, extending from Richmond to Hope, from Port Coquitlam to Agassiz, and from the international border to the mountains north of the Fraser River.

Vancouver’s G.F. Strong was named president of the American College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Bill Rea, who had started Radio CKNW in 1944, and moved to California for health reasons in 1954, sold the station to accountant Frank Griffiths.

Judge Sherwood Lett became Chief Justice of BC. He would hold the post until his death in 1964. For a good biography see this site.

Lawyer Leon Johnson Ladner became a UBC senator. See this site.

Stonemason Jimmy Cunningham, aged about 77, “retired.” He had been working on the construction of the Stanley Park seawall since 1917, eventually became supervisor of the work. After his retirement he continued to come down to the wall to keep an eye on things. He died September 29, 1963. His ashes are secreted in an unmarked location within the wall.

Druggist George Cunningham was elected as a Vancouver alderman. He had the most votes of any candidate. He served to 1957.

Samuel Patrick Cromie, 37, became vice president/assistant publisher of Sun Publishing.

Medicine Hat-born B.C. Binning, 46, in BC since 1913, co-founded UBC’s fine arts department. He would head the department to 1968.

Baltimore-born Alvin Balkind, 34, who had come to Vancouver in 1954, founded the New Design Gallery. It became a centre for the avant-garde.

Calgary-born Hy Aisenstat and his wife Barbara, with the help of a $3,000 loan, opened a restaurant called Hy’s Steak House in Calgary. He would move to Vancouver in 1960 and launch a small restaurant empire.

A story excerpted from Top Dog!, the history of Radio CKNW, written by Chuck Davis and published by Canada Wide Magazines in 1994:

For a textbook example of how to win over a reluctant client, look at Mel Cooper’s 1955 pursuit of Weston Bakeries. Through his contacts in the food industry, Mel learned Weston was soon to introduce a new product onto grocery shelves in western Canada: Sunbeam Bread. It was an American innovation, and had been franchised to many bakeries south of the border. It was still unknown in Canada.

“’We were on the outside looking in with the Weston people,’ Mel said. ‘I couldn’t even get my calls to Jim Johnston answered. He was the key man. I went down to Seattle, where the Hanson Bread people had a Sunbeam franchise. I saw the drawing of the Miss Sunbeam girl on the package, and that gave me the idea. I came back to Vancouver, had an outfit made identical to the one on the package, the frilly little blue dress, then I hired a little girl and drove her to Weston Bakeries at Kingsway and Broadway.

“’Now, remember, only Jim Johnston and his sales manager knew anything about the upcoming launch of Sunbeam Bread into this market. I sent the little girl up to his office, and I waited in my car outside. The girl is carrying a little package. The receptionist says, “Well, who do we have here?” The girl says, “My name is Little Miss Sunbeam, and I’m here to see Mr. Johnston.” The receptionist bounces up and into Johnston’s office. “There’s someone out here you just have to see.” Johnston comes out, sees the little girl, and he’s instantly charmed. He takes her into his office and she hands him the pretty little package.

“’Inside it is a letter from me: “Dear Mr. Johnston, my name is Mel Cooper, and I represent CKNW. We think we can sell a lot of bread for you in this market, etc., etc. I’m parked out on Broadway hoping to see you.’”

“’Well, he came down, invited me in, and we got that account’.”