1982
Above: Science World. It opened in 1982 as the Arts, Sciences and Technology Centre in an interim space on Granville Street.
[Image: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 775-189.18]
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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 14 Serial killer Clifford Olson pled guilty to the murder of 11 Vancouver-area children and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The RCMP will pay Olson’s family $100,000 in return for Olson revealing where his victims’ bodies were buried.
January 15 The Arts, Sciences and Technology Centre opened in an interim space on Granville Street. Under the leadership of Barbara Brink, the Junior League of Greater Vancouver and the City of Vancouver, the dream of establishing a science centre began in 1977. A set of hands-on exhibits known as the “Extended I” was displayed in venues around Vancouver prior to the opening of the Centre. In six years, the temporary centre at the corner of Granville and Dunsmuir attracted more than 600,000 visitors. Another 400,000 benefited from the centre’s outreach programs which travelled around the province. The demand for a permanent venue was clear; the only obstacles which stood in the way were finding a location and securing funding. Both campaigns were successful.
Today, it’s known as Science World at Telus World of Science.
The big silver sphere at 1455 Quebec Street began life as the Preview Centre for Expo 86, so it’s been a city landmark for 20 years.
January 16 An arsonist’s fire heavily damaged Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park. The fire destroyed, among other things, the signatures of hundreds of performers and the names and dates of shows, all pencilled on the old wooden walls. The fire-setter was never found, but the old Bowl was rebuilt and shows continued to be presented.
February Individual members of CAPOM, the Canadian Association for Preventive and Orthomolecular Medicine joined with members of The Coalition for Alternative Therapy to form a new group. Ronit Cohen, in The Greater Vancouver Book, writes: “They gathered in pregnant ex-CAPOM member Lorna Hancock’s basement to decide on a name for a new organization. Lorna went into labor and politely excused herself from the meeting. While Lorna gave birth to her daughter Lorill in the hospital, the group birthed a new organization, the Health Action Network Society (HANS).”
Their web site says, in part: “Health Action Network Society (1984) is a membership-based, health education charity whose purpose is to facilitate individual wellness through education and networking. We support personal choice, and make available information on a variety of health approaches. Sometimes the critical difference in improved wellness comes not from a single modality but from a combination of many, in which an integrated team works for the best benefit of an individual.”
March 1 Groundbreaking started the construction of the original SkyTrain line.
March 8 The move to the new Douglas College campus was marked by a trek of students, teachers, and administrators. Accompanied by a marching band, they walked or drove from the Queen’s Park campus at McBride and Eighth Avenue to the new downtown site. Leading the trek on his black motorcycle was the college’s second president, William L. Day. A pine tree uprooted from the old campus and transported by wheelbarrow was replanted on the new campus. Also transported during the trek was the wooden college entrance sign. A few years later, that sign would be given legs and turned into a bench.
April 1 Premier Bill Bennett announced that a world exposition called Transpo 86 would be held in Vancouver. The name was later changed to Expo 86. (We also have April 2.) He also announced that a trade and convention centre would be built.
Also April 1 University of B.C. radio station CITR-FM 101.9 signed on with 49 watts omni-directional as Vancouver’s first on-air campus station. Later, it would boost its power to 1,800 watts directional towards Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, sharing the frequency with the University of Victoria’s CFUV-FM.
April 2 Health Minister James Nielsen opened the 120-bed “New Grace Hospital” at 4490 Oak Street site. It would be called the British Columbia Women’s Hospital and Health Centre.
April 17 Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed the Constitution Act.
April 24 The second annual Peace March in Vancouver. The first, in April 1981, attracted fewer than 10,000 participants. This one drew 35,000. (And in 1983 more than 100,000 would participate.)
May 10 Leonard Charles Marsh, social scientist, died in Vancouver, aged 75. “He was born,” writes Constance Brissenden, “September 24, 1906 in London, Eng. He attended the London School of Economics, then moved to Canada to direct a social-science research program at McGill (1930-41). A writer and editor, he contributed to the League for Social Reconstruction’s influential book, Social Planning for Canada (1935). His book Canadians In and Out of Work (1940) studied social class. He was a research advisor for the federal committee on post-war reconstruction (1941-44). He published Report on Social Security for Canada (1943). Marsh’s programs led to today’s social security system. He was a welfare adviser to the United Nations from 1944 to 1946, then director of research at the UBC school of social work from 1948 to 1964, next a professor of educational sociology (1964-72). He retired in 1973.”
May 16 There was no joy in Vancouver (nor the rest of Canada) on May 16, 1982 when the Vancouver Canucks were defeated by the New York Islanders in the quest for the Stanley Cup. Not even “Towel Power” had helped. It was the closest the Canucks had come to hockey’s top prize. But they had been beaten in four straight games by the Islanders, and the team was inconsolable. The fans were not. A piece by the Vancouver Sun’s Ian Haysom was headlined CINDERELLA HEROES LOST STANLEY CUP BUT WON OUR HEARTS. “Stan Smyl,” Haysom wrote, “eyes red, choking back the tears, said: ‘Yes, it hurts. I guess it hurts a lot.’”
Outside the Canucks’ dressing room, a crowd of almost 200 diehard fans chanted “Next year! Next year!” and “Stan-ley, Stan-ley!” That wasn’t for the Cup, but for team captain Stan Smyl. “The Canucks’ captain,” Haysom continued, “after regaining his composure, was persuaded to go out and meet them. They mobbed him, told him he was the greatest, they held aloft a foil-wrapped Stanley Cup, shook both his hands and cheered themselves hoarse. Smyl managed a smile and said, simply: ‘Thanks, guys. You’re the greatest. You’ve all been incredible.’”
June 28 Variety Tonight begins to originate from CBC Radio in Vancouver, with host Vicki Gabereau. Note: this item may belong in 1981. We’re checking.
Also June 28 Journalist Harold H. ‘Torchy’ Anderson died. He joined the Province in 1928 as a reporter. (His bright red hair earned him the nickname.) He became editor in 1946.
July 30 Margaret Grant Andrew, arts activist, died in Vancouver, aged 70. She was born March 19, 1912 in Kingston, Ontario. Her father was William L. Grant, history professor and principal of Upper Canada College. She graduated from McGill in 1933 (BA, economics and political science, 1933), worked in a bank, then joined the CBC when it started in 1936. She was a Vancouver School Board trustee in1975-76, and chair of the Board from 1977 to 1979. A popular figure in the artistic and academic community, she was active in the B.C. Arts in Education Council, Vanier Institute of the Family, Vancouver Art Gallery, Family Service Association and University Women’s Club. Her husband Geoffrey was vice president of UBC and a director of Association of the Universities and Colleges in Canada. He died in 1987.
September 11 Arthur Delamont, bandleader, died in Vancouver, aged 90. On the web site is a tribute to Mr. Delamont by one of the Kitsilano Boys Band alumni, Norman D. Mullins, QC. An excerpt: “Arthur W. Delamont, the only organizer, instructor and conductor of the Vancouver Kitsilano Boys Band, was born in Hereford, England, January 23, 1892 . . . Mr. D., as we called him, and his family were raised in the beliefs and traditions of the Salvation Army and it was with one of its bands that he learned to play the cornet. His irrepressible zest for motorcycle racing and dance hall music brought him to his first crucial decision: fun or faith. He left the band and committed himself to a career in music – with the occasional bike ride on the side. In 1910 the family moved to Canada and in 1914, intending to return to England for a great international Salvation Army convention, they suffered the ghastly misfortune of being aboard the Empress of Ireland when it was sunk in the St. Lawrence River with the loss of many lives including that of Arthur’s brother, Leonard . . . In 1920 Mr. D. settled in Vancouver and in 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression, it occurred to him he might make a living and a contribution to his newfound community by organizing footloose boys into a band. They met first and always thereafter in the basement of General Gordon School – in Kitsilano – and he adopted that name for his group.”
The long list of awards won by the band under Delamont’s direction is astonishing. Go to the web site cited above to read more.
September 27 Hugh Keenleyside, diplomat and executive, died in Saanich, aged 94. Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside was born July 7, 1898 in Toronto. He graduated from UBC (1920). Diplomat (1928-47). Opposed internment of Japanese in WWII. LL.D (UBC, 1945). Worked for UN in 1950s. Chair, B.C. Power Commission (1959-61). Co-chair, B.C. Hydro (1961-69). Chancellor, Notre Dame (1969-77). Companion, Order of Canada (1969). Winner of Vanier Medal (1962); Pearson Peace Medal (1982). He wrote Memoirs of Hugh L. Keenleyside.
September Thanks to Father Christopher Vermeulen, the first Catholic school in B.C. since the early 1960s was opened in Port Coquitlam. Our Lady of the Assumption School began with 17 students. Its first graduation was in June, 1988. He would also be instrumental in the building of Archbishop Carney Regional Secondary School in Port Coquitlam, which would open in 1994. (Father Vermeulen, who served Port Coquitlam’s Catholic community for 23 years, died April 18, 2002 at 85.)
October 6 Alan Morley, journalist, died in North Vancouver, aged 77. He was born August 15, 1905 in Vancouver but grew up in Armstrong and Penticton. He first worked with father Harry, manager of the Sally Dam, in the Kettle Valley as a mucker and miner. He supported himself through UBC in the early 1930s writing for The Vancouver Sun, then wrote for 21 other newspapers before returning to the Sun in 1957. He worked there until his retirement in 1970. He wrote The Romance of Vancouver (1940), a collection of his historical columns, and in 1961 wrote Vancouver: From Milltown to Metropolis. It’s still our favorite of the book-length histories of Vancouver because of his story-telling ability and his affection for the city . . . but we know of a book due in 2007 that may overshadow it.
October 7 Construction began on the Expo 86 site.
October 22 Surrey’s Centennial Centre Theatre opened.
October 24 Bill Pritchard, labor activist, died in Los Angeles, aged about 93. William Arthur Pritchard was born in 1889 in Salford, England of Welsh parents. Writes Constance Brissenden: “He came to Vancouver in 1911. He became head of the Vancouver Longshoremen’s Union; executive member, Vancouver Trades and Labor Council; member, Socialist Party of Canada; organizer of One Big Union. After speaking June 12, 1919 during the Winnipeg General Strike, he was arrested, found guilty of seditious conspiracy (March 28, 1920) and spent a year in jail. ‘His speech to the jury,’ said a contemporary, ‘was a famous illustration of working-class oratory.’ Pritchard was reeve of Burnaby from 1930 to 1932, and president of the Union of B.C. Municipalities. He ran for the CCF (C0-Operative Commonwealth Federation, predecessor to the NDP) for election as an MLA in 1933, but lost. He lost again in 1937 at another run at provincial politics, then began working as a baker. A musician, he organized youth orchestras, choirs and operatic productions.”
A now defunct website referred to an essay by Bettina Bradbury, an SFU graduate, who described conditions in Burnaby during the Depression. “It was a time,” says the site, “of significant tension as 22 per cent of the district’s population ended up on welfare and almost half of its taxpayers could not afford to pay taxes.
“Burnaby’s reeve during the Depression was William Pritchard, who once edited the Socialist Party’s newspaper and was convicted of sedition during the Winnipeg General Strike. Pritchard’s notoriety and his demands for senior governments to help pay for ‘real work,’ rather than make-work projects, meant Burnaby came under intensive scrutiny from federal and provincial politicians. At one point, Pritchard ended up in court after illegally using municipal funds to help the jobless. A judge agreed Pritchard’s action was illegal, but argued it was necessary ‘to avert the possibility of revolution’.”
October Durieu Convent, a residence for native girls, built next to St. Paul’s Indian Catholic Church in North Vancouver in 1959, was demolished.
November 6 The B.C. Lions played their last game at Empire Stadium (and defeated the Montreal Alouettes). Coming up for the team: a new home at B.C. Place Stadium.
November 12 Clarence Wallace, shipbuilder and former lieutenant-governor, died in Palm Desert, California, aged 89. He was born in Vancouver, Constance Brissenden writes, “on June 22, 1893. On leaving college, he joined the family business, Burrard Drydock. (See the entry on his father, Andy Wallace, in our Hall of Fame.) He served overseas during the First World War from 1914 to 1916, was wounded at Ypres. In 1918 he became secretary-treasurer of Burrard Drydock, and in 1929 was named president. During the Second World War he built North Sands and Victory ships and converted other vessels for war use. He was awarded the CBE in 1946 for his wartime efforts. He acquired Yarrows Ltd. of Esquimalt in 1946, Pacific Drydock in 1951 and the shipbuilding operations of Victoria Machinery Depot in 1967. In 1972, the Wallace family sold Burrard Drydock to Cornat Industries of Vancouver. Wallace was lieutenant-governor of BC from 1950 to 1955, the first to have been born in the province.”
See a history of Wallace Shipyards here.
November 14 The 255-tonne B.C. Place Stadium fabric dome, largest of its kind in the world, was inflated. It took less than an hour!
The Stadium’s website passes along some interesting facts: It’s the world’s largest air-supported domed stadium. It covers 10 acres in all, with a circumference of 760 metres (2,500 feet) * There is enough concrete in B.C. Place to build a sidewalk from Vancouver to Tacoma, Washington * There are two layers of fabric with a four-foot space between them. When it snows, hot air is pumped between these layers to melt six inches of snow per hour. * The roof lets in 20 per cent natural light. That’s because the total thickness of each layer is only 1/30th of an inch.
The Stadium would open June 19, 1983.
November 20 Vancouver was declared a “nuclear free zone” in a plebiscite, and voters also okayed Sunday shopping.
Also November 20 The UBC Thunderbirds, coached by Frank Smith, won the CIAU (Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union) football championship, the Vanier Cup. The UBC Sports Hall of Fame website says, in part, “According to TSN football analysts this ‘awesome’ UBC team is the greatest in CIAU history. It went undefeated in Canadian competition (12-0), often dominating by more than 40 points, winning the Canadian championship with a 39-14 victory over Western Ontario. This team had five first rounders selected in the CFL draft, 14 players placed on the league All-Star team and 12 of its players play professionally in the CFL.” Check that website for a fine recap of the Birds’ 1982 season by Fred Hume, UBC Athletics Historian.
November 29 Olympic medallist Percy Williams died in Vancouver, aged 74. He was born May 19, 1908. He was a double gold medallist at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
When he came home to Vancouver in September, 1928 the city went a little nutty. What Williams, a King Edward High grad, had done—and what no Canadian track and field athlete has done since—was to win two Olympic gold medals at the same games. He came out of nowhere at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics to win both the 100-metre and the 200-metre races.
“Perhaps the most remarkable home-coming in the history of British Columbia,” said B.C.’s Premier Simon Tolmie. Thousands of people jammed Granville Street from the CPR station to Georgia Street to cheer 20-year-old Percy on. “The demonstration affected spectators,” one newspaper report said, “to such an extent that they tore up the contents of waste paper baskets, and sent the fluttering scraps out over the crowds as confetti.”
Percy’s race wasn’t a fluke: He won the world record for the 100-metre dash in 1930, and held it for 10 years. Only an injury kept him from succeeding at the 1932 Games.
But he was shy and reclusive. “I didn’t like running,” he told a reporter once. “Oh, I was so glad to get out of it all.” He never married and his later years were marked by constant pain from arthritis. On November 29, 1982 he took his own life.
November The Workers Compensation Board moved its entire operation to Richmond, adjacent to its Rehab Centre. (The WCB is known today as WorkSafe.
November On a Saturday morning Shell Busey, 39, began his own regular weekly on-air home maintenance program on CJOR 600. He’d been a guest on Rafe Mair’s show, answering callers’ questions about home maintenance, and went over really well. After the second successful guest shot the station offered him his own show.
December 7 The sports fraternity in B.C. was shocked by the sudden death of sprinter Harry Jerome, 42. He was riding as a passenger in a car northbound over the Lions Gate Bridge when he suffered a seizure, and was dead when brought minutes later to Lions Gate Hospital. Jerome had been at Vancouver General Hospital just four days earlier after suffering a series of brain seizures.
He was born September 30, 1940 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, began running at North Vancouver High School. He won a scholarship to the University of Oregon. He was the first to simultaneously hold world records for the 100-metre and 100-yard events. Harry Jerome was co-holder of the 100-metre world record for eight years after setting the mark at 10 seconds flat in Saskatoon in 1960. He won a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics, gold medals at 1966 Commonwealth Games and 1967 Pan-American games. He competed in the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968, retiring the same year. Jerome was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1966, the Canadian Amateur Athletic Hall of Fame in1967 and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1971. He received the Order of Canada in 1970.
There’s a good Wikipedia article on him here.
Also December 7 A Hong Kong bank opened a branch in Chinatown, operating in both Chinese and English.
December 8 UBC Chancellor Emeritus Allan McGavin died, aged 71. His passing was described as a great loss to the community and the University. He was born in Darvel, Scotland in 1911 and came to Canada with his family in 1913, settling in Edmonton, where the McGavin bakery firm was founded. He joined the Canadian army (Artillery) in 1939 at the outbreak of the war, and served actively in the Reserve from that time until 1952 when he retired as Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 43rd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Vancouver. He became president of the family company in 1946.
A UBC site is the source for this short article. McGavin had an outstanding record of community service. He was well known for his strong support of amateur athletics, acting as Vice-President of the Canadian Olympic Association, Chairman of the Pan-American Games Committee for Canada and as an organizer of the British Empire Games of 1954. He was a member of the National Fitness Council of Canada, Chairman of the 1963 United Appeal and of the Vancouver Centennial Committee and a director for many other public spirited enterprises.
At UBC he was a member of the Board of Governors from 1966 to 1969, Chancellor from 1969 to 1972, and Chairman of the Board of Governors from 1972 to 1974. He also played a major role from 1964 onward, as co-chairman of the Three Universities Capital Fund.
When McGavin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) his citation read in part “No man has done more for the University, its faculty and its students, its integrity and its reputation.”
December A group called Canadian Ecumenical Action, meeting in the basement of Chalmers United Church on Hemlock at West 12th Avenue, established the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. The group included Reverend Val Anderson, later a member of the B.C. Legislature, and the first Executive Director of the Food Bank, Sylvia Russell. Within a few months, the Food Bank would move into its own warehouse, and would distribute food each week through five depots, most in churches.
A continent-wide recession that had started in the late 1970s and continued into the early 1980s hit resource-based economies such as BC’s especially hard. In response to the needs of newly laid-off workers, churches, trade unions, and other socially aware organizations started to collect food from persons who were better off to distribute to those in need. Food banks were born.
December Peter Toigo, whose company, Shato Holdings, had run through a rough patch in the mid-1970s, saw it recover well enough by December 1982 to buy the White Spot restaurant chain.
Also in 1982
Electronic Arts, today the world’s leading interactive entertainment software company, and with a big staff in its local studios and offices, was incorporated.
For hockey fans 1982 witnessed “the miracle on Renfrew Street.” Under interim coach Roger Neilson (filling in for Harry Neale who had been suspended after getting into a fight in the stands in Quebec) and with the heroic goal tending of “King” Richard Brodeur the Vancouver Canucks beat Calgary 3-0 in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, then took out Los Angeles 4-1 but ran into trouble in game two of the Campbell conference final against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Canucks were losing 3-1 in the third period and were frustrated by a series of calls by referee Bob Myers—including a disallowed goal—so Neilson showed his dismay by hoisting a white towel atop a hockey stick. Players Gerry Minor and Tiger Williams joined in and “towel power” was born. Although the Canucks received a bench penalty and went on to lose the game the sarcastic gesture galvanized the team and when they returned to Vancouver the fans were ALL waving white towels.
There’s a fine description of the incident here.
Here’s an excerpt: “The game was fairly evenly played, but the Canucks did not get any breaks from the officiating. The Canucks had a goal called back that would have closed the score to 3-2 because of a questionable penalty call, and on the ensuing power play the Hawks scored to put the game out of reach. Roger Neilson was incensed. ‘Why don’t we throw all of the sticks on the ice?’ asked Tiger Williams to his coach. ‘No, I’ve done that before,’ Neilson answered, ‘Let’s surrender.’ So Roger took a white trainer’s towel, propped it onto a spare stick and waved it in the air in mock surrender. Several players followed suit. Referee Bob Myers was first going to ignore the incident, until captain Stan Smyl turned him in the direction of the bench to make sure he understood what his team thought of the officiating. Neilson was ejected from the game (and later fined by the league), but on his long walk across Chicago Stadium ice he was congratulated by several players, the last being Brodeur, who ruffled his hair with his big catching mitt before the coach departed through the gate behind the net. Of course, this latest event was ripe for exploitation. A killing was made on white towel sales outside the Coliseum to jubilant fans waiting to get inside the building. Once inside, the sight and sound of 16,413 fans waving towels and screaming was really something to behold.”
Dick Irvin’s book Behind the Bench says it was Tiger Williams who got referee Bob Myers to look at the towels, and adds this lovely bit from Neilson himself: “The next day we were on the only United Airlines plane out of Chicago going to Vancouver. We land and we’re pulling up to the gate and a big Air Canada 747 goes by and the pilot is waving a white towel out his window at us. Then we get into the airport and every airport employee has a towel, and there were hundreds of fans there and they all had towels. Everybody, and they kept it up until the finals were over.”
Vancouver T-shirt entrepreneur Butts Giraud is credited with realizing immediately the significance of what Neilson had done, and within 36 hours had silk-screened and handed out 5,000 white towels with sponsors’ names. A few days later Giraud was able to sell 15,000 towels at a Canucks-Blackhawks game. ‘Towel Power’ had begun.
The Renfrew Trojans won the Canadian Junior Football League title . . . the first local junior team to win the championship since the Vancouver Blue Bombers took it in 1947. (The team has been the Vancouver Trojans since 1994, even though their home field today is the Burnaby Lake West Sports Complex.)
Maple Ridge athlete Debbie Brill—the first woman in North America to clear six feet in the high jump (she was 16 at the time)—won gold in that event at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. She’d done it before, in 1970, at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Check out this article.
In an X-Files episode Agent Fox Mulder said: “In 1982 a Harvard ethnobotanist named Wade Davis did extensive field research in Haiti on the zombification phenomenon. He analyzed several samples of zombie powder prepared by voodoo priests . . .” When you make it into an episode of X-Files, you’ve arrived! Wade Davis, who was born in Vancouver December 14, 1953, tells in his book The Serpent and the Rainbow of a trip to Haiti to find the plant that causes “zombification.” But this globally-known scientist delves into much more. David Suzuki calls him “a combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all life’s diversity.” His last book, The Light at the Edge of the World, is a picture-rich celebration of ethnodiversity.
Hassan Khosrowshahi, who in 1979 had fled to Canada with his family from his native Iran and a flourishing import-export firm when it was evident Ayatollah Khomeini would be taking over, started Future Shop in Vancouver. He would build it into Canada’s biggest consumer electronics retailer. Future Shop was only part of his holdings: he owns condominiums, shopping centres, golf courses and development land in Coquitlam. Khosrowshahi stays out of the limelight, but his wife Nezhat—with whom he shares a $7 million Shaughnessy home—is a major financial backer of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
On November 4, 2001 Future Shop (91 stores with 7,300 staff) was sold to Minneapolis-based Best Buy Co. Inc., the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S.
In 1982 Vince Ready switched careers, began to work in private mediation and arbitration. The consensus from management and labor more than 20 years later: he’s the best, a man whose skill at arbitration has made him famous. Ready, born June 25, 1943 in Pembroke, Ontario, fibbed about his age to get a job in an Ontario mine at 15. He was a union organizer (Steelworkers) and troubleshooter for more than a decade. He’s been doing his present work calmly and thoughtfully, appealing to the best in people, for more than 20 years, has arbitrated hundreds of collective agreements and mediated hundreds of labor disputes. “The thing about negotiations,” Ready says, “is that they all end up being settled eventually.”
The Amalgamated Civil Servants Credit Union, renamed Vanfed, became part of Burnaby Credit Union in 1982. (That organization will be renamed Harbour Savings in 1985 and then merge with North Shore Credit Union in 1986. The stationery makers must have celebrated!)
The Firehall Theatre opened its doors. Now known as the Firehall Arts Centre, their website says, “Each season the Firehall produces between four and six theatre productions and between three to five dance productions and is also home to at least 25 other arts organizations as a theatre and studio rental facility, and Arts Centre Box Office.” It’s a busy place! More than 35,000 people attend over 340 performances at the Firehall in the year, making it one of the busiest venues in Vancouver.
Muni Evers’ 13-year career as mayor of New Westminster ended after seven terms. Evers, a pharmacist, was first elected in 1969. When he announced his retirement Evers told The Royal City Record: “I’m very satisfied with my term. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m close to it.” He was grinning when he said it, but the consensus was that he had been a very good mayor. Evers died in 2004. See a nice appreciation by Lori Pappajohn in this old article.
The Vancouver East Cultural Centre was the venue for the comedy musical Last Call!, a “post nuclear cabaret” that, wrote Mark Leiren-Young, “marked the arrival of the duo that helped define Vancouver theatre through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Morris Panych and Ken MacDonald. The two co-created and starred in the acclaimed Tamahnous Theatre production and Panych went on to become a Governor General Award winner as a playwright and one of Vancouver*s most successful stage actors while MacDonald has shown himself to be one of Canada’s most innovative set designers.”
Hamilton McClymont stepped down as general manager of the Vancouver Opera Association, which he had headed since 1978 (succeeding Richard Bonynge) for assignments relating to Expo 86. The VOA was $725,000 in debt when McClymont took over; he cut that in half during his term. In 1978 he convinced the VOA Board not to sell the company’s rehearsal/office building—and in 1982 BC Transit expropriated the building which resulted in a capital fund of nearly $2 million. McClymont was succeeded by Irving Guttman, acting as interim director.
“In 1982 a diverse group of young independent dance-makers,” dance historian Max Wyman wrote, “created another influential modernist collective, EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music), exploring issues ranging from contact improvisation to dance of the absurd.” The group would begin to splinter in 1987.
Dal Richards, musically active since the 1930s, had also been in hotel management since the late 1960s. He recorded a pair of swing revival albums in 1982 and 1983 and they went over really well . . . and brought him back into the music biz with a bang. Mayor Mike Harcourt would declare February 3, 1984 as Dal Richards Day in Vancouver. Today, at 88, Dal is still active.
An exhibition titled Cabinets of Curiosities opened at the Vancouver Museum. The show captured the spirit and history of earlier years of the Museum where, with no departments, collections had grown “somewhat randomly.” The public found the result both fascinating and eclectic, and attendance was heavy. The exhibition offered up a nostalgic selection from the very first donation—a stuffed white swan—to First Nations poet Pauline Johnson’s performance costume and a long-treasured Egyptian mummy, displayed for 30 years in error as ‘Diana’ until X-rays in 1951 proved ‘Diana’ was really a boy, about 10 years old. (A funny story about this mummy: Museum staff were spooked one day to discover white crystals just below its nostrils! Was it coming to life? No, it was just a chemical reaction caused by faulty ventilation.)
Leonard Schein initiated The Vancouver Film Festival this year.
SFU alumna Terri Nash made a 26-minute film titled If You Love This Planet that recorded a lecture given to American students in 1981 by Dr. Helen Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. In the film, Dr. Caldicott “outlines the effects of detonating a single twenty-megaton bomb, and traces the development of atomic weapons from the devastating bombs of the 1940s to the even more dangerous, apocalyptic weapons of today.” In 1983 Nash’s film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short.
Michael Walsh comments on movies made locally and released in 1982:
The Grey Fox (Director: Phillip Borsos) Richard Farnsworth has the title role in the true story of Bill Miner, the “gentleman bandit” who robbed trains in turn-of-the-century B.C.
Phillip Borsos, incidentally, was born May 5, 1953 in Hobart, Tasmania and moved to Vancouver at age five. He made a short (17 minutes) film, Cooperage, in 1976. His even shorter (13 minutes) film, Nails, was nominated for an Oscar in 1980. He died at age 42 in 1995.
Mother Lode (Director: Charlton Heston) The woods above North Vancouver’s Cleveland Dam stand in for a Cassiar forest in this adventure-thriller starring director Heston in a dual role as sinister, gold-obsessed twins.
By Design (Director: Claude Jutra) Director Jutra broke new ground thematically with his comic tale of same-sex lovers (Patty Duke Astin, Sara Botsford) who are seeking a man (Saul Rubinek) so that they can have a baby.
First Blood (Director: Ted Kotcheff) American pop culture icon John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) got his start with a rampage shot on location in Hope, B.C. and on the sound stages of Burnaby’s Bridge Studios. This was the first locally made box office megahit.
Saskatchewan-born (1908) Sinclair Ross, most well known for his 1941 novel As For Me and My House—described as “Canada’s most critically discussed novel”—moved to Vancouver. He mostly lived at the Brock Fahrni Pavilion, a new veterans’ wing of the former Shaughnessy Hospital, and died in 1996, aged 88. See this site.
Writer Russell Kelly, born in Toronto in 1949, came to Vancouver. In 1986 he will write Pattison: Portrait of a Capitalist Superstar, which sold more than 20,000 copies. Kelly died of cancer in 1997. See this site.
The book My Spirit Soars by Chief Dan George appeared posthumously, not long after George died in September of 1981.
The book Tynehead Memories: History of a Surrey Neighborhood, compiled by the Tynehead Historical Society, appeared. “Dedicated to the descendants of pioneer families who were at one time residents of Tynehead, a small district tucked away in the northeast end of the municipality of Surrey, near the head of the Serpentine River.”
Betty Keller’s life of Indian poet Pauline Johnson appeared. Pauline: A biography of Pauline Johnson won the Canadian Biography Medal for 1982 and was a Book of the Month Club selection for April 1983.
Ron Stern and his partners sold Vancouver Magazine to Comac Communications. By the time they sold it this year they had changed the face of magazine publishing in the city. It began in 1967 as Dick MacLean’s Greater Vancouver Greeter Guide. By April 1974, writes Sandra McKenzie in The Greater Vancouver Book, “the magazine was on the verge of collapsing. MacLean was fired by owner Agency Press, and new editor Malcolm (Mac) Parry hired. The first issue under his guidance featured five by-lines—all of them Parry, in various disguises, including golfer/author Driver T. Niblick. By the second issue, journalist Sean Rossiter joined Parry and, for the next two years, they produced most of the magazine’s articles.”
Agency Press pulled the plug on the magazine, but Parry and Rossiter approached journalists Paul and Audrey Grescoe and artists Iain and Ingrid Baxter—who in turn approached Vancouver lawyer Ron Stern—and, Sandra McKenzie writes, “all mobilized their resources to purchase the magazine . . . with Paul Grescoe becoming the editorial director and Stern the publisher.”
With a lively style and sharp new and seasoned writers (Susan Musgrave, William Gibson, W.P. Kinsella, Jack Hodgkins, Ben Metcalfe and others) the magazine began to prosper. It still does.
Several local publications debuted in 1982:
Christian Info News, a monthly publication of the Christian Info (Vancouver-Lower Mainland) Society, in Langley.
Discovery News A bi-monthly published by the Discovery Foundation.
Geotechnical News A quarterly published by BiTech Publishers Ltd., it featured news on geotechnical activities in Canada, the US, Mexico and Europe including special sections on waste geotechnics and geosynthetics, instrumentation and a calendar of geotechnical events.
Hort West A bi-monthly publication from the British Columbia Nursery Trades Association, a trade publication for the horticultural industry.
Markwick Midden, a semi-annual publication on heraldry.
Impresarios Hugh Pickett and Holly Maxwell sold Famous Artists Limited to Jerry Lonn of Seattle.
Coquitlam Centre at 2929 Barnet Highway won the Governor-General’s Award for Excellence in Architecture for Edmonton architect B. James Wensley. The centre opened in 1979 and housed a collection of 27 sculptures and other work by B.C. artists.
Burnaby Parks and Recreation opened Barnet Marine Park, on the concrete remnants of a sawmill destroyed by fire in 1946.
London Heritage Farm, restored by the Richmond Historical and Museum Society, opened to the public. The farm overlooks the south arm of the Fraser River. “A lovely 1890s farmhouse was built on the site by the London family and has been completely restored and fully furnished for that period. Around the house are fragrant herb and flower gardens . . . Other attractions on the site include the restored Spragg family barn and a hand tool museum.”
The New Westminster and District Labour Council founded the Unemployment Action Centre to help unemployed people. Seeing that claimants often needed food, the Action Centre, with the help of local labour unions, established the New Westminster Food Bank this year.
The CPR’s Kitsilano Trestle, built in 1886 across the mouth of False Creek and modified in 1903 to allow a swing span, was removed. The CPR’s informally dubbed “Sockeye Limited” used this trestle between 1902 and 1905. (The “Sockeye” ran twice a day between the CPR’s waterfront station and Steveston, then a major fishing and canning centre.) The trestle was also used regularly by the BC Electric’s No. 12 Kitsilano streetcar to Kits Beach, a line that was discontinued in 1949. B.C. Electric freight trains also used it between their freight yards southwest of Chinatown to their other lines south of False Creek.
The White Rock-South Surrey Food Bank began in a small room in a church basement.
A $15 million addition to Richmond General Hospital was completed.
Gale-force winds and high tides caused waves to overtop dykes in the Mud Bay/Crescent Beach area. Salt water poured over some of the most productive agricultural land in North America.
Surrey Co-op went into receivership when a demand loan was called in by the B.C. Central Credit Union. A long strike in 1977 and the building of two shopping malls (on borrowed money) had led to financial troubles.
At the 1982 ceremony of the presentation of the coat of arms for the City of North Vancouver, the young Salish artist, Susan Sparrow (now Susan Point), whose representation of a salmon and a bear are embedded in the arms, was a guest of honor. Copies of her print, featuring the two representations, were presented to Lieutenant-Governor Henry Bell-Irving and to Conrad Swan, York Herald.
Work began on Blackcomb Benchlands, the area around the base of Blackcomb Mountain. It later became a mix of hotels, shops, restaurants, condominiums and a golf course. The Black Market, centred in and around Chateau Whistler and the base of Blackcomb Mountain, is Blackcomb Benchlands’ shopping area.
The Iredale Partnership rehabilitated the old Victoria Court (1943 East 1st Avenue) which had started life as a long-term storage vault for the Imperial Bank of Canada’s archival records, and turned it into residential townhouses. “New windows and iron balconies enhance the original character,” writes architectural historian Harold Kalman, “and the shield with the bank’s monogram has been retained over the entrance, acknowledging the building’s layered history.”
A recession that began this year unsettled UBC’s fiscal foundation, and led to rising tuition fees.
In 1975 the re-elected Social Credit government committed to building a children’s hospital somewhere in Vancouver. By 1976 they had chosen a location at West 28th Avenue and Oak Street. In 1977 Health Minister Robert McClelland broke ground at that location. And this year the hospital was completed at a cost of $60 million. It had 320,000 square feet of space and 250 acute care beds, an adolescent unit, a modern isolation facility, a rehabilitation unit, a 10-bed psychiatric unit and a 60-bed special care nursery.
The IODE Glaucoma Centre at the Vancouver General Hospital opened. The IODE provides annual funds for equipment and further research.
