1978
Above: The sculpture Throne of Nezahualcoyotl, by Ted Sebastian, was presented the to the International Stone Sculpture Symposium by the Mexican government in 1978.
[Image: Vancouver City Archives AM1502-S1-2-: CVA 1502-544]
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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 1 The 58th annual Polar Bear Swim was the biggest to date, with 1,000 participants and 20,000 spectators.
Also January 1 Canada’s first Native Indian Citizenship Judge, Marjorie Cantryn, swore in 30 new Canadians in Whalley in Surrey.
February 3 To mark the opening of its new cultural centre on Grandview Highway, Vancouver’s Italian community staged a Carnevale Italiano. (The Centre opened September 25, 1977).
February 12 The number of Greek immigrants to Vancouver doubled through the 1960s, and that eventually led to the construction of the Hellenic Cultural Community Centre. The centre opened today next door to St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church on Arbutus Street.
Also February 12 Vancouver’s Variety Club Telethon raised $1,152,000, a world record for any telethon sponsored by Variety.
February 14 Harry Ornest announced his new Pacific Coast League baseball team would be called the Vancouver Canadians.
March 23 Bill Kenny, lead singer of the Ink Spots, died in Vancouver at age 63. He was born in Philadelphia June 12, 1914. He joined the Ink Spots in early 1936 on the retirement of Jerry Daniels, and the combination of his high tenor and Orville “Hoppy” Jones’ deep-voiced spoken interludes made them a success from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. On November 6, 1936, they became the first black performers to appear on television, in an NBC/RCA demonstration. Their biggest hit, and it was a huge one, was If I Didn’t Care, recorded January 12, 1939. Swing Magazine reports the group was paid $37.50 for the session. “When sales took off,” the magazine continues, “and sales reached 200,000 Decca had to destroy the original contract and the Ink Spots were paid an additional $3,750.” Kenny left the group in 1953, and in 1961 moved to Vancouver.
A CBC site has this about The Bill Kenny Show that ran on Sundays from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. from May 22 to July 10, 1966: “Elie Savoie produced The Bill Kenny Show, a half-hour of easy listening in which Kenny was supported by a vocal group called the Accents, and an orchestra led by Fraser MacPherson. Kenny’s guests included Susan Pesklevits, Judy Ginn, Marty Gillan, accordion player Ricky Mann, Fran Gregory, Patty Surbey, Attilo Ronuzzi, and the Rutherford Kids, of Burnaby.”
March 27 Nat Bailey, restaurateur, White Spot founder, died in Vancouver, aged 76. Nathaniel Ryal Bailey was born January 31, 1902 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His itinerant family arrived from Seattle in 1911. “At 18,” writes Constance Brissenden, “Nat moved his peanut stand to Athletic Park, and later served Sunday drivers at Lookout Point from a 1918 Model T truck. A customer’s shout, ‘Why don’t you bring it to us?’ inspired the first White Spot drive-in, which opened in June 1928 at Granville and West 67th Avenue. From 1930 into the 1960s, his second wife, Eva (née Ouelette) co-managed his restaurants. In 1968 13 White Spots and other interests were sold by the Baileys to General Foods for $6.5 million. Nat Bailey Stadium is named for him, as a lifelong promoter of local baseball.” Read Triple-O, The White Spot Story by Constance Brissenden.
March 30 Doug Little marked 41 years at city hall, most latterly as Vancouver City Clerk He will be succeeded by Bob Henry.
April 2 The Vancouver Parks Board voted to rename Capilano Stadium after Nat Bailey.
April 12 Leon Ladner, lawyer and MP, died in Vancouver, aged 93. He was born November 29, 1884 in Ladner. (His father Thomas and uncle William had founded Ladner.) After his BA (1907) and LL.B (1909) both from the University of Toronto, he was admitted to the bar in 1910. In 1912 he began his Vancouver law practice. He was a founder in 1912 of UBC convocation. He was a founder of Ladner, Carmichael and Downs. Ladner was a Liberal-Conservative MP for Vancouver South from 1921 to 1930. (The Liberal-Conservative Party was later named, simply, the Conservative Party, then in 1942 became the Progressive Conservative Party, changed again in 2003 back to the Conservative Party.) Ladner was a UBC senator from 1955 to 1961, in 1957 was elected to the university’s board of governors. He was reappointed in 1963, retired in 1966. Honorary lecturer, faculty of law. He donated the Ladner Carillon and Clock Tower to UBC in 1969 in honor of B.C. pioneers. See this site.
April 26 The Triple A Vancouver Canadians baseball club made its home debut. They beat the San Jose Missions 9-4 before a crowd of 7,128 in newly-named Nat Bailey Stadium.
May 5 Walls, a play by Paris-born Christian Bruyere, premiered at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre as a New Play Centre and Arts Club Theatre production. The play was based on the 1975 hostage-taking incident in the B.C. penitentiary which resulted in the death of prison worker Mary Steinhauser. It featured Winston Rekert in the lead role of hostage-taker Danny Baker and Susan Wright in the lead role of Steinhauser—although the names were changed. A film with the same title appeared in 1984. Bruyere later became active as a Vancouver-based film producer.
May 9 Dorothy Steeves, politician, died in Vancouver, aged 82. Dorothy Gretchen Steeves (née Biersteker) was born May 26, 1895 in Amsterdam, Holland. “She was,” writes Constance Brissenden, “a graduate in law of Leyden U. During the First World War she served as a legal adviser to the Netherlands government. In 1918 she married Rufus Palmer Steeves (b. 1892 in Woodstock, NB, died June 1960 in Cloverdale, B.C.), a Canadian officer and former prisoner of war. They came to Vancouver in 1919, where Rufus resumed his teaching career. Dot was a founder in 1932 of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), which later became the NDP. She served as CCF MLA for North Vancouver from 1934 to 1945, one of seven original CCF members in B.C. In May 1948 she was elected CCF president for B.C./Yukon . . . ‘A fiery member … in the headlines much of the time.’” See this site.
May 14 Gordie Tocher, friend Richard Tomkies, and navigator Gerhart Kiesel set out for Hawaii from West Vancouver in a native-style log canoe Tocher had carved himself, to prove Hawaiians could have originated in B.C. There is a good description by writer Terry Barker from his book Last of the Sunshine Sketches of this quixotic adventure here. An excerpt: “The trip was a nightmare. According to a feature article in MacLean’s Magazine of March 5, 1979, the adventurers had to face 35-foot waves—or, as Richard put it, ‘sheer terror interspersed with moments of boredom.’ Kiesel loved it, his grin growing wider as the waves grew higher. Gordie was the expedition’s cameraman, recording everything on a 16 mm Bolex. Later he would travel about B.C. with his film, eking out a living by telling his adventures to rapt audiences at $3.50 a head.”
May 18 Henry Bell-Irving was sworn in as B.C.’s lieutenant governor, succeeding Walter Owen.
May 29 The first Vancouver Children’s Festival began in big, colorful tents at Vanier Park. Since the festival began, more than 1.5 million children have attended.
June 11 Actor Joshua Jackson was born in Vancouver.
July 18 Claude Dettloff, photographer, died in Vancouver, aged about 79. (The spelling ‘Claud’ is correct.) Writes Constance Brissenden: “‘Dett’ Dettloff was born in 1899 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, started his career with the Minneapolis Journal in 1923, then worked 11 years with the Winnipeg Tribune. He joined the Vancouver Daily Province in 1936, would eventually become its chief photographer. His famous Second World War photograph Wait for Me, Daddy, showing five-year-old Warren ‘Whitey’ Bernard running after his marching dad, was shot October 1, 1940 as the New Westminster brigade went overseas. The photo appeared October 2, 1940 in the Province, and was named one of the 10 best pictures of the 1940s by LIFE magazine. The unposed shot was taken at 9 metres with a 3 1/4 by 4 1/4 Speed Graphic and a 13.5 C.M. Zeiss lens. Exposure was 1/200 of a second at F.8, using Agfa film.” See a fuller account in our ‘Archives’ section.
July Brock House, a big handsome mansion built in 1911 at 3875 Point Grey Road, was declared a Heritage Building by the City of Vancouver. In 1952 the owners at that time sold the building to the federal government, and until 1971 it served as the RCMP’s Vancouver Sub-Division Headquarters. On May 1, 1975, the property was turned over by the Federal Government to the City of Vancouver as part of the transfer of the Jericho Waterfront Lands. Since 1977 the house and grounds have been leased to Brock House Society from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation. The Society holds many community events there. There is an interesting history of the house here.
August 11 to 13 The first Vancouver Folk Music Festival opened in Stanley Park. To quote the Canadian Encyclopedia web site, “The festival was founded by Mitch Podolak and Colin Gorrie of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and Ernie Fladell and Fran Fitzgibbon of Vancouver’s social planning department through its Heritage Festival Society, and Gary Cristall, who co-ordinated this first festival . . . It has avoided the promotion of star performers but attendance has averaged about 30,000 annually, making this one of Canada’s most successful folk festivals.” Gary Cristall would be associated with the festival from its beginning to 1995.
September 3 An Air West Airlines Twin Otter crash in Coal Harbour killed 11 people, nine of the 11 passengers and both crew members.
September 8 Dave Brock died in West Vancouver, aged about 68. This gentle, delightfully funny, mutton-chopped writer and CBC broadcaster was a true original. David Hamilton Brock was born in Ottawa in 1910. He wrote the articles on local entertainment in the 1976 Vancouver Book, and fine pieces they are. He was a son of Reginald W. and Mildred Brock, came to Vancouver at age 4. He attended UBC and Harvard, was called to the BC bar but never practised. He was best known for CBC radio and TV shows, talks and documentaries, notably CBC-TV’s Seven O’Clock Show. He wrote a column for the Victoria Times in the 1960s. His barbs—never cruel—were directed at people in power and politicians. He was regularly published in Punch, Saturday Night, Atlantic Monthly in the late 1930s and 1940s.
I interviewed Dave on my CBC radio show sometime back in the 1970s and he told me a story that I have treasured ever since. He’d been visiting a friend, a woman who worked in a meat-packing plant making sausages. They were sitting outside on the factory’s lawn during her lunch break, and she said to Dave, “Oh, Dave, I’m so hungry I could eat a sausage.”
Dave’s parents were killed in a 1935 plane crash. See that year in the Chronology for details.
September 18 Maclean’s Magazine went weekly.
October 2 Jack Webster, whose radio talk show (CKNW) was a ratings force for years, started doing the same thing on television at BCTV.
October 3 Walter Gage, retired president of UBC, died in Vancouver, aged 73. He was born March 5, 1905 in South Vancouver. He was educated at Tecumseh Elementary and John Oliver High School, earned a BA in 1925 and an MA in 1926 from UBC. He took graduate studies in math at the University of Chicago, and the California Institute of Technology. A scholar and revered instructor, he taught from 1927 to 1933 at Victoria College, a UBC affiliate, then at UBC until 1978. They called him the Dean of Everything. Walter Gage was associated with UBC for more than 50 years. Students liked him, and he liked them: he was a superior teacher. remembered their names throughout the years, and was famous for helping students in crisis. He won UBC’s 1953 Great Trekker Award and the 1968 Master Teacher Award, Engineering students paid tribute to him by dubbing their fuel-efficiency vehicle the ‘Wally Wagon.’ Gage was the sixth president of UBC, serving from 1969 to 1975. He was awarded the Order of Canada, in 1971.
October 16 The Province’s Coffee Break page had an interview with ventriloquist Peter Rolston, who had left kids’ TV and was now working clubs. He was in Calgary, working with a little girl dummy named Cindy who told Peter, in her little girl’s voice, “I go to kindergarten.”
“Is that right?” said Peter.
“Yes, I write poetry.”
“That’s nice.”
“Wanna hear a dirty poem?” she asked.
Startled, Peter shook his head. “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”
An inebriated lady in the audience shouted, “Let her tell it!”
At which point Cindy leaned forward from Peter’s knee and gazed intently at the lady, then turned and looked solemnly at Peter. “That’s my teacher,” she said.
October 19 National Geographic was doing a cover story on Vancouver, and sent one of its photographers, Charles O’Rear, to take some photos. An indication of the magazine’s scale of preparation: O’Rear took more than 10,000 pictures, yet a mere 21 got into the magazine. To get a shot of the magnificent interior of the Orpheum, O’Rear had special lights brought in by chartered plane from Washington, D.C., but his Orpheum shots were among the 9,979 that didn’t get in.
October 22 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, born in Wadowice, Poland, on May 18, 1920, became Pope John Paul II.
October 24 The Stormont Connector was officially opened. It pushed McBride Boulevard (which links to the Pattullo Bridge) through Burnaby to hook up with Highway 1 at Gaglardi Way. Highways Minister Alex Fraser cut the ribbon.
October The new New Westminster library opened.
Also in October The 1911 Stanley Park Pavilion was designated a Schedule A Heritage Building by the City of Vancouver.
Also in October Taylor’s shoe store in Ladner closed after 66 years. Begun as a harness repair shop, the business switched to shoes when automobiles begin to replace horses.
Fall Three British Columbians were sipping coffee in the anteroom of the Cavalry Club in London, England. Social Credit cabinet minster Grace McCarthy wanted “something dramatic” for Vancouver’s centennial in 1986, eight years in the future. (“Could we borrow the Mona Lisa?” was one of her first ideas.) Lawrie Wallace, Agent General for British Columbia at the time, knew that the third person in the group—Patrick Reid, then running Canada House—was also president of the Paris-based International Bureau of Expositions. The BIE, to give it its French initials, had awarded the hugely successful Expo 67 to Montreal. “Why couldn’t Vancouver have one?” Eight years and $1.5 billion later—despite some loud nay-sayings and union strikes during construction in 1984 that nearly cancelled the whole event—what began as Transpo 86 would go on to claim success as Expo 86. Some 22 million tickets were sold.
November 1 The Province and The Vancouver Sun were closed by a labour dispute. They would not resume publication until June 26, 1979, just under eight months. The Province lost 16 persons from its editorial department, the Sun eight, including columnist Doug Collins, who joined The Daily Courier, and sportswriter Jim Taylor, who later joined the Province.
The union newspaper The Vancouver Express was launched to fill the gap. Copies of this newspaper are on microfiche at the Vancouver Public Library. (An earlier Express, also launched as the result of strikes at the two major dailies, had appeared from February to May, 1970.)
November The first 15 Vietnamese refugees from the Hai Hong arrived in Vancouver. The Hai Hong, journalist Kevin Griffin wrote, was a “rusty old freighter anchored off the coast of Malaysia, unable to unload its human cargo. Hung over the side of the boat was a sign in English: ‘Please Rescue Us.’ Captured by television news cameras, it was an image that showed up on TV sets in living rooms in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Images of hungry and homeless refugees stuck on what amounted to a floating casket also tweaked the conscience of thousands of Canadians. Vancouverites were no different . . . Former Saigon resident Tzee Kok Wu told of leaving in such secrecy that he was contacted about the boat’s departure only an hour before it left. Wu and his four brothers and sisters made it in time but their parents were delayed a half hour and were left behind. Wu told of being so crowded aboard the boat, he could only sit because there wasn’t enough space to lie down. Of the 2,500 refugees crammed aboard the Hai Hong, about 600 arrived in Canada; 150 eventually arrived in Vancouver.”
November 11 Billy Bishop Goes to War, playwright-composer John Gray’s two-man musical about Canada’s World War One flying legend, opened at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. It starred Gray and Eric Peterson (who played 21 different parts), and became a huge hit. Says the online Canadian Encyclopedia of Music: “The musical brought Gray the 1981 Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Award, the 1982 Chalmers Canadian Play Award, and the 1983 Governor General’s Award for drama, as well as an Actra award for best television program. Billy Bishop Goes To War remains one of the most popular of Canadian musicals.”
Eric Peterson is seen regularly on TV these days, as a judge on CBC-TV’s This Is Wonderland and as Brent Butt’s irascible dad on CTV’s Corner Gas. John Gray, who is now known as John MacLachlan Gray to distinguish himself from a host of other John Grays, is as busy as ever. See a brief recap of his busy career here.
December 15 W.J. VanDusen, forest industry executive, died in Vancouver, aged 89. Whitford Julian VanDusen was born July 18, 1889 in Tara, Ontario. “In 1912,” writes Constance Brissenden, “he met H.R. MacMillan at the University of Toronto, who pushed him to study forestry (BSc, 1912). From 1913 through WWI he worked as a B.C. forester. In the fall of 1919 VanDusen joined H.R. MacMillan Export as manager and senior vice president (1945-49). Following the merger with Bloedel, Stewart and Welch he was named vice chair (1949-56). He remained on the board of MacMillan Bloedel until he retired in 1969. He was involved in philanthropic works, including the establishment of the Vancouver Foundation (1943). He donated the purchase amount for the Shaughnessy Golf Course, now the VanDusen Botanical Gardens.”
December 25 Charles Edward Borden, archaeologist, died in Vancouver, aged 73. He is called the “Grandfather of B.C. archaeology.” Borden was born May 15, 1905 in New York City, although he grew up in Germany. He graduated from the University of California in German Literature (PhD, 1937). He formed UBC’s department of archaeology in 1939 and also taught German. In 1945 he served as archaeological resident with a small, privately funded dig in Point Grey, followed by major B.C. studies. In 1949 he was appointed lecturer in archaeology and taught the first courses at UBC. In the mid-1950s he began studies in the Fraser Canyon. He wrote some three dozen publications on B.C. and Fraser River archeology.
Also in 1978
Dr. Patricia Baird became the head of the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. Under her leadership, the department grew from a small group of pioneer scientists and clinicians to an internationally known resource. She was the first woman to chair a clinical medical school department at UBC, and the first woman to be elected to the Board of Governors. Her medical genetics course, regularly voted the best course by UBC medical students, was an outstanding model for teaching genetics to physicians of the future. The American Society of Human Genetics has used this model in the development of medical genetics courses for medical students in North America.
Jim Kinnaird, who had been the assistant deputy minister of labor in the NDP government, was elected president of the B.C. Federation of Labor. He was credited with uniting the divided body, would serve three terms as leader of 250,000 unionized workers.
The British Columbia Film Commission was formed. The making of movies in BC had accelerated, and the function of the commission would be to promote and market B.C. to the world as a film, television and commercial location, and to use the province’s skilled professionals in their productions, both before and behind the cameras. The Commission operates within the B.C. Trade Development Corporation and maintains extensive photo files of locations, assists producers with budgeting and production scheduling, acts as a liaison for production companies and handles inquiries from the public.
After being hounded by a young North Vancouver singer who insisted Bruce Allen become his manager, Allen acquiesced. Good move. The young man was Bryan Adams, still a major star more than 25 years later.
Musicologist Ida Halpern, a potent force on the local music scene and the first person to study the music of West Coast native people, was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
The Vancouver Whitecaps finished the season with an NASL best 24-6 first place finish—which included winning the season’s last 13 games in a row. The Whitecaps were drawing crowds of close to 30,000 at Empire Stadium.
The Canucks revamped their uniforms, changing the team colors from the original blue, green and white (with hockey stick logo) to a yellow, orange and black outfit that looked, wrote Mark Leiren-Young, “like a bad set of pajamas.” A San Francisco marketing firm claimed it would strike fear into the hearts of opponents, but, says Mark, “all it induced was giggles and they soon switched to a more subdued uniform— although they did keep the speeding skate logo.”
Debbie Brill won gold in the World Cup of track and field at Montreal.
In 50 years of high school basketball in BC, writes Howard Tsumura, the only B.C.-born and schooled player to end up in the NBA was Lars Hansen, a 6-foot-10 centre from Coquitlam’s Centennial Secondary. After leading his school to the B.C. title in 1972, Howard writes, Hansen went on to play four seasons at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he had an opportunity to play against Stu Jackson’s University of Oregon team. Hansen later played 15 games for the Seattle SuperSonics during the 1978-79 season, averaging just over five points per contest. Seattle went on to win the NBA title that season, however, Hansen did not play in any of the playoff games.
The Ocean Engineering Centre opened at BC Research on the UBC campus. The centre is consulted frequently by naval architects and ship builders. They use a 67-metre-long towing tank here as an interactive design tool allowing them to optimize hull lines. Tests of models have examined the performance of tugs, barges, planing hulls, sailboats, offshore supply boats, hydrofoils, ferries, catamarans and even submarines. The Centre also gets into the movies: a large wave basin (30.5 metres long) there has proven to be ideal as an aquatic sound stage. It includes a 32-ton wave maker. “Here accurate models of entire harbors and shorelines can be constructed and subjected to scaled-down tempests.” Features filmed on location at OEC include The First Season, Jason Takes Manhattan, and The Sea Wolf. (The basin’s water was warmed in the latter film for star Charles Bronson.)
Edmonton-born (February 14, 1923) I.K. “Ike” Barber, after a quarter century in the forest industry, formed his own company: Slocan Forest Products Ltd. Sales were $23 million, eventually reached nearly $1 billion. Slocan employed more than 4,000 people, including contractors, and won awards for its sustainable forestry practices. Barber will become a prominent philanthropist, and will make a $20 million donation to UBC to help establish the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, in the university’s old main library. Barber would retire in 2002. (In 2004 Slocan Forest Products was purchased by Canfor, Canadian Forest Products Ltd.)
Entrepreneur Brent Davies leased the Teahouse at Ferguson Point in Stanley Park. (On May 5, 2004 he will rename it the Sequoia Grill.) The Teahouse was built in 1938, just prior to the Second World War, as an officers’ mess for a military defense garrison, staffed by the 15th Coast Artillery Regiment. After the war, the city operated it as a summer teahouse.
The Vancouver Maritime Museum purchased the Thomas F. Bayard, a two-masted schooner built in New York in 1880 as a pilot ship. The Museum planned a major restoration of the vessel. After its years as a pilot ship in Delaware Bay (Bayard was a Delaware senator, later the U.S. Secretary of State), the Bayard became a Gold Rush freighter, running between Puget Sound and Alaska from 1898 to 1906, then a seal hunter out of Victoria from 1907 to 1911. Its most lasting fame was as the Sandheads #16 lightship at the mouth of the Fraser River from 1913 to 1957 (another source gives 1955), a remarkable service of more than 40 years.
Alvin Balkind’s term as chief curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, started in 1975, ended. See his biography in our Hall of Fame.
Richard Bonynge’s years as artistic director of Vancouver Opera ended. “The Bonynge years (1974-78),” music critic Ray Chatelin wrote, “began with great promise and ended with the last half of the 1977-78 season being cancelled because of mounting debt. Bonynge, though often mired in controversy about finances and programming, changed the direction of the company. He created his own orchestra and established a resident training program, both which are foundations of the current operation.” He was succeeded by Hamilton McClymont.
Stu (James Stuart) Keate, journalist and publisher of The Vancouver Sun since 1964, retired.
John Avison, originator and conductor of the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, was named a Member of the Order of Canada.
Punchlines, Western Canada’s first comedy club, opened in the basement of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Founder Rich Elwood would later move the club to Gastown where it lasted to 1995.
Greenpeace bought its own ship, a converted North Sea trawler, Sir Williams Hardy, renamed it the Rainbow Warrior and began to campaign against whaling in Iceland and Spain.
La Petite Maison Housing Co-operative, on Talon Square in Champlain Heights in Vancouver, began operation. Architectural historian Harold Kalman comments: “Champlain Heights, the name given to this southeastern corner of Vancouver, was the last undeveloped acreage within the city limits to be built up. The showcase residential community was planned in the early 1970s, with curved roads and cul-de-sacs serving a mix of housing types and income levels. The City retained ownership of the land, leasing it to developers. This stucco-and-wood housing co-op [La Petite Maison], inspired by the idea of European townhouses around a public square, provides a comfortable, human scale.” Architects were Hawthorn/Mansfield/Towers.
The book The Salish People appeared. It consisted of the field reports of ethnologist Charles Hill-Tout (1858-1944), collected by Ralph Maud. Hill-Tout was a devoted amateur anthropologist, and wrote much on the Salish.
The book Heritage Fights Back by Marc Denhez appeared. Much of the book was dedicated to the fight to save the Gastown area—at a time when the civic, provincial and federal levels of government were in favor of demolishing it for massive redevelopment.
A decision was made to switch to the use of natural gas only at the Burrard Thermal plant—the six tall stacks emitting steam just west of the Ioco refinery on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. The plant, completed in 1963, was designed to burn either crude oil or natural gas. High pressure steam is passed through turbines to generate electricity—almost 7,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough for 700,000 homes, if needed.
The provincial government asked Vancouver financial consultants Brown Farris & Jefferson Ltd. to study how investors fared on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. “The odds of losing, overall, are 84%—about five times out of six,” the study concluded. “The chances of investors doubling their money each year for more than four years by buying and holding an issue appear to be nil.”
Passenger service at the CPR’s second station at 2734 Murray Street in Port Moody ended. The Port Moody Heritage Society later restored the building and some of its early functions (the telegraph office and station agent’s kitchen), and today it’s the Port Moody Station Museum.
The Burnaby chapter of AHEPA (Anglo-Hellenic Educational Progressive Association) was chartered. AHEPA is the largest Greek Heritage organization in the world, supports a variety of charitable causes.
The Mexican government presented the sculpture Throne of Nezahualcoyotl, by Ted Sebastian, to the International Stone Sculpture Symposium. Placed (appropriately) in VanDusen Botanical Garden, it depicts the Aztec prince Nezahualcoyotl who found inspiration in flowers.
The book Pioneers, Pedlars, and Prayer Shawls: The Jewish Communities in British Columbia and the Yukon by Cyril Leonoff appeared, published by Sono Nis Press.
H.D. Stafford died. He was an educator who served the Langley area as District Superintendent of Schools for 19 years and the education system for 30 years. He was a graduate of the University of Alberta, who received an Honorary Life membership from the Canadian Education Association and the Canadian Association of School Administrators. A Langley secondary school is named for him, and the Langley Chamber of Commerce presents an annual H.D. Stafford Good Citizen of the Year award in his honor.
The Douglas College council approved a downtown New Westminster site for the college’s first permanent campus. The campus at Royal Avenue and Eighth Street would be completed in the fall of 1982 and officially opened the following spring.
A permanent residence (replacing temporary quarters) was built on the BCIT campus. It consisted of five low-rise houses and accommodated up to 250 students.
Prince Philip opened the Health Care Centre at New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital.
A new 75-bed extended-care facility, Cedar Hill Centre, opened at Langley Hospital.
A regional association that United Way established in 1978 as the Lower Mainland Alliance of Information & Services has grown this year to become the B.C. Alliance of Information & Referral Services (BCAIRS), with 16 members in the Lower Mainland.
Open-line broadcaster Jack Webster moved from radio (CKNW) to television (BCTV) and repeated his success.
The Surrey Story, by G. Fern Treleaven, which had originally appeared in smaller separate parts, was published as a book by the Surrey Museum and Historical Society. It told the story of Surrey up to that point, frequently in the words of the city’s pioneers.
Vancouver, a history of the city by Eric Nicol, appeared, published by Doubleday. On my travels around Canada and the US, I often pop into public libraries and check to see what books on Vancouver they stock. This is the title most often seen.
Peter Trower’s Ragged Horizons was a retrospective collection of his earlier works.
Geoff Meggs became editor of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union’s The Fisherman, oldest and largest circulation west coast fishing industry publication.
SFU English professor John Mills published Skevington’s Daughter.
The movie The Other Side Of The Mountain, Part 2 (Director Larry Peerce) was released. Overcoming her fear of commitment, paraplegic Jill Kinmont (Marilyn Hassett) marries a sensitive truck driver (Timothy Bottoms) and passes through Vancouver on her way to a Vancouver Island honeymoon.
Quintessence Records—an outgrowth of Ted Thomas’ Kitsilano record store of the same name—became a focal point for the emerging punk and new wave scene, and introduced bands such as The Pointed Sticks and Young Canadians.
Charitable casinos were first permitted in BC.
A number of new periodicals appeared in 1978. They included:
B C Runner, a quarterly published by the Seawall Running Society.
Canadian Holistic Healing Association Newsletter, a quarterly.
Consulting Engineers of British Columbia: Commentary, a quarterly for the membership of the Consulting Engineers of British Columbia. It offered industry profiles, selection procedures, awards for engineering excellence, export activity, sector articles, etc.
Indo Canadian Times, a weekly with text in Punjabi, a free suburban publication.
The Link, the first Indo-Canadian English paper to be published in Vancouver, appeared as a biweekly.
Online – Onward, an irregular (approx. eight times a year) publication of the Vancouver Online Users Group. It covered events and information of interest to local librarians and others who worked with computerized information retrieval and database management systems
Pacific Report Newsletter, a semi-annual free publication of the Canadian Cancer Society, B.C. and Yukon Division.
Transmitter, published six times a year by the Telecommunications Workers Union, a free telephone union newsletter
West Coast Libertarian, a bi-monthly publication of the Greater Vancouver Libertarian Association, first appeared.
Ben Wosk, furniture and appliance merchant, and community activist (Schara Tzedeck synagogue, B.C. Heart Foundation, Vancouver Epilepsy Centre, Boy Scouts and others), was named a Member of the Order of Canada.
Tsutae Sato, educator, was awarded the Order of Canada. He and his wife Hanako ran the Vancouver Japanese Language School from 1906 to 1942. See his entry in our Hall of Fame for more information.
The Vancouver School of Art, newly independent from Vancouver Community College, was renamed the Emily Carr College of Art. The new name was not a unanimous choice. Painter Gordon Smith, a former student and teacher at the school, was among those who opposed naming it after Emily Carr. Smith was on the school’s board at the time, and says there had been fear that no one would know who Carr was. Many students also opposed the idea, and protested against it. But today the name has become happily accepted. “In retrospect, I think it was a good idea,” says Smith. “Emily Carr was one of the greatest artists in Canada. Her name has become synonymous with the school.”
Under its various names the school has enjoyed more than 70 years of activity, and produced thousands of artists and designers. To quote from their very attractive web site: “Previous names include Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (1925); Vancouver School of Art: Decorative and Applied (1933); Vancouver School of Art (1937); Emily Carr College of Art (1978); Emily Carr College of Art and Design (1981); and finally, Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design (1995).”
The Institute’s web site gives a lively and comprehensive overview of its activities.
A series of photographs was taken this year by Vancouver’s Planning Department, panoramic views of the city intended for a special study. Some 25 years later matching photographs were taken. The result is fascinating panoramic time-span views in which you see how the city changed in those 25 years. The camera seems to “pan” along the various skylines shown, and you see forests of new buildings rising.
