1962

Above: Hurricane Frieda remains Vancouver’s biggest on record.
[Image: Vancouver Park Board and www.vancouverisawesome.com/]

*****************************************
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!
*****************************************

January 6 Frank (Francis James) Burd, newspaper publisher, died in Vancouver, one day short of his 92nd birthday. “He was born,” writes Constance Brissenden, “January 7, 1870, in Muskegon, Michigan. At age 13 he was selling newspapers in Winnipeg, working days as an apprentice printer. At 18 he was hired as circulation manager of the Winnipeg Free Press. In 1899 Burd moved to Vancouver but, unable to find work, he moved to Yukon with his brother Richard Burde (sic) and, working out of a tent, began to publish the Whitehorse Tribune. After eight months he returned to Vancouver. He was hired by Frank Carter-Cotton at the News-Advertiser. He later joined the Vancouver Province as its circulation manager with a $2.50 raise, bringing his salary to $27.50 per week. He rose in the ranks and in 1933 was named president of the Province, retiring in 1935. He was a founder in 1917 of Canadian Press.”

February 26 The Queen Elizabeth Playhouse opened.

February 28 Actress Rae Dawn Chong was born in Vancouver.

March 1 The first Vancouver International Amateur Film Festival opened.

March 30 BC Hydro took over operations of the BC Electric Railway. See this website.

May 30 There was a near riot at the Forum as Prime Minister John Diefenbaker addressed a rowdy crowd at an election rally.

June 17 Bob (Robert Paul) Brown, baseball promoter, died in Vancouver, aged 85. Brown was born July 5, 1876 in Glencoe, Iowa. He was known here as “Mr. Baseball,” and his career spanned 60 years. “A successful athlete at Notre Dame in the 1890s,” Constance Brissenden writes, “he was a pro ball player (1900-09) in Montana, Oregon and Washington state, leading the Spokane Indians to a PCL pennant win in 1908. A shoestring operator and shrewd promoter, Brown built Athletic Park (opened April 18, 1913) on land leased from CPR. He was the owner/manager of the Vancouver Beavers (renamed Vancouver Canadians). He introduced Canada’s first night games played under lights. Brown was the first inductee into the B.C. Baseball Hall of Fame.”

June 18 Native people in Greater Vancouver voted in their first federal election after Parliament extended the franchise to them in 1960.

Also June 18 The original Grouse Mountain Chalet, opened in November 1926, burned down.

June 22 Actor Nicholas Lea (X-Files, others) was born in New Westminster.

June 25 The Haida section of Totem Park opened at UBC. It included a 19th century large family dwelling and a smaller mortuary house. There are ten totem poles here, and works by many contemporary First Nations artists of the Northwest Coast: Bill Reid, Douglas Cranmer, Norman Tait, Mungo Martin and others.

June 29 Kosaburo Shimizu, United Church minister, died in Winnipeg, aged 68. He was born September 13, 1893 in Tsuchida, Shiga-ken, Japan. He came to B.C. about 1906. At Royal City High School in New Westminster (1910-11), he won a gold medal for attaining the highest average of a first-year student. He attended UBC (1915-19), in 1924 earned an MA at Harvard. Shimizu was ordained by the United Church (1927), serving Vancouver. He was committed to bridging first and second generation Japanese-Canadians and Anglo-Saxons. During the Second World War he was relocated to an internment camp at Kaslo, BC. In 1945 he was transferred to Toronto and organized Japanese United Church work there. He received a DD from Union College (now the Vancouver School of Theology). Shimizu died while chairing a conference of Japanese ministers.

June Arthur Laing, 57, former MLA and BC Liberal Party leader, who had left politics in 1959, emerged from retirement to run federally. Laing was one of only two B.C. members in Lester Pearson’s cabinet after the 1962 election. The Arthur Laing Bridge is named for him.

Also June Bob Prittie was elected MP for Burnaby/Richmond. He would serve to 1968, then become Burnaby’s mayor in 1969.

July 21 This appeared as a photo caption in the Sun: “On a lonely hillside seven miles north of Agassiz stands the new federal maximum security jail that will house convicted Sons of Freedom Doukhobor terrorists. 49 inmates will be transferred to the $300,000 prison next month from New Westminster penitentiary.”

July 30 The 7,821-kilometre-long Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, was opened to traffic at Rogers Pass in the Rockies. It had taken 12 years to build, and more than 3,000 km were still to be paved, but it was now possible to drive right across the country on one highway. See the September 3 entry.

Also July 30 Comic Lenny Bruce (author of How to Talk Dirty and Influence People) opened to a packed house at Isy’s Supper Club. In the next day’s Vancouver Sun Jack Wasserman attacked Bruce’s caustic performance. That evening the Morality Squad showed up at Isy’s, and after the show informed Bruce and club owner Isy Walters the show was finished, citing a bylaw which did “prohibit or prevent any lewd or immoral performance or exhibition.”

A (tame) sample line: “If something about the human body disgusts you, complain to the manufacturer.”

Walters was told his operating licence would be suspended unless Bruce was cancelled, and he killed the balance of the engagement. The operator of the Inquisition Coffee House stepped forward with an offer to present the remainder of the performances. Bruce agreed, but the city’s licensing boss announced the Inquisition’s licence would be lifted if he performed. Bruce, who would be remembered as a hugely influential, ground-breaking comic, finally threw up his hands and vowed never again to perform in Vancouver.

Bruce died August 3, 1966.

July Agassiz’s Mountain Institution opened. Designed to house special inmates, the facility serves as an incarceration centre for a high percentage of sex offenders. At one time many of the Doukhobors convicted of arson and terrorism in the 1960s were interned at this prison.

August 5 Actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead of an overdose of sleeping pills.

August 12 Buda Hosmer Brown (née Jenkins), MLA, died in Vancouver, aged 68. She was born June 10, 1894 in Bellingham, Washington. She taught school in Washington state, later married Donald C. Brown. In 1958 she was elected Social Credit MLA for Vancouver-Point Grey. In 1960 she entered Premier W.A.C. Bennett’s cabinet as minister at large, the first woman in a Bennett cabinet since Tilly Rolston. Her interests included traffic safety and youth fields. A parks commissioner, Buda Brown was the first woman president of the International Northwest Parks Association.

August 17 David Stadnyk, sports owner and executive, was born in Abbotsford. In August 2000 he would buy the 86ers soccer club. During his tenure as owner the name of the team reverted to the Whitecaps. In 2003 he would relinquish ownership, citing severe financial losses. Stadnyk also launched the Vancouver Breakers women’s team during his term. See this site. He was an early investor in the Ravens, a lacrosse team, but they were a short-lived phenomenon, lasting only three seasons, and Stadnyk would drop out before they began play.

September 3 The Trans-Canada Highway, open to traffic since July 30, was officially opened. CBC-TV has a clip from the ceremony at Rogers Pass, narrated by Ted Reynolds and presided over by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker . . . who hoped the new road would never hear “the warlike tramp of marching feet.” See this site.

September 28 Randy Stoltmann, environmentalist, was born in Vancouver. He would conduct an exhaustive exploration of mountain country within 200 kms of Vancouver. In April 1994 Stoltmann drew up a formal proposal to preserve the Elaho-Upper Lillooet wilderness under the B.C. government’s protected area strategy. The 260,000-hectare roadless area is known today as the Randy Stoltmann Wilderness. He was killed May 22, 1994 in an avalanche while skiing through remote ranges west of the Kitlope River. He wrote Written by the Wind, a description of wilderness hiking in Kyuquot Sound. And see this site.

October 4 In 1956, UBC took over the responsibility for training B.C.’s teachers, but there was no central facility for instruction. Today the hoped-for education building opened. There would be additions and renovations in 1965, 1972 and 1996. In 1973 the building would be renamed to honor Neville V. Scarfe, former dean of the faculty.

October 12 (and continuing into the early hours of October 13) Hurricane Frieda wreaked enormous damage in Greater Vancouver. Gusts reached 78 mph (125 k/ph) at the Sea Island Weather Station. Windows of downtown department stores were shattered, and 3,000 trees blew down in Stanley Park. One person was killed when a falling tree crushed her car. There were five other deaths in BC. Trees on the back nine at the Vancouver Golf Club in Coquitlam “fell like matchsticks.” More than 1,500 trees were lost on the course, making VGC the hardest hit by far of all local courses. The storm lasted about four hours. The Lower Mainland was darkened from Horseshoe Bay to Hope.

Terri Clark of the Vancouver Park Board has written a description of what the storm did to Stanley Park at this document, which is also the source of the image to the right.

Sometimes it’s called “Hurricane Frieda” (68 hits on Google), sometimes “Typhoon Frieda” (73 hits). Thanks to CKNW’s Jack Gordon, an engineer with more than the usual helping of smarts, that station was the only one on the coast north of California to stay on the air during the crisis. (Long before the storm, Gordon had created an emergency broadcast system.) CKNW became a coordination and information centre.

Across the border this is called the “Columbus Day Storm,” and it did even more damage! As this document explains, the dying remnants of Frieda combined with another storm and suddenly strengthened it, dealing smashing blows to Washington, Oregon and California.

Was it a hurricane, or was it a typhoon? We put that question to Sylvain Boutot of the Meteorological Service of Canada, who sent this response: “There was indeed a hurricane called Frieda that hit Vancouver on October 12, 1962. You’ll hear some folks refer to Frieda as a typhoon and others as a hurricane and both terms are a little right and a little wrong. As storm aficionados are aware, the term ‘hurricane’ refers to severe Atlantic weather systems and those in the eastern Pacific. The term ‘typhoon’ is the designation for Pacific storms west of the International Date Line. Frieda had the distinction of starting as a typhoon and then moving east (instead of west which is the usual pattern for typhoons) and becoming a hurricane while merging with another tropical storm. Weather professionals like to call her an extra-tropical storm and she proved her strength when she slammed into the coastal cities of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.

October 19 UBC students protested closure of the Hotel Georgia pub, a favored hangout.

October 22 Scuba divers found the drive shaft of the SS Beaver, sunk off Stanley Park more than 70 years earlier.

November 1 Bob Smith interviewed Duke Ellington at the Georgian Towers Hotel. See this site.

November 17 A new Surrey Municipal Hall was opened on Highway 10.

November 23 Ira Dilworth, scholar and broadcast executive, died in Vancouver, aged 68. “He was born,” Constance Brissenden writes, “March 25, 1894 in High Bluff, Manitoba, came to the Okanagan as a boy. From 1915 to 1934 he taught English at Victoria High School, became the principal in 1926. A poetry expert, Dilworth was a popular UBC associate professor of English from 1934 to 1938. From 1938 to 1940 he directed the Bach Choir. He was the first president of the Vancouver Community Arts Council (1945), the first of its kind in North America. From 1938 onward, Dilworth rose in CBC ranks to director of all CBC English networks (1956).”

November 29 The Vancouver Mounties PCL baseball club folded. They would return for the 1965 season.

November 30 Impresario Harry Schiel started a series called Variety Follies at the Kitsilano Theatre.

December 9 Bill Rathie was elected mayor, the first to have been born in Vancouver. See this page.

December 10 The old Union Steamship hotel on Bowen Island was demolished, and the resort closed.

Also in 1962

Highway 99 was completed, providing a continuous link between the U.S. border and Vancouver through Richmond.

The Greater Vancouver Tourist Association changed its name to the Greater Vancouver Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Vancouver’s G.P.V. Akrigg saw his Jacobean Pageant: The Court of King James I named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 1962.

John B. MacDonald, the president of UBC, made a proposal to build a system of community colleges across the provinces. BC had a poor record in providing post-secondary training and educational opportunities for British Columbians. The government began to act on his recommendations.

Baltimore-born Alvin Balkind became curator of UBC’s Gallery of Fine Arts. He would hold the post to 1973.

The building at the northeast corner of Main and East 15th in Vancouver, originally Postal Station C, was vacated by the Department of Agriculture (which had been there since 1922). It would sit empty until 1965. (Today it’s known as Heritage Hall.)

Gordon Shrum became the first chancellor of Simon Fraser University. Shrum will push through the construction of “Berkeley North” in 18 months. SFU will open for classes in 1965.

Mrs. Flora Bingham won the Order of Merit for Scouting in Canada, after 20 consecutive years as Lady Cubmaster of the Cloverdale Wolf Cub Pack.

A clamor from north shore residents began for a second crossing over the First Narrows, “or the Lions Gate Bridge will become the world’s largest parking lot.” It hasn’t happened yet.

Austrian ski area consultant Willy Schaeffler reported favorably on Whistler’s potential as a world-class ski area.

Trinity Junior College was opened in Langley by the Evangelical Free Church of America, with 17 students. Its dorms were portable housing units moved from a B. C. Hydro construction project in B. C.’s interior. The dining hall was an old farmhouse; the barn was converted into a gymnasium called the “barnasium.”

The University Women’s Club purchased Hycroft (built 1909), one of Shaughnessy’s premier homes. Inside and out, it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, and they keep it that way.

Fred Hume bought the Vancouver Canucks, then in the WHL, and would own the team until his death in 1967.

R.M. Booth became Vancouver’s chief of police, succeeding G.J. Archer (1956-62). Booth would serve to 1968.

The Surrey-based Danish Community Centre of B.C. (DCC), began this year as an information co-ordinator and hall operator for the Danish-Canadian community, and acts as an umbrella group for members of the community in Greater Vancouver.

John B. MacDonald became president of UBC, succeeding Norman MacKenzie (1944-1962). MacDonald would serve to 1967.

The King Edward Senior Matriculation and Continuing Education Centre was established. In 1965 it will become part of Vancouver City College.

Edward Cecil “Cece” Roper became the first principal of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, which would open in the spring of 1964. Roper came to BCIT from teaching in the commerce department at UBC. He would serve to June, 1967.

Vancouver, a Bibliography appears. Compiled by Katherine M. Freer from material in the Vancouver Public Library and the Special Collections of the UBC Library.

The Great Northern Railroad abandoned its False Creek station, which will be demolished in 1965. Using the CN terminal next door, the American railway continued to operate a Vancouver-Seattle train service until 1977.

The Vancouver Stock Exchange traded more than 100 million shares this year, the first time it had done that since 1937. A mining assay scandal and the Second World War combined to keep the exchange quiet for many years.

As head of the Vancouver Tourist Association (precursor to Tourism Vancouver) Harold Merilees founded the Sea Festival.

Seattle held a World’s Fair. Many Lower Mainland residents attended. See this document.

CP Hotels, unwilling to spend more money on a hotel it didn’t own, decided not to renew its Hotel Vancouver management contract with CN. CN contracted the hotel’s management to Hilton. It would resume sole management in 1983. (And, in 1988, the hotel’s ownership would come full circle as Canadian Pacific Hotels once again acquired the Hotel Vancouver.)

Frank Panvin, who had opened the Commodore Lanes on September 7, 1930, and who owned several other bowling alleys, died. In the 1920s bowling was almost exclusively a male sport. Panvin changed that. He introduced a promotion that allowed women to bowl free in the mornings. He was also the first to rent out shoes.

The Japanese Friendship Garden was created in New Westminster as a tribute to its sister city, Mariguchi, Japan. One hundred ornamental flowering cherry trees have been planted in this informal Japanese-style garden. Waterfalls, ponds and streams add to its charm.

Attendance at the PNE passed the one million mark this year. It has rarely dropped below that since.

The Abbotsford International Air Show was born. Forty enthusiastic members of the Abbotsford Flying Club passed the hat and came up with $700 to put on the first one. Since then the show has become one of the world’s premium flying and aviation-technology extravaganzas, attracting more participants and bigger audiences each year. The 1962 event attracted 15,000 spectators. In recent years averages of between 250,000 and 300,000 have turned out during the show’s three-day run at Abbotsford International Airport, 80 kms east of Vancouver. Since 1970 it has officially been Canada’s National Air Show.

Mungo Martin died, aged about 83. He was born in Fort Rupert, BC in 1879. “He was the most influential Kwakiutl master carver,” writes Tony Robertson, “noted for his massive totem poles. Martin devoted most of his working life to preserving by copying the best examples of earlier tribal totems before they were lost. As a teacher he trained successive generations of carvers such as the Hunts and Bill Reid, and did much to interpret his culture and its traditions to those interested in learning about them.” See this site.

A mural in the form of a canvas collage was installed by artist Toni Onley at the brand-new Queen Elizabeth Playhouse. Something about this big work sparked controversy when it was installed, with one outraged citizen claiming it was “a Communist plot” in a letter to The Province.

The Metropolitan Theatre Co-operative, an organization of various local community theatre companies, opened its first theatre on 4th Avenue in Kitsilano. Now known as Metro Theatre, they would move in 1963 to a new home at 1370 SW Marine Drive where they’ve been located ever since.

Sidney, Australia-born (1924) James Clavell’s first novel appeared. King Rat would be made into a movie in 1965.

Writer and poet Michael Turner (Hard Core Logo among others) was born in North Vancouver.

Judge Alexander Campbell Des Brisay was appointed head of a one-man royal commission on workmen’s compensation. When he died November 30, 1963 he had produced 6,000 pages of transcripts for the as-yet unfinished enquiry. (His wife, Ella Helen, died the following morning (Dec. 1, 1963) of a heart attack.)

Hugh Keenleyside won the Vanier Medal.

Bob Smith, jazz broadcaster, began a column on jazz in The Vancouver Sun.