1964

Above: The Beatles in Vancouver.
[Image: Vancouver Sun]

*****************************************
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 26 Actor Paul Johansson was born in Vancouver. He made a TV commercial sensation a few years ago as a hunky Coca-Cola delivery guy bringing a load of Coke into an office full of panting ladies.

February The new Grandview Community Centre was opened by Mrs. Eric Hamber.

March 2 Angus MacInnis, politician, died in Vancouver, aged 79. He was born September 2, 1884 in Glen William, PEI. As a teenager, he ran the family farm after his father’s death. He arrived in Vancouver in 1908. He drove a milk wagon, then in 1910 became a streetcar conductor. MacInnis studied economics and politics and helped found the CCF. He worked for three years as business agent for the Street Railwaymen’s Union. In 1921 he was elected to the school board, and he served as an alderman from 1926 to 1930. He was the member of parliament for Vancouver East from 1930 to 1956. MacInnis Park in East Vancouver was named for Angus and his even more well-known wife Grace MacInnis on September 10, 1994. “A brilliant orator and champion of the little man.”

March 17 Weldwood of Canada was incorporated. The company would be acquired on December 31, 2004 by West Fraser Timber Co.

April ASK, the Association for Social Knowledge, the oldest homophile organization in Canada, first published the ASK Newsletter, which would cease publication in February 1968. ASK, which had already been operating for some months, was formed, its newsletter explained, “to help society to understand and accept variations from the sexual norm.” See this site for more details. A group of academics and feminists began ASK, which has been described as the first gay and lesbian discussion group in the country.

May 2 Northern Dancer became the first Canadian-bred winner of the Kentucky Derby, and set a record of two minutes flat while doing it. That record would hold for nine years, until Secretariat won it in 1973 with a time of 1:59 2/5, three-fifths of a second faster.

May “The whole mountain is swarming with men and equipment,” a reporter wrote. “At 9 a.m. officials signed a contract to build the $1 million gym; at 10 a.m. the government granted approval to build the gym and a $3 million library; and an hour later they were pouring concrete for the footings.” Construction had started on Simon Fraser University.

Spring The first class at BCIT: 37 medical laboratory technology students. See the October 6 entry. By September, with the institute’s first 17 two-year technology programs in place, about 645 more students were enrolled, less than half the number who had applied. BCIT’s original three-storey building was designed to accommodate 1,200 students, but first-year capacity was set at 750. First-year fees were between $150 and $190, and second-year fees were $60.

June 12 The Port Mann bridge opened. Its construction was unique in North America, and at the time it was the most expensive piece of highway in Canada. (Trivia: the first “civilian” to drive across the bridge was CKNW reporter Marke Raines—he wasn’t authorized, so he put the pedal to the metal and drove across at teeth-clenching speed .) See details on the bridge’s dimensions, etc., here. “This elegant bridge,” says engineer Robert Harris in The Greater Vancouver Book, “carries the Trans-Canada Highway across the Fraser River at the most stable part of its lower channel, above the two earlier bridges at New Westminster, the apex of the Fraser delta.”

June 29 Laura Emma Jamieson (née Marshall), juvenile court judge, died in Vancouver, aged 80. “She was born,” Constance Brissenden writes, “December 29, 1883 in Park Head, Ontario. A U of T graduate in 1908, in 1911 she married lawyer J. Stewart Jamieson. She was an active member, of the University Women’s Club and of suffragette groups. In 1921 she organized a branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. When her two children reached school age, she joined the B.C. Parent/Teacher Federation (and was president 1925-26). On her husband’s death in 1926, she succeeded him as Burnaby Juvenile Court judge, the first B.C. woman in this position, and held that position to 1938. She joined the CCF party in 1939, and was elected MLA for Vancouver Centre. Re-elected in 1941, she lost her seat in 1945. In 1947 she was elected the second woman alderman in Vancouver history.”

On June 30 BCIT made this announcement: “Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada has donated three Harley-Davidson motorcycles: a 2002 Fat Boy, 2003 VROD, and a 2004 Sportster, valued at about $60,000 retail, to BCIT Polytechnic. ‘It’s our pleasure to contribute to such a worthwhile program, and institution, as BCIT,’ says Malcolm Hunter, President and COO, Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada. ‘We want our donation to encourage further knowledge and safety for all students in all power motive programs.’” Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada is a sponsor of The History of Metropolitan Vancouver. They have the year 1917.

July 24 Sherwood Lett, judge, died in Vancouver, aged 68. He was born August 1, 1895 in Iroquois, Ontario. He was the goaltender for UBC’s 1914-15 hockey team. Lett was with the Vancouver law firm Davis & Co. from 1922 to 1955. They have a very good brief biography here. After distinguished service in both world wars (he reached the rank of Brigadier), Lett was named the first Canadian representative (1954-55) on the International Control Commission to oversee the ceasefire and disengagement of French forces in North Vietnam and the country’s political stabilization. Lett was UBC Chancellor from 1951 to 1957. He was chief justice of B.C. from 1955 to 1964. In 1963 he ruled expropriation of a private company, B.C. Electric, by the provincial government’s B.C. Hydro and Power Authority, to be illegal. The province was forced to pay far more to acquire B.C. Electric.

July 25 William George Murrin, president of the BC Electric Railway, died in Vancouver, aged 88. He was born August 27, 1875 in London, Eng. Murrin worked with City of London Electric Lighting (1894-1901) and London United Tramways (1901-03). He joined the BC Electric Railway (BCER) in 1913 as mechanical superintendent, was president by 1929. He continued in that post until 1946. Active in the community, he received the Silver Acorn from the Greater Vancouver and District Boy Scout Council and was a life member of the Salvation Army. He was a governor of UBC and, at various times, president of the Vancouver Art Gallery Association, a member of the Vancouver Little Theatre Association and of the Vancouver Symphony Society.

August 22 The Beatles hit Vancouver. They had been in Seattle the night before, would be in Los Angeles the next night. A good description of the pandemonium that ensued when the Liverpool Four got here was in a column for Maclean’s by Allan Fotheringham.

An excerpt: “The Beatles press conference has become as memorable an institution as President Roosevelt’s fireside chats; and at the Vancouver session, Paul, John, George and Ringo were at their flippant best. Eighty-nine newsmen crowded into a room designed for forty, including the travelling Beatle experts from the Liverpool Echo and London Daily Mirror, the CBC’s royal tour expert, several writers from the U.S. and Eastern Canada, a score or so of electronic journalists and disk-jockeys, five reporters from Victoria—the Empire’s last anti-Beatle outpost—and a thirteen-year-old Beatlemaniac named Susan Lomax whom the Sun sent along to get the Youthful Viewpoint. All of them were aware that the craze has now reached the stage where the press needs the Beatles much more than the Beatles need the press; and all of them were charmed by their now-familiar Liverpudlian cockiness. When a radio reporter asked how the boys felt ‘now that Britannia rules the waves,’ Paul McCartney jeered: ‘Oo, you worked that one out, didn’t you!’ Asked about the customs delay, John Lennon replied: ‘We had to be deloused.’ Most disarming of all was the Beatles’ cheerful admission that, when nubile young girls throw themselves at their feet, they have no compunction about picking them up. (Question: ‘What is the most unusual request you’ve had from your fans?’ Lennon’s leering answer: ‘Oo, now, I wouldn’t like to say.’)” Read the full Fotheringham article on this site.

August 27 Coley Hall bought the Devonshire Hotel.

September 5 The Vancouver Times launched a bid to become Vancouver’s third daily newspaper. The paper, under publisher Victor Odlum, installed the latest off-set printing presses in its plant at 3350 East Broadway, ran color photos every day, and spoke proudly of being locally owned and operated. See August 5, 1965 to learn the Times’s fate. And for excellent detail on the short life of this paper, see this site.

September 14 From the Province “Highways Minister (Phil) Gaglardi says his department is buying land along portions of the Upper Levels Highway to make room for a four-lane freeway from Horseshoe Bay to Taylor Way. He said expansion of the highway—to cost at least $5 million—will begin within two or three years.

“‘A lot of people try to hold me up (on land prices) but we’re very fair,” Gaglardi said. ‘It would have been cheaper to build a four-lane highway ten years ago when it was first built. I fought night and day with the so-called experts. I said let’s at least build four-lane bridges, if not highways. They said no, this will do for 20 years.’”

Also September 14 There was a tribute to John Emerson, all-round theatre man, at the Cave.

September 16 US President Lyndon Johnson and Prime Minister Lester Pearson signed the Columbia River Treaty in BC. The treaty continues to generate income from sale of water to the U.S.

September 28 The Burrard Bridge Civic Marina officially opened. Half of its 628 boat spaces were already taken. Of those, 450 were on the water, 178 in dry storage. There were 350 boats at the marina on opening day.

Fall Thanks to Brian Walks for this item: CBS-TV’s Thursday evening schedule started with two series with locally-born actors. Vancouver-born Yvonne De Carlo starred as Lily Munster in The Munsters at 7:30 followed by New Westminster-born Raymond Burr starring in Perry Mason at 8:00 p.m. These programs were available to us on KIRO-TV, Channel 7, Seattle.

October 6 BCIT, the British Columbia Institute of Technology was formally opened by Premier W.A.C. Bennett. He promised to double the institute’s size, and that promise would be fulfilled when a new laboratory and classroom building opened in September, 1967. Today, the main campus of BCIT at 3700 Willingdon Avenue in Burnaby includes 55 permanent buildings and a few portable structures. BCIT also has a Downtown Campus at 549 Howe Street, a Sea Island Campus at 5301 Airport Road in South Richmond and a Pacific Marine Training Campus at 265 West Esplanade in North Vancouver. BCIT’s philosophy, stated at its opening, was to prepare job-ready graduates who could step into key technical and commercial positions and make an immediate contribution. Graduates of BCIT’s trade and technology programs are some of the most sought-after graduates in Canada. Visit their web site at www.bcit.ca.

October 15 CKLG-FM 99.3 signed on with an easy listening format, including orchestra concerts and Broadway soundtrack recordings. See this site.

November 8 CBU-FM 105.7 began regular programming separate from CBU-AM 690, with recorded classical music and BBC programs.

November 12 The Woodward Biomedical Library at UBC was officially opened. The library has in its Charles Woodward Memorial Room a very large collection of rare and aged medical texts, some of them hundreds of years old. There is an astonishing and beautifully written essay on the history of the collection written by Dr. William Gibson and viewable here.

The library was built through a gift of the Mr. and Mrs. P.A. Woodward Foundation and matching federal funds. A more formal history can be seen here.

November 28 The B.C. Lions defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 34-24 to win their first Grey Cup. Says a fan web site www.lionbackers.com: “A two-touchdown, two-way starring performance by Bill Munsey, Joe Kapp and Willie Fleming, and a touchdown from the field goal unit led the Lions to a 34-24 victory that ended 11 seasons of waiting for the faithful fans of British Columbia.”

The BC Sports Hall of Fame www.bcsportshalloffame.com reminds us six players from those 1964 Lions are members of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame: Norm Fieldgate, Tom Brown, By Bailey, Willie Fleming, Joe Kapp and Tom Hinton.

There is an excellent recap of Joe Kapp’s career at this site, which includes descriptions of his quarterbacking time with the Lions.

November 29 Thousands welcome home the B.C. Lions from their Grey Cup win over Hamilton.

December 7 The William Tell Restaurant opened on Richards Street under the expert control of Swiss-born Erwin Doebeli. Erwin is retired now, but the William Tell is still thriving after more than 40 years, still always in the top tier of Best Restaurants in Vancouver.

December 9 Elmore Philpott, journalist and MP, died in Penticton, aged 68. He was born May 1, 1896 in Toronto. Philpott was a Vancouver Sun columnist from 1943 to 1961. He had been severely wounded in the First World War and received the Military Cross. In 1922 he entered journalism and was married. He was a writer and associate editor for the Toronto Globe for five years. He moved to BC in 1937. He wrote in Victoria, then joined the Sun in 1943. Much travelled, Philpott was an expert on China. In 1953 he was elected Liberal MP for Vancouver South, but was defeated in 1957. He continued writing for the Sun to 1961. This site has details on his career, which included much work for the CCF in Ontario.

December 27 Regina-born (December 12, 1927) Chris Gage, a Canadian jazz pianist whose technique was considered second only to Oscar Peterson, committed suicide in North Vancouver.

At age four, Gage had stood on tiptoes to play the family pump organ; at six, he performed on Regina radio; at 11 he performed all-nighters with an adult band; at 14 he had his own six-piece band. He came to Vancouver at age 17. He appeared often on CBC radio, made more than 100 TV appearances, performed in Vancouver clubs and with Louis Armstrong. He declined many offers to tour with such stars as Armstrong, Peggy Lee and Gerry Mulligan, and remained in the Vancouver area until his death. Arrested for drunkenness and harassment of his ex-wife, he died of a barbiturate overdose. The Chris Gage Memorial Award would be established in 1990 by the Bob Smith Scholarship Fund.

Jazz musician Don Thompson was interviewed on this article and asked about the decline of jazz in Vancouver. Chris Gage’s name came up.

You have been around and witnessed the glory years of jazz as well as the decline of the great jazz scene in Vancouver that you just talked about. Do you have any theories as to what happened here in Vancouver?

Don Thompson: Something happened in Vancouver for sure and what it was was Chris Gage died. It was just such a black crowd and everything. Everybody was so sad and depressed and everybody just stopped doing anything. Everything stopped being fun because Chris Gage was just such a fantastic person and such a fantastic musician—I mean he was everybody’s best friend and the best doggone piano player you’d ever hope to hear. All of a sudden he goes and commits suicide. Well, it just messed up a lot of cats and like a lot of guys just sort of left town and the scene really collapsed and I think that really had a lot to do with it. It was an awful thing.

See more at this site.

Also in 1964

Pacific Press Ltd. was established to print both the Vancouver Sun and the Province from a single shared plant at 2250 Granville St. The Sun remained an evening newspaper and the Province became a morning daily. There were two separate owners, Southam Inc. for the Province and, successively, Sun Publishing, FP Publications Ltd. and, briefly, Thomson Newspapers for the Sun.

Tolls came off the Oak Street Bridge, which opened July 1, 1957.

The Deas Island Tunnel was renamed George Massey Tunnel, for the minister of highways, and tolls were removed.

Vancouver’s Mayor Bill Rathie and Park Board Chairman George Wainborn drove the last spike in the Stanley Park miniature railway.

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and Premier W.A.C. Bennett met at Peace Arch Park to sign the Columbia River Treaty.

Grouse Mountain Resorts Ltd. was formed, and the following year a decision would be taken to build Canada’s largest aerial tramway and a new chalet. Grouse Mountain Ski School would later become Canada’s biggest.

Whistler got its first paved road.

A water system was installed in Point Roberts.

The Islamic Centre was established at 655 West 8th Avenue.

The Electrical Engineering Building was erected at UBC.

Dynamic Engineering Inc. began operations.

Patrick McTaggart-Cowan became the first president of SFU, would hold the post until 1968. He shared responsibility for building and opening the university on schedule and chaired and endured “long, arduous and torn” meetings. (SFU would open in 1965.)

A $2 million addition to the downtown building finally made it possible for all Vancouver Vocational Institute classes to return to the downtown campus. Student enrolment had rapidly increased, and some of the Institute’s programs, like plastering, bricklaying, drywalling, and aircraft repair, had been forced to relocate to places such as the Poultry and Livestock buildings at the PNE. Now they could all be together.

CKLG switched to rock music, and started an FM station that today is called C-FOX.

The phone-in talk show as a local ratings phenomenon had its beginning this year on CJOR with the sudden and volcanic appearance of a man named Pat Burns. Burns wasn’t new to radio: he’d been a news broadcaster for years. But when CJOR’s Peter Kosick put Burns on air with his Hotline program, the change in local radio was convulsive. Within weeks, seemingly everyone was listening to, as Jack Webster described him, this “gruff-voiced, well-informed, first-class demagogue.” In fact, it was Burns’ success on OR that sparked CKNW’s counterattack with Jack Webster, and talk radio has been a local radio staple ever since. Astonishingly, the Burns phenomenon was over in little more than a year: by the end of 1965 he would be released without explanation by CJOR’s owners. He later returned to the talk show format, but his ratings never matched the earlier numbers. Webster, on the other hand, went on to garner excellent ratings and would later repeat his success on television.

George Hungerford and Roger Jackson teamed to win double sculls gold at the Olympic Games. Says the web site Historica: “Expectations were not high for George Hungerford and Roger Jackson when they competed at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In August, two months before the Olympics, Hungerford had come down with mononucleosis and was forced to give up his seat in the men’s eights. Six weeks before Tokyo, Hungerford recovered enough to train and created a formidable partnership with Jackson. Because of the hasty manner in which the Hungerford/Jackson team had been assembled, they sat at the start line of the final with a borrowed boat. But the dark horses from Canada raced their scull to its second gold medal in eight years.”

Harry Jerome (born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan September 30, 1940) won bronze in the 100 metres at the Tokyo Olympics, despite a severe hamstring injury.

The Lyall Dagg rink of Vancouver won the World Curling Championship in Calgary. His team mates, also from Greater Vancouver, were Loe Hebert, Fred Britton and Barry Naimark.

Toronto’s George Knudson drew 5,000 fans to Capilano Golf Course for a filming of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf.

The Arbutus Curling Rink opened.

The Vancouver Public Aquarium captured the first killer whale ever to be studied alive in captivity. He (yes, he) became known as “Moby Doll.” They originally thought he was a female.

Yvonne Firkins, “BC’s first lady of the theatre,” opened the Arts Club Theatre on Seymour Street. One of its early presentations: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Tree Island Industries was incorporated. They are the sponsors of 1964 in The History of Metropolitan Vancouver.

The first color feature movie made in B.C. was filmed on the north shore. The Trap starred Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham. “Another wilderness romance,” movie reviewer Michael Walsh wrote, “this Anglo-Canadian co-production features a burly trapper (Reed) carrying a mute orphan (Tushingham) into an Eastmancolor North Shore rain forest.”

The movie Sweet Substitute (aka Caressed) appeared, directed by Lawrence Kent. “Reuniting his UBC team,” Michael Walsh writes, “Larry Kent filmed the story of an intense, randy high school graduate (Robert Howay) and the girl he leaves pregnant (Carol Pastinsky).” The “reuniting” reference relates to Kent’s 1963 feature The Bitter Ash.

Margaret Atwood started as a UBC English Department lecturer, and began to write the first draft of her novel The Edible Woman.

The Marco Polo, the first Chinese nightclub in Canada, opened.

The New Westminster Museum was opened. One of its most interesting holdings is the material on New Westminster’s annual Mayday celebrations, a tradition since 1870.

Carrie Cates was elected mayor of North Vancouver city. She would be reelected in 1965 and 1967.

Vancouver-born (October 13, 1913) Stuart Keate, who had been publisher of the Victoria Daily Times since 1951, left to become publisher of the Vancouver Sun. He would remain in that post until his retirement in 1978.

Population of Greater Vancouver reached 800,000, double what it had been in 1946.

Ethel Wilson, Vancouver-based novelist and short story writer, was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. See this site.

St. Paul’s Hospital performed its first heart valve replacement and double valve replacement.

Kapoor Sawmill in Barnet ended operations. It had started around 1900 as the North Pacific Lumber mill at Barnet, but that plant was destroyed by fire in 1909. A modern plant was constructed in its place to handle 150,000 board feet a day. Separate accommodation was built for Caucasian, Chinese and Sikh workers, and Barnet, although a part of Burnaby, became a company townsite. The mill was closed during the Depression, then reopened as Kapoor Sawmill.

The Canadian Progress Club, established in Toronto in 1922, established a Greater Vancouver chapter on the north shore. There are three branches in Greater Vancouver (one in Vancouver and two in North Vancouver) with approximately 75 members. The clubs assist those less fortunate. The Greater Vancouver Club provided the first $40,000 to help the B.C. Special Olympics launch its start in British Columbia.

Indo-Canadian, a quarterly in Punjabi, began publishing.

Pacific Hosteller, a quarterly published by the Canadian Hostelling Association, B.C. Region, first appeared. It featured news of the youth hostel movement and travel notes.

Grandview, Forum, Empress and Hastings taxi services amalgamated to form Forum Empress Taxi. Yellow Taxi would take that company over August 17, 1977.

“The Rivtow Lion, a 147-foot oceangoing tug built in 1940 in Selby, England, joined the Rivtow Straits fleet,” write marine historians Rob Morris and Leonard McCann. “She would work the B.C. coast for 22 years, most often towing the 10,000-ton log barge Rivtow Carrier. Her original horn was contributed by Rivtow Straits to the Pacific Coliseum where it resonated loudly each time the Vancouver Canucks hockey team scored a goal. The horn was returned to Rivtow when the Canucks moved into the new General Motors Place arena.”

Evergreen Studs Limited began operations. The company name would be changed to Primex in May, 1986.

Painter Charles H. Scott died, aged about 78. He was important historically in his role as a teacher and administrator at the Vancouver School of Applied and Decorative Art.

Entrepreneur Jim Howe began a west Burnaby club called The Lamplighter. Local country music fans went there to hear performers like Waylon Jennings and Bobby Bare and the Canadian Sweethearts. And, in an era when nightlifers were still brown-bagging it, the club featured BC’s first liquor license.

A show called In the Rough was a smash at the Frederic Wood Theatre at UBC. The topical revue was directed by John Brockington, and starred Jimmy Johnston, Daphne Goldrick, Norman Young, Pat Rose and Louise Glennie and featured sketches and songs by such writers as Dave Brock and Eric Nicol. In the Rough ran into 1965, and was revived in 1967 to tour the province as part of Canada’s centennial celebrations.

Thanks to the efforts of Yvonne Firkins, the Arts Club Theatre opened on Seymour Street—upstairs above a former auto repair shop and Gospel Hall—and became an instant theatrical institution. The first production, Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky, won high praise. Now the largest regional theatre in Western Canada, the Arts Club would later move to Granville Island.

Helen Goodwin’s experimental dance company—called TheCo.—was founded at UBC. It took part in many of UBC’s contemporary arts festivals. See this site for more on her activities and other contemporary cultural figures of the era.

Alan Twigg writes: “Margaret Powers composed a meditative poem called Footprints in 1964 during a troubled period in her life. It was illegally reprinted and became known to millions as an inspirational message on plaques, calendars, posters and cards. Footprints: The Story Behind the Poem chronicles her creation, loss and legal recovery of the material interwoven with the author’s life experiences.” See this site.

For another claim as to authorship of Footprints, check out this site.

The Willingdon Heights Community Centre opened at 1491 Carleton Avenue in Burnaby.

London, England-born (September 24, 1906) Leonard Marsh became a professor of educational sociology at UBC. Marsh had joined UBC’s School of Social Work in 1947, becoming Director of Research in 1959. He would retire in 1973. Marsh was hugely influential in the formation of Canada’s social security system. See this site.