1965

Above: The new Canadian flag was hoisted at 6 a.m. at Vancouver city hall in 1965.
[Image: www.pixabay.com]

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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 11 A newspaper called the Vancouver Times appeared, with retired general Victor Odlum as publisher. The paper had a very short life.

January 24 Sir Winston Churchill died, aged 90. There is a good brief biographical sketch here.

January 29 Grouse Mountain Skyride opened to skiers. The official opening will be February 2.

February 15 The new Canadian flag was hoisted at 6 a.m. at Vancouver city hall. Because of the time differential, this was the first appearance of the flag in Canada after its official proclamation.

February 17 A testimonial dinner for Premier W.A.C. Bennett was held at the Hotel Vancouver on occasion of his becoming the longest-serving premier in B.C.’s history: 13 years. He would go on to serve seven more years.

March 7 Drugstore pioneer George Cunningham died in Palm Springs, California, aged about 76. “George Torrance Cunningham was born,” writes Constance Brissenden, “on an oxcart trail in North Dakota in 1889. His family arrived in New Westminster in 1891. In 1904 he was hired as an apprentice druggist at Woodward’s, later worked at William M. Harrison’s ‘classy’ drug store/post office. He graduated from the Ontario College of Pharmacy in 1909, studied in New York and Chicago. At age 21, in February 1911, he opened his ‘No. 1′ Cunningham Drug Store at Denman and Nelson. He bought the Vancouver Drug Store chain in September, 1939, building his own chain from 12 to 35 stores. He would eventually command a 52-store empire. He was named Man of the Year in 1948 by the Independent Retail Drug Association. In 1955 he became a Vancouver alderman, having topped the polls. He served to 1957. He was chair of the UBC Board of Governors.” The Cunningham stores were purchased by Shopper’s Drug Mart.

March 19 Violet Pooley Sweeny, golfer, died in West Vancouver, aged 78. “She was born,” writes Constance Brissenden, “December 18, 1886 in Victoria. She was known as ‘the Queen of Northwest Golf,’ and first played at age eight. In 1905 she won the first of seven Pacific Northwest and nine B.C. championships. She moved to Vancouver, and in 1915 married Bimbo (Sedley Campbell) Sweeny (born October 16, 1888 in Vancouver; died February 12, 1966 in West Vancouver), a famed rugby player and rower. She sold cars for Consolidated Motors on W. Georgia, then demonstrated the basics of the golf swing at McLennan, McFeeley & Prior sports and hardware store. She was inducted posthumously into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 1974. See Backspin, 100 Years of Golf in B.C. by Arv Olson.” There is an excellent brief bio here.

March Famed opera singer Marilyn Horne appeared in the VOA’s production of Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers (L’Italiana in Algeri).

April 24 Duncan Bell-Irving, aviator, died in Vancouver, aged 70. He was born August 28, 1894 in Vancouver, the son of Henry Ogle Bell-Irving. Duncan was Canada’s first WWI flying ace: as a member of the RFC, he shot down six planes and a balloon. During WWII, he commanded an RCAF training school at Trenton, Ont. The book Gentleman Air Ace was written by his sister, Elizabeth O’Kiely.

May 10 Work commenced on clearing a portion of a 58-acre site for the Gardens of Gethsemani in south Surrey. Financed by the Archdiocese of Vancouver, it was the first regional cemetery and mausoleum to serve the needs of Catholics and their families in the Lower Mainland. There is a full-service Catholic chapel there.

June Betsy (Elizabeth) Flaherty, private pilot, died in Vancouver, aged about 87. She was born c. 1878. A buyer for Spencer’s department store, she was a passenger on Trans-Canada Airlines’ first cross-Canada flight. She was over 50 when she received her license (the second granted to a woman in Vancouver) on December 16, 1931, making her the oldest female pilot in Canada. In 1936, she was the oldest founder of The Flying Seven Canadian Women Pilots, flying out of Sea Island, “the forerunners of a splendid air movement.” During WWII, club members trained women in parachute packing, fabric work and other aspects of airplane care. See Daring Lady Flyers by Joyce Spring and No Place for a Lady by Shirley Render. (Note: Pioneering Aviation in the West, a 1992 book by Lloyd M. Bungey, published by the Canadian Museum of Flight and Transportation, gives her death date as 1968. We’re not convinced yet.)

August 5 Eleven months to the day after its first edition appeared, The Vancouver Times ended publication. It had first appeared September 5, 1964. By early 1965, with just 50,000 subscribers, the newspaper was in financial trouble. In May, 1965 they began to cut costs, asked shareholders to purchase more stock, and offered an annual subscription rate of $15—down from $18—“to furnish needed working capital.” On June 23 they lowered the daily edition cost from ten cents to five. Nothing worked.

Our thanks to site visitor Larry Morton. He has every edition of the Times published, and compiled this information for us.

For excellent detail on the short life of the paper, see this site.

August 16 The largest crowd in B.C. racing history turned out to watch as Wakefield, England-born Johnny Longden rode his 6,000th winner at Exhibition Park. Wrote the Province’s Alf Cottrell: “Legendary jockey Johnny Longden got a kiss from his wife Hazel in the winners’ circle at Vancouver’s Exhibition Park as he celebrated his 6,000th win as a jockey. Longden reached the historic milestone on local industrialist Art Fouks’ steady veteran Prince Scorpion, after a masterful ride climaxed by a stern stretch drive. The little Englishman was the first jockey in history to ride 4,871 winners, for that was the point at which he passed England’s Gordon Richards . . . in 1956. Longden was the first rider to get 5,000 winners . . . Now word of his latest feat will flash all over the world, including Taber, Alberta, the little town where he was raised.” Longden had started his racing career in Canada and wanted to record this historic riding achievement before the “home folks.”

September 9 Simon Fraser University—the sponsor of 1965 in The History of Metropolitan Vancouver—admitted its first students on Burnaby Mountain. Designed by Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey, the university had been built—thanks to the hard-driving Dr. Gordon Shrum—within two years. 2,500 students enrolled. The official opening was presided over by Lord Lovat, whose name was Simon Fraser, and who was the 24th head of the Fraser clan. He told an audience of 5,000 about the Fraser family crest, which had been adapted and adopted by the university. “There are strawberries all over our crest because the name Fraser came originally from ‘la fraise,’ French for strawberry. Our ancestors came to Scotland by way of Normandy and England.” Simon’s second great-grandson, Donald Fraser of Fargo, North Dakota, beamed proudly from the audience.

SFU pioneered the year-round trimester system—self-contained l6-week semesters—a radical departure from the traditional academic year, with new possibilities for work and study. It developed the “Oxbridge” system of tutorials, in which students, guided by tutors, were left to their own resources. Large lectures are supplemented with small discussion groups. Admission requirements were relaxed for bright high-schoolers and mature students. Whiz kids and grandparents have always shared classes. And in 1965 SFU was the only university in Canada to offer athletic scholarships for academically qualified students.

For an excellent overview of the university, click here and for 40th anniversary events see this site.

September Vancouver City College opened at the King Edward Centre at Oak Street and West 12th Avenue, in a 1905 building that had housed King Edward High School. VCC was the first two-year community college in Canada. It was formed by bringing together the Vancouver School of Art, established in 1925, the Vancouver Vocational Institute, established in 1949, and the King Edward Senior Matriculation and Continuing Education Centre, established in 1962. In 1974 it would become Vancouver Community College.

October 22 Alvo von Alvensleben, one of BC’s first millionaires and an important Vancouver realtor, died in Seattle, aged 86. It’s estimated he pumped $7 million into the provincial economy in the years before WWI. He was one of our most colorful characters. One of my favorites of many, many stories about Alvo: He arrived in Vancouver with about $3 in his pocket, made a living partly by selling game birds he had shot in the Fraser Valley, which he sold to a haughty head waiter at the back door of the Vancouver Club. A few years later, now a millionaire through real estate dealings, he proudly entered the front door of the club as a member . . . and snubbed the waiter. One of Alvo’s homes is now Crofton House School for Girls. See this article.

October 29 Christy Clark, cabinet minister and MLA for Port Moody-Westwood, was born in Burnaby. She grew up in a political home: her father Jim was a three-time candidate for the Liberals in Burnaby.

October 30 Actor John Drainie died, aged 49. He was born in Vancouver April 1, 1916. Drainie was called by many the greatest radio actor in the world. Not just in Canada—the world. “He mastered nearly every accent and dialect in the English world,” said a cohort. “Not only could Drainie imitate the voices of six different people in one program, he was able to simulate the sound of a telephone ringing, telephone dialling, a busy signal and even the sound of a bell over a grocery store door.” He was Jake on CBC Radio’s Jake and the Kid, he played Stephen Leacock to perfection, and there were hundreds of other roles.

November 1 Austin Cottrell Taylor, financier, died in Vancouver, aged 76. He was born January 17, 1889 in Toronto, came to B.C. in 1917. In the 1930s, he was an owner of the Bralorne gold mine and one of the city’s wealthiest people. He raised race horses at his A.C.T. stock farm in Langley. His horse Indian Broom placed third in the 1936 Kentucky Derby. He owned Shannon Estate (Granville and 57th), now converted townhouses. During WWII Taylor worked for war minister C.D. Howe for one dollar a year. In 1942 he chaired the B.C. Security Commission which interned the Japanese. He was awarded the CBE in 1947 for his wartime service. He chaired the B.C. Emergency Flood Committee which handled fundraising for victims of the 1948 Fraser flood. His daughter Patricia married the prominent American conservative commentator William F. Buckley.

November 22 Edith McConnell Stewart-Murray, journalist, died in Victoria, aged about 65. She was born in Montreal in 1900. She lived in Vancouver from 1904 to 1958, then moved to Victoria. Her father, John P. (Black Jack) McConnell, with brother-in-law T.S. Ford, founded the Morning Sun, the forerunner of The Vancouver Sun (1912). She was a columnist and women’s page editor of the Sun and Vancouver News-Herald for 40 years. Her best known column was Let’s Go Shopping. She was a life member of the Canadian Women’s Press Club.

November 26 Among the dumber questions ever asked (I know, because I asked it) was this one of Jim Coleman, doyen of Canadian sports writers and the writer on thoroughbred racing in this country: “Remember when George Royal was named Canada’s Racehorse of the Year?” Jim remembered because he was on the committee that selected him today. Writing earlier in 1965 about a journey George Royal took to Toronto’s Woodbine track, Jim said: “He accepted his first-class flight accommodations with the lordly boredom of an Oriental potentate. He’s a cool one . . . he even tipped the stewardess a bale of hay.” There is an excellent article on George Royal’s career here.

December 3 Henry Bose Elementary School opened in Surrey. Bose was born in London, England in 1868, then moved to Surrey in the 1890s and began farming. He served a year on council, five years as reeve (1905-10) and more than 30 as a police magistrate. A road is named for him in Surrey. The school has a friendly and interesting web site and more information on Bose here.

December 27 The Vancouver Sun and The Province began publication in new Pacific Press premises shared at 2250 Granville Street. For a little more than 30 years this would be where the two papers were published. Curiously, although that building is now gone—replaced by upscale condos—the earlier homes of both papers are still around: The Province‘s old home was the Carter-Cotton building at the southeast corner of Cambie and Hastings, with the old Sun tower just a couple of blocks away at 100 West Pender.

Pacific Press had started in 1958 as a response to the rising costs of producing newspapers. The Sun and the Province merged their mechanical and financial departments, a change that had been happening in two-newspaper cities all over North America. The move by both papers to the 2250 Granville building was the next step. The two papers had been virtually next-door neighbors for more than 50 years already. When the Sun started in 1912 it was at 125 West Pender, just around the corner from the Province. Then, in March 1937, a fire destroyed the Sun’s business and editorial offices. (There was just one casualty: the janitor suffered minor burns and smoke inhalation.)

The Sun simply bought the World Building across the street at 100 West Pender, a funky green-topped skyscraper that had once been home to the now-vanished Vancouver World. The Sun staff walked across the street and set up shop, and were there until the 1965 move. They’ve been out of there for 40 years, but the building is known as The Old Sun Tower to this day. The two papers’ next move, in 1997, would bring them to Granville Square at the north foot of Granville Street, their home today. (The presses that print the actual papers are in Surrey.)

Also in 1965

Winnipeg-born (1905) Grace McInnis became the first woman to be a British Columbia Member of Parliament. She established a tradition: her father, J.S. Woodsworth, was the founder of the CCF, forerunner of the NDP.

W. Lorne Davies, who will become a 2000 recipient of the Order of British Columbia, is appointed the director of athletics and recreation at Simon Fraser University. He will hold that post for more than 30 years, stepping down in 1997. His OBC citation read, in part, “The athletic program at SFU he built was considered one of the best in the country. Simon Fraser was the only Canadian university to offer athletic scholarships and the first to provide full-time coaches and equipment. Davies established the first endowment fund to support a university athletic program.”

The Variety Club opened a Vancouver chapter, thanks to the efforts of Harry Howard. Hearing of the efforts of Howard and others, businessman Jack Diamond invited the group to the Clubhouse at The Track. He sponsored the dinner meeting and became a charter member of Tent 47, one of the most productive Tents in Variety’s world. Today, with the word “Club” dropped to indicate the openness of the group, Variety – The Children’s Charity of British Columbia, has raised more than $120 million for BC’s children. Its major fund-raising endeavor is the “Show of Hearts” telethon. To quote from Variety’s web site: “The ‘Show of Hearts’ Telethon . . . enables Variety to provide recognition to its numerous corporate donors and fund raisers. The 39th annual telethon raised $7,362,410 for BC’s children with special needs. Each year our friends at Global Television provide technical, production and volunteer support for the ‘Show of Hearts’ – a remarkable 40-year partnership with Variety – The Children’s Charity.”

Mushroom Studios was built at 1234 West 6th Avenue in Vancouver by Al Reusch’s Aragon Studios as an orchestral recording room for special sessions by the CBC. It expanded its scope and became a favorite recording location for well-known performers. “Among the earliest clients,” says Mushroom’s web site “were Motown artists Diana Ross and the Supremes. Legend has it that they cut their tracks here, in the dead of winter, even before heating had been installed in the building.”

Back in 1915 a musical comedy, 50 Years Forward, premiered at the Imperial Theatre in Vancouver. Among its predictions for Vancouver in 1965: a woman mayor. We checked: it didn’t happen.

Vancouver-born W.H. “Bill” New began to teach English at SFU.

The funky old building at Main Street and East 15th Avenue in Vancouver, originally Postal Station C, later a federal Department of Agriculture office block, had been empty for three years. A special investigation branch of the RCMP moved in this year. The Mounties would be there until 1976.

The Fraser River Harbour Commission replaced the New Westminster Harbour Board. Now all municipalities adjoining the river will send representatives to the new Commission which deals with issues like water pollution and industrial growth.

The Bentall I office tower was completed in downtown Vancouver.

Richmond Square shopping mall opened.

Surrey adopted the concept of “five towns” within the municipality: Guildford, Whalley, Cloverdale, Newton and Sunnyside with sub-units designed as villages and “green bands” around each area.

The Smith House at 5030 The Byway in West Vancouver was designed by Erickson/Massey. In 1967 it will win the Massey Medal for Architecture.

The Provincial Home for Incurables, mainly for tuberculosis patients, closed in Marpole. It had been the Grand Central Hotel, but in 1917 changed to the Home.

Whistler Resort was born. It was originally called London Mountain, but the name was changed to Whistler, writes Constance Brissenden, “inspired by the whistler marmot that frequents its rocky outcrops.” The first paved road had gone in just a year earlier. Inaugural ski runs at Whistler Creek opened, built by the Garibaldi Lift Company, later renamed the Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation. Franz’s Run, named after founder and first president Franz Wilhelmsen, still exists. See Constance’s Whistler and the Sea to Sky Country (Altitude Super Guides, 1995)

The Lions Bay development, battered by Hurricane Frieda in October 1962, and suffering slowing lot sales, went into receivership. It would recover a couple of years later.

Mary Isabella Rogers died, aged about 96. She was the wife of Benjamin Tingley Rogers, founder of the B.C. Sugar Refinery. Her diary would be the basis for a privately-printed 1987 book, compiled and edited by Michael Kluckner and J. Gudewill. The book also contains the recollections of contemporaries and descendants of Mr. and Mrs. Rogers.

Twin Fountains, a copper/steel sculpture commissioned by Block Bros. and designed by Lionel Thomas, was installed at 1600 Beach Avenue.

The Middle Arm Bridge, a low-level span over Moray Channel, was built. This two-lane bridge links the south end of Oak Street Bridge to Sea Island and the airport, as well as serving local traffic. It has a steel plate girder swing span, driven by hydraulic rams.

The Provincial Government established the regional district concept. The Greater Vancouver Regional District will be created in 1967.

The tunnel at Vancouver’s main Post Office, built to carry mail to the CPR station, was closed permanently for that purpose, having proved impractical. It will be used for storage and creepy movie scenes.

Known as UBC’s first “skyscraper,” the eight-storey Henry Angus building—home to the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, and the first fully air-conditioned building on the university’s campus—replaced 15 dilapidated army huts to house both Commerce and all of the Social Sciences. At the corner of Main Mall and University Boulevard, the building was named after Dean Emeritus Henry F. Angus, a member of the UBC faculty from 1919 to 1956.

Charlie Crane died. He was one of the most interesting people in Vancouver’s history. He was both deaf and blind, but he accomplished much. Charlie was a bright student at the Halifax and Jericho Hill schools for the deaf and a special student at UBC from 1934 to 1937—the first deaf-blind person to attend university in Canadian history. He was also outstanding in athletics, particularly in wrestling. Later in life, due to lack of publicity and support, Charlie settled into a life of manual work and personal study. He read voraciously, became an avid Braille book collector, and with help from others created his own Braille books. He bequeathed his personal collection of more than 10,000 books to UBC on his death, and that collection would form the basis of the Crane Library. The Crane Resource Centre and Library, as it’s known today, is one of a kind in Canada. Since 1970 the library and its dedicated volunteers have recorded talking textbooks and background materials. The website is here.

The province approved a 340-bed expansion at overcrowded Burnaby Hospital.

A new 81-bed acute care hospital opened in Langley.

Vancouver built its first curb ramps for wheelchair users. (Today, virtually all the sidewalks in the downtown core have sloping ramps, called curb cuts, for easy access.)

Logistics and Transportation Review, a quarterly published by the Centre for Transportation Studies at UBC, first appeared.

The Pacific Trollers Association Newsletter, a monthly publication of the Pacific Trollers’ Association, first appeared.

Pazifische Rundschau/Pacific Review, a fortnightly newspaper covering German interests, first appeared.

The Peak, a newspaper for SFU students, first appeared.

Weekly Stock Charts – Canadian Industrial Companies began appearing in Vancouver. The same company also began publishing Weekly Stock Charts – Canadian Resource Companies.

The Great Northern Railway station, next door to the CN terminal and unused since 1962, was demolished. Using the CN station, the American railway continued to operate a Vancouver-Seattle train service for 15 years.

The Vancouver Mounties baseball team, which had disbanded in November of 1962, returned for the Pacific Coast League’s 1965 season. The club, alas, would fold for good at the end of the 1969 season.

Skiers bemoaned the fate of Hollyburn, a skiing favorite since the 1920s: the chairlift shut down and Hi-View Lodge was destroyed by fire.

The Royal City Curling Club was formed in New Westminster. Website here.

Vancouver’s Joan (Rocco) Haines was chosen the world’s best female bowler.

The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club purchased Alexandra Island, in Centre Bay of Gambier Island.

Paul Deggan’s welded copper, aluminum and brass relief sculpture is placed on the north wall of UBC’s Education Building.

The Vancouver Playhouse, opened in 1963, presented its first original Canadian play, Eric Nicol’s Like Father, Like Fun. It told of a crass lumber baron’s attempt to contrive his son’s initiation to sex. It was a success here, and would be taken to Broadway in 1967 with a new title: A Minor Adjustment. It was not successful there, but Nicol, unbowed, even had fun with that misfortune.

The Dorothy Somerset Scholarship Fund was established. Perth, Australia-born (June 9, 1900) Dorothy Somerset was an actor/director and teacher, celebrated for her encouragement of young talent in the theatre. In 1958 she helped found UBC’s drama department.

Writes dance reviewer Max Wyman, “U.S.-trained Iris Garland arrived at Simon Fraser University [in 1965] and developed a dance program that showcased leading U.S. modernists. Echoes of these influences were seen for years in the companies created by SFU alumni.”

Singer/musician Tom Northcott formed Syndrome Records.

Movie director Larry Kent presented his third film in as many years. In When Tomorrow Dies, writes reviewer Michael Walsh, “moving on to domestic melodrama, Kent cast Pat Gage as a discontented matron who attempts to recapture her youth by returning to school and having an affair with her English instructor.”

According to Mark Leiren-Young, entertainment chronicler, Isy’s Nightclub was indirectly responsible for the creation of one of Vancouver’s most respected dance companies. “Paula Ross was working as a showgirl at Isy’s when she decided to form her own modern dance company in 1965. The first Paula Ross Company was made up of other dancers from Isy’s who wanted lessons from the classically trained Ross. Her company was a vital part of the local dance scene until suspending operations in 1987.”

Writer Jan Drabek, born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1935, came to Canada. “He has recalled his upbringing,” Alan Twigg tells us, “in a memoir, Thirteen, written numerous thrillers: Report on the Death of Rosenkavalier, What Happened to Wenceslas?, The Lister Legacy and The Statement, plus a Canadian guide to retirement, The Golden Revolution. He temporarily returned to Czechoslovakia upon its reversion to democracy, and was subsequently appointed that country’s ambassador to Kenya until 1994.” (By then the country had become the Czech Republic, with the new Slovak Republic to the east.) In the late 1990s Drabek served as the Czech ambassador in Tirana, Albania, but is now back in Vancouver. See this site for more.

In the late 1960s a resurgence in arts and crafts brought forth a whole new interest in stained and art glass. Students at Sir William MacDonald Elementary School on East Hastings created a 14-window art project this year.

Burnaby Lake Arena opened at 3676 Kensington Avenue.