1985

Above: Rick Hansen somewhere in Asia during his around-the-world Man in Motion tour by wheelchair which began on March 21, 1985. [Image: Vancouver Sun]

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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 Frederick Soward, historian, teacher, died at 86. Frederick Hubert Soward was born April 10, 1899 in Minden, Ontario. Smart enough to enter high school at 10, he had to wait two years. He won a scholarship to the University of Toronto, but after two years went overseas for First World War experience with the 48th Highlanders. After the war he studied at Oxford where he began a lifelong friendship with Lester Pearson. The “boy wonder” of UBC’s history department, he taught from 1922 to 1966. During the Second World War he was an adviser to external affairs and assistant to the secretary of state. Soward headed UBC’s history department from 1953 to 1963, was dean of graduate studies from 1961 to 1965. Soward was famed on campus for his international affairs lectures. The 1969 book Empires and Nations contains essays published in his honor by 14 Canadians, with a preface by Lester Pearson.

January 31 Vancouver’s Whitecaps soccer team declared bankruptcy. Attempts began quickly to form a new team. It would be born the following year as the 86ers.

January Hall’s Prairie School in South Surrey celebrated its 100th anniversary.

February 10 Bryan Adams, song-writing partner Jim Vallance and producer David Foster co-wrote Tears Are Not Enough, an all-star recording that raised funds in Canada’s aid for Ethiopia campaign. It was recorded today in Toronto. For Bruce Allen’s role in the recording, and for its effect, see this site.

February 16 A team skipped by Victoria’s Steve Skillings won the Canadian mixed curling championship.

February The Bank of British Columbia bought the assets of collapsed Pioneer Trust, and opened nine new branches in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

March 5 Thomas Moore Whaun, political activist, died at 91. He was born October 22, 1893 in Toisan, Canton, China, came to Canada in 1907. He was one of the first Asian residents of West Vancouver, and the second Chinese-Canadian graduate of UBC (BA, 1927). He worked in the newspaper industry as advertising manager for Canada Morning News and New Republic Daily, two of Vancouver’s Chinese newspapers. He was known for his nationwide letter-writing protest against the Chinese Exclusion Act.

March 21 Rick Hansen, paralyzed as the result of a vehicular accident, left to the cheers of a crowd at Oakridge Mall in Vancouver to begin his around-the-world Man in Motion tour by wheelchair. Rick’s target: 24,901.55 miles, equal to the circumference of the world.

Rick had been grievously injured in June of 1973 when a truck he’d hitched a ride on overturned. He was a paraplegic at 15, a kid with, in his own words, “three obsessions: fishing, hunting—and sports. Always sports. If you could throw it, hit it, bounce it, chase it or run with it, I wanted to play it. And usually I could do it pretty well.”

A long, painful (and sometimes angry and self-pitying) stretch of rehab followed, then Rick got into wheelchair sports. He was mentored by Stan Stronge, to whom he pays special respect in his autobiography—written with Jim Taylor, it’s a splendid book.

And then he met Terry Fox. Terry’s heroic 1980 Marathon of Hope—and the millions it raised for cancer research—inspired Rick.

Rick’s journey ended successfully May 22, 1987 to the cheers of thousands at Oakridge, where it had started 26 months earlier. Today, the Rick Hansen Foundation has funneled $158 million into research on spinal cord injury.

Also March 21 Horace Plimley, car dealer, died at 90. Thomas Horace Plimley was born March 5, 1895 in Victoria, son of the automobile dealer Thomas Plimley. As a child Horace played the violin and performed with Professor Edward G. Wickens’ children’s orchestra. As an adult he worked for Thomas Plimley Limited. In 1936 he opened a British car dealership in Vancouver.

He was one of three men (the other two were Frank Morriss and Horace’s brother Percy) to start Western Equipment Ltd in Victoria. After two years, success in selling power transmission accessories to the forest industry prompted the move to a new location on Government Street and subsequently to a new headquarters on Main Street in Vancouver. Western Equipment is now based in Richmond.

March 22 North Vancouver’s Linda Moore skipped her team to the world women’s curling championship in Jonkoping, Sweden, becoming the first B.C. women’s rink to accomplish that feat.

March 27 Maillardville Shopping Centre in Coquitlam was destroyed by fire.

April 10 Vancouver middleweight Michael Olajide, Jr. won the Canadian middleweight boxing title at the PNE Agrodome with a ninth-round TKO over Winnipeg’s Wayne Caplette.

Spring A new basement wing of the UBC Student Union Building was completed, completely funded by the Alma Mater Society.

May 27-29 More than 20,000 people greeted Steve Fonyo for a nationally televised event at B.C. Place Stadium. Fonyo was very near the end of his cross-Canada walk, a trek inspired by Terry Fox. He paused at Terry Fox Plaza to place a single white rose beside the memorial arch before walking into the stadium and crossing a giant map of Canada. Just after midnight he was on a Canadian navy ship bound for Victoria and the May 29 finish at newly-named Fonyo Beach where, at 4:15 in a pelting rain, he poured into the Pacific Ocean the water he had collected from the Atlantic 14 months earlier. He wore out six artificial legs and 17 pairs of running shoes on his long journey. For more, see this article.

June 1 Weldwood of Canada closed its sawmill in South Westminster. A shortage of Douglas fir logs led the company to consolidate its operations in Squamish.

June 8 Blanche Macdonald (née Brillon), modeling agency executive and First Nations activist, died in Vancouver, aged 54. “She was born,” writes Constance Brissenden, “May 11, 1931 in Faust, Alberta. Her First Nations and French ancestry was a source of pride. She championed Native causes and feminist ideals. A housewife and mother of two, she opened a modelling agency and self-improvement school in 1960, later expanded into fashion, esthetics and make-up artistry training. As CEO, Native Communications Society of B.C., she launched a journalism program for Native students. She was a founding member of Vancouver’s First Woman’s Network; board member, Better Business Bureau, Modelling Association of America, Professional Native Woman’s Association and Vancouver Indian Centre. In 1985 she received the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for Business and the Professions. A dynamic and inspiring woman.”

June 17 The Mess Hall of the Point Atkinson Second World War military base in West Vancouver re-opened as Phyllis Munday House, for use as a Nature House by West Vancouver Girl Guides. Phyllis Munday, a well-known mountaineer, had a life-long association with the Guide Movement. She is mentioned often on this web site, but check the 1920 chronology for more and a photo. Kathryn Bridge has written Phyllis Munday: Mountaineer (2002).

June 20 One of the most remarkable men in our local history, Dr. Gordon Shrum, teacher, SFU chancellor, builder, executive, died in Vancouver, aged 89. “He was born June 14, 1896,” Constance Brissenden writes, “in Smithville, Ontario. He was a graduate of the University of Toronto (BA, math, 1920; PhD, 1923). At 29, he crossed Canada in a Model T to teach at UBC. He was the head of UBC’s physics department from 1938 to 1961, the dean of graduate studies from1956 to 1961. As the first chancellor of Simon Fraser University (1962 to 1968), he pushed through its construction in 18 months. Forced to retire when he reached age 65, he chaired the B.C. Energy Board under W.A.C. Bennett. Shrum oversaw projects such as the Vancouver Museum/Planetarium complex, the courthouse, and waterfront convention centre. He was awarded the OBE in 1946, was inducted into the Order of Canada in 1967.”

June 23 Canada’s worst case of mass murder occurred as a bomb hidden in a suitcase aboard Air India Flight 182 exploded in the plane’s forward cargo hold as it approached the coast of Ireland. The 747, which had left Vancouver International Airport a few hours before, was 31,000 feet above the Atlantic—just 45 minutes from landing at London’s Heathrow Airport. Some passengers survived the fall, but drowned in the frigid waters. Everyone on board—329 people, including 82 children—was killed. Many of the people aboard were Canadian citizens of East Indian descent, and intending to fly on to Bombay or Delhi.

Two baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Narita Airport died in another connected bombing.

More than 20 years later, after the longest, costliest trial in Canadian history no one has paid for this crime.

Province reporter Salim Jiwa would write extensively on Flight 182, and has a website that contains the text of the book he wrote about it.

August 2 The flame at the Stanley Park war memorial commemorating the Japanese- Canadian contribution during the First World War was re-lighted. It had been extinguished since December 8, 1941.

During the First World War, 196 Japanese-Canadians volunteered to fight for Canada. At Vimy Ridge (fought over four days in April, 1917) one of them, Sergeant Masumi Mitsui of Port Coquitlam, led his troop into battle with such distinction that he was awarded the Military Medal for Bravery. Of those 196 volunteers, 145 were killed or wounded. That remarkable Japanese-Canadian contribution was honored by the construction in 1925 in Stanley Park of a striking monument, surrounded by cherry trees, with an electric flame that was to burn forever.

But the flame was switched off shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. It would stay off for more than 40 years. Like so many others, Masumi Mitsui and his family had been forced from their home during the Second World War and scattered in internment camps across the country. Their farm, their house and all its contents were confiscated. He was so enraged he threw his medals down onto the desk of the confiscating officer.

But time healed this wound: on August 2, 1985 Sgt. Mitsui, now 98, one of two surviving Japanese-Canadian soldiers who had served Canada so bravely, was brought in to turn the light on again. Mr. Mitsui died in 1987, five months short of his 100th birthday, and one year before Ottawa issued an official apology to Japanese-Canadians for the injustices done them during the Second World War.

August 21 A three-member team from BC (Jennifer Wyatt of Richmond, Patty Grant of Mission and Beach Grove’s Joli Pereszlenyi) defeated a team from Ontario to take the Canadian amateur women’s golf championship.

September 5 Sydney J. Risk, theatre pioneer, died in Vancouver, aged 77. Sydney John Risk was born May 26, 1908 in Vancouver. His early years were spent training with the Old Vic Theatre School in London, England. He returned to Canada in 1938, taught drama at the University of Alberta and the Banff School of Fine Arts, completing his MA at Cornell. He was head of the Banff school for six summers. In 1946, he founded Vancouver’s Everyman Theatre, the first professional company in Western Canada, and toured Canadian plays from B.C. to Manitoba until 1953. From 1954 Risk worked as field drama supervisor of UBC’s extension department, directing plays and teaching across B.C. He was founder in 1952 of Holiday Theatre for children. The Sydney J. Risk Foundation, established in his honor, offers annual awards for acting, directing and playwriting.

September 10 The Vancouver Canadians won baseball’s Pacific Coast League title, the first for the city after 20 years of trying.

September 28 Burnaby runner Lynn Williams won the Fifth Avenue Mile in New York City.

September Heritage Hall opened at 3102 Main Street in Vancouver. Charles Keast, the first president of what was then the Greater Vancouver Information and Referral Service, had led an initiative to have the City of Vancouver buy the old Mt. Pleasant Post Office from the federal government, and turn it into Heritage Hall, a permanent home for five community service agencies, including Information Services Vancouver, the Junior League and others.

October 8 Neville Scarfe, the founding Dean of UBC’s Faculty of Education, died, aged about 78. A UBC site gives these details of his outstanding career: “Neville Vincent Scarfe, UBC’s first Dean of Education was born in Essex, England in 1908. He attended the University of London graduating with first class honours in geography. After teaching geography until 1935, Scarfe became Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Education at the University of London where he remained until 1951. Internationally recognized for his research work in the teaching of geography and in the principles and philosophy of education, he became Dean of Education at the University of Manitoba in 1951 and remained there for five years. In 1956, Scarfe became the founding Dean of Education at UBC. A consolidation of the University’s School of Education and the Provincial Normal School had given rise to the new Faculty and College of Education. He continued to guide the faculty until his retirement in 1973. Throughout his career, Scarfe wrote over 100 articles and gave numerous speeches around the world on education.”

As Dean, Scarfe undertook the responsibility of integrating all professional preparation of public school teachers at UBC. He also served as a member of the UBC Senate from 1956 to 1973 . . . His name featured prominently during the creation of UNESCO as a force in the development of international understanding and humanitarianism “In his outstanding contribution to public education,” says UBC, “Neville Scarfe’s commitment was unparalleled. His ideas were creative, provocative and widely respected . . . Neville Scarfe was a scholar, an administrator, a teacher and a public figure—but over all, he was a compassionate and tolerant human being. His commitment to a life of learning will continue to flourish through the lives of an entire generation of British Columbians.”

October 14 Vancouver Croatia won the six-team Canadian senior soccer championship over Montreal.

October 20 The B.C. rugby team defeated Ontario 31-11 to take the national crown for the third year in a row.

October 30 To mark Orpheum Theatre manager Ivan Ackery’s 86th birthday, the lane behind the theatre was titled Ackery Alley as a tribute to the master showman.

November 3 Nan Cheney, portrait painter and the first UBC medical artist, died at 88. Anna Gertrude Lawson Cheney was born June 22, 1897 in Windsor, Nova Scotia. She enjoyed a close relationship with Emily Carr in the period before Carr’s work gained fame. Read Dear Nan, Letters of Emily Carr, Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms, edited by Doreen Walker. And see this site, which has a fine short biography.

An excerpt: “A prominent figure at the University of British Columbia in the 1950s was Nan Cheney, the first and only medical illustrator in the Anatomy Department of our fledgling Medical School from 1951 to 1956. Her one-person art department was expanded in 1956 and, under its new director, Victor Doray (whom she had recruited herself), she continued as medical artist until her retirement in 1962. In addition, outside of her official university duties, and after her retirement, Cheney also served as an advisor on Fine Art purchases, a subject on which she could speak with considerable authority.

“For in the British Columbia artistic and literary communities since the 1930s she had also been a prominent figure, as a friend of Lawren Harris, Jock Macdonald, Emily Carr, Dorothy Livesay and Ethel Wilson—and of a host of other artists and writers, many of whom regarded her as an important early patron and encourager. She collected the works of many of her friends, such as B.C. artists Bert Binning, Gordon Smith, Joe Plaskett, Bruno and Molly Bobak, Alistair Bell and Takao Tanabe. She served on the board of the Vancouver Art Gallery soon after her arrival in Vancouver in 1937, and was instrumental in inspiring and arranging Emily Carr’s first Vancouver exhibition in 1938.”

November 24 Richmond’s Dave Barr and Brandon, Manitoba’s Dan Halldorson teamed up to win the World Cup team golf tournament in La Quinta, California. Their decisive four-stroke victory earned them a $200,000 payday.

November 27 In a terrific sports year marked by many national titles won by local athletes, the biggest prize of all was gained when the B.C. Lions won the 1985 Grey Cup, defeating Hamilton TiCats 37-24 at Olympic Stadium in Montreal The street in front of the football club’s Whalley headquarters was renamed Lions Way. The Lions would win the Grey Cup again nine years later to the day when they defeated Baltimore.

December 9 The first of Vancouver’s three Cambie Street bridges, a two-laner built in 1891, cost $12,000. The second, with four lanes, opened in 1912 and named for the Duke of Connaught, Governor General at the time, cost $740,000. The third and present six-lane bridge, which opened today, cost $50 million—some 4,167 times the cost of the first. Mayor Mike Harcourt officiated at this opening, with a very special guest of honor on hand. She was Isabelle Duff-Stuart, who as a child had presented flowers to the Duchess of Connaught at the opening of the preceding bridge 73 years earlier.

December 11 The rapid-transit system SkyTrain, running from Vancouver to New Westminster, began. It followed the same route through Burnaby as the old interurban tramline. (The line was later extended to Surrey.) “Kyla Daman-Willems,” the Province’s Don Hauka wrote, “gets to ride on SkyTrain all day long. And best of all, she gets paid for it.” As one of the line’s 81 attendants Kyla was enthusiastic. “It’s very exciting to be involved in something from the time it was on paper to when it goes into operation . . . I just can’t wait to see what happens. Everyone’s dying to see it carry passengers and do what it was designed to do.”

SkyTrain tells us that in the 1997-98 year, they carried 41,593,000 passengers.

December 31 The runaway winner of the award for Canadian Newsmaker of the Year? Steve Fonyo. The amputee runner from Vernon “easily out-distanced Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in the balloting for top Canadian newsmaker by the country’s newspaper, radio and television editors.”

Fonyo, 20, said he was “shocked” by the news. He didn’t realize he’d made so many headlines during his Terry Fox-inspired cross- country Journey for Lives. Fonyo raised nearly $11 million for cancer research during his 14-month run, which ended May 29, 1985, in New Westminster.

December Atlantis Submarines of Vancouver became the first company in the world to design, build and operate passenger-carrying submarines. Vessels built by Atlantis will carry tourists on dives at locations around the world, including Grand Cayman, Barbados, St. Thomas, Aruba, Hawaii, Guam and the Bahamas. The Atlantis is a free-swimming, self-propelled submersible capable of operating at a depth of 150 feet.

Also in 1985

A British Columbian was the first Canadian recording artist to sell one million albums within Canada. B.C.’s Bryan Adams roared onto the scene this year with Reckless. A single from the album, Heaven, reached #1.

The tower clock at 757 West Hastings (Sinclair Centre), there since 1909, was converted to electronic operation. The four clock fronts were given “face-lifts” to replace the glass and dials. The original parts—the winding mechanism and the old bell—were restored and today are displayed in the Centre’s atrium.

John Bishop started his now-famous restaurant at 2183 West 4th. He opened it in the middle of a recession, but it didn’t seem to matter: people came anyway. “We let the ingredients tell us what to cook,” Shrewsbury-born (April 12, 1945) Bishop says. “A supplier brings in a load of razor clams, and they become our evening special. Someone picks a bunch of elderberry blossoms from a tree growing wild, and their distinctive fragrance inspires a sauce. Blackberries come into season, and we consider the possibilities of using them different ways, perhaps in a meat dish. That’s the fun of running a small restaurant.” [Sadly, Bishop’s closed it’s doors in January 2022. “I finally took the very difficult decision to actually close,” John Bishop said. “It was not easy.”]

David Strangway became the president of UBC. He would hold that post to 1997. Strangway’s tenure at UBC will be marked by success in fund raising, sparking a leap forward for UBC in advanced studies and world-level research. Dr. Strangway (his PhD is in physics) was born June 7, 1934 in Simcoe, Ontario, spent his childhood in Angola. His Wikipedia site tells us he received a BA in Physics and Geology in 1956, an MA and a Ph.D in Physics from the University of Toronto in 1960. In 1970 Strangway joined NASA as the Chief of the Geophysics Branch and was responsible for the geophysical aspects of the Apollo missions. In 1972 he was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, “given for an exceptional scientific contribution toward achieving the NASA mission.” He worked for the University of Toronto from 1973 to 1985 and held the positions of Acting President, Vice-President, and Chairman of the Geology department. Today, he is chair and CEO of Quest University Canada which he founded in 1998.

There was a sharp upswing this year in local TV and movie production. In 1981 some $57.6 million was spent on productions in BC. That dropped to $39.8 million in 1982, and plummeted to $7.9 million in 1983. Budgets rose again in 1984 to $33.1 million . . . and then began to take off. Total production budgets this year were $150 million, and then they started to climb. And climb. And climb. See this document.

Movies made locally or with a local connection this year included:

Rocky IV, directed by Sylvester Stallone and starring Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers, Burt Young and Dolph Lundgren. Here’s what one visitor to the imdb.com site said about this film, which he rates as the best of the Rocky series: “I remember I was in Kokomo, Indiana visiting family for Christmas. My mom and I walked into a packed theater and you want to talk about a place erupting like a volcano, then this was the place. When Rocky finally hits Drago to cut him over the eye and Duke yells ‘He’s cut, he’s cut!,’ the crowd went into a frenzy. And you can look no further than that as to why the Rocky films were so popular. It doesn’t matter if you are Canadian, American, Portuguese, Polish or Dutch or whatever, Rocky appeals to all of us. Because all of us have been the underdog at some time in our lives and we love to watch him and perhaps live vicariously through him. That is the beauty of Rocky. If Rocky can do it then dammit so can I!”

My American Cousin Directed by Sandy Wilson, and starring Margaret Langrick. A charming film, with a fine performance by 12-year-old Langrick, whose family is visited in the late 1950s by her cousin, a 16-year-old American, striving to be tough. In any roster of the best Canadian movies, this one nearly always pops up.

Walls Directed by Tom Shandel, and starring Winston Rekert, in a drama inspired by a 1975 B.C. Penitentiary hostage-taking incident. See our 1975 chronology for more detail.

Year Of The Dragon Directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Joan Chen and John Lone. Violent and entertaining. Some Chinese movie-goers protested against what they perceived as stereotypical treatment.

The Journey Of Natty Gann Directed by Jeremy Kagan (who’s done a lot of work on TV), and starring Meredith Salenger and a wolf named Jed. In the 1930s, a tomboyish girl runs away from her guardian to join her single father who is 2,000 miles away, because there was work there. ‘Jed’ was the same wolf later seen in 1991’s White Fang.

Certain Fury Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, and described by reviewer Michael Walsh as “a female rerun of 1958’s The Defiant Ones,” this starred Tatum O’Neal and Irene Cara.

Books published in 1985 included:

Vancouver Fiction, an anthology edited by David Watmough, described as “an outstanding centennial collection by Vancouver’s world-class writers.” Authors included Jane Rule, Keath Fraser, Audrey Thomas, D.M. Fraser, Keith Mallard and Beverley Simons.

The Chinese Connection, by Michael Goldberg. It featured interviews with 80 Chinese real estate investors and their related Pacific Rim advisors.

School Wars, a critique of B.C. education, by Crawford Kilian, a Capilano College English professor. (For a way to access a world of fascinating information that takes you away from work you should be doing, check out Kilian’s blog here. His tastes are eclectic and perceptive.)

Hubert Evans: The First Ninety-Three Years, a biography of the writer by Alan Twigg. His 1954 novel Mist on the River is considered a BC classic. There is a fine recap of Evans’ life and career here.

The Natural history of New Westminster, with contributions by Dana Anderson, et al. It was published by Douglas College.

Once in the Royal City: the Heritage of New Westminster, by Jack David Scott, about the city’s heritage buildings. It was described as “a great source of information for buildings, architects and craftsmen of the mid-19th through to the 20th century. It contains photographs and historical information on many houses in New Westminster.”

This is my own: letters to Wes & other writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941-1948 by Muriel Kitagawa. Roy Miki, ed. The BC Bookworld site is an always rewarding source of interest for anyone wanting information on BC writers. Here’s what the site says about Muriel Kitagawa: “Tsukiye Muriel Kitagawa was born in Vancouver on April 3, 1912. Raised mainly in New Westminster, she graduated from Duke of Connaught High School and briefly attended UBC. Befriending other Nissei who were anxious to be full-fledged Canadian citizens with the right to vote and work in any profession, she helped found The New Age in 1932, the first journal to regularly print the thoughts, emotions and ideals of Canadian-born Japanese Canadians. By 1941 she had married the star of the local Asahi baseball team, Ed Kitagawa and was writing regularly in the English language periodical New Canadian. Edited by Roy Miki, her posthumous collection called This Is My Own: Letters to Wes & Other Writings on Japanese Canadians 1941-1948 (Talonbooks, 1985) consists primarily of letters Kitagawa sent to her brother Wes Fujiwara, a medical student in Toronto, in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor bombing of December, 1941.”

The Suspect, by L. R. Wright. This murder drama set in Sechelt won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best novel of 1985. Her Sechelt police detective Karl Alberg and his librarian lover Cassandra have become favorites of readers.

Working Lives Vancouver 1886-1986, by The Working Lives Collective.

Study of the Fraser River Estuary pollution problems resulted in the Fraser River Estuary Management Program, introduced this year. FREMP is, the website says, “an intergovernmental partnership among federal, provincial and regional governments and port authorities to coordinate planning and decision-making in the estuary. FREMP and its partners work to protect and improve environmental quality, provide economic development opportunities and to sustain the quality of life in and around the Fraser River Estuary.”

Another benefit: the public now has access to miles of easy trails along the river’s channels, islands and rich tidal backwaters.

Bonnie Irving took over as editor at BC Business. The monthly magazine had been launched in 1972 by Joe Martin of Agency Press. She would be editor for an astonishing 19 years, possibly the longest tenure of any general-interest editor in the lower mainland. When she took over, she once said, the magazine was “remarkably dull and boring, with an emphasis on guys in suits standing next to their big corporate widgets.”

Burrard Dry Dock (formerly Wallace Shipyards) became Versatile Pacific Shipyards. Francis Mansbridge’s book Launching History: The Saga of Burrard Dry Dock looks at the story of this fabled yard.

The B.C. Packers cannery at Steveston canned more salmon this year (24 million pounds, with a further 12 million pounds frozen) than all the Steveston canneries together in the boom year of 1901 (16 million pounds).

A dwarf-tossing contest at the Flamingo Hotel in the Whalley neighborhood of Surrey led to newspaper stories and comment all over North America.

Former Surrey mayor and MLA Bill Vander Zalm and his wife Lillian began construction of Fantasy Gardens in Richmond.

A downtown revitalization program began at Horseshoe Bay.

Capers, a natural food store and restaurant, opened at Dundarave in West Vancouver.

Construction began on the New Westminster Quay.

Trinity Western College became a university. The only private university in B.C. at the time, it stressed leadership, excellence and Christian ethics.

The West Vancouver Seniors’ Activity Centre was awarded the Canadian Architects’ Award of Excellence. It also received the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association’s 1985 Facility Excellence Award.

The Kerrisdale Historical Society erected a memorial cairn at the site of Sam and Fitz McCleery’s homestead to commemorate these Vancouver pioneers.

Members of the French secret service sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, and badly injured skipper David McTaggart. A Greenpeace website has a fascinating conversation, conducted by Michael Friedrich, in which some of the original organizers—Dorothy Metcalfe, Dorothy Stowe, Jim Bohlen and Bob Hunter—talk about the early days and, at one point, about McTaggart’s beating.

An excerpt:

Jim: It wasn’t until later that he [McTaggart] became a convinced environmentalist, after the French had given him such a bad beating. That was their mistake.

Bob: Yes, on the Vega’s second voyage to Moruroa, the crew was really given a roughing up by the French. But David’s girlfriend, Anne-Marie Horne, managed to take some photos of it. She smuggled the film off the ship and took it to Vancouver, where we developed it and immediately realized what we had got hold of. At the time David was still in hospital.

Jim: We attacked the French for their orgy of violence. The government in Paris claimed that David had slipped up and got his bruises and eye injury from that.

Bob: Only then did we publish the photos. It was a complete knock-out.

It must be said that Greenpeace’s earliest organizers had mixed feelings about David McTaggart. Visit the website cited here and read the whole thing. It’s deeply interesting.

The Lonsdale Quay Market was developed to help revitalize the Lower Lonsdale area of North Vancouver. “The glazed and galleried interior,” wrote architectural historian Harold Kalman, “recalls nineteenth-century iron-and-glass industrial architecture.”

The Ismailia Jamatkhana Centre, at 4010 Canada Way in Burnaby, opened for services. The strikingly beautiful building, architect Bruno Freschi, is the home of Canada’s first Ismaili congregation. You used to be able to see it more clearly from the road, but trees obscure it today.

The funky old Orillia apartment block, built at Robson and Seymour Streets in Vancouver in 1903, was demolished.

Design work began on Canada Place (designed by Toronto’s Zeidler-Roberts Partnership with Vancouver architectural firm Downs-Archambault). The building will serve as the Canadian Pavilion for Expo 86. Its distinctive five sails will make it a landmark on the harbor.

Whistler, 1985 population 6,000, got a cemetery.

George Pedersen, president of the University of British Columbia, resigned to protest cuts in government funding. He was succeeded by Robert H.T. Smith, who served very briefly before David Strangway took over in 1986.

Vancouver initiated a parking identification program, run by SPARC, to enable persons with mobility impairments to park in specially identified spaces in public and private lots.

The last False Creek mill on Granville Island, a vestige of the island’s industrial past, shuts down.

The B.C. Medical Association began a Speakers’ Service, involving doctors who volunteer to speak about medical issues in their communities.

Magazines that debuted in 1985 included:

B C Woman Women’s lifestyle in British Columbia.

Canadian Nursing Home Journal A quarterly publication.

Fraser Forum A monthly publication studying market solutions for public policy problems.

Glasnik Hrvatske Seljacke Stranke A monthly publication in the Croatian language, with news of Croatia and Croatian peoples in BC and elsewhere in Canada,

Pacific Currents: Life and politics in B.C. A bi-monthly.

Tri-City News This newspaper appeared Wednesday and Sunday, and was distributed free to households in the Coquitlam, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam districts.

Burnaby Credit Union was renamed Harbour Savings.

Lynn Headwaters Regional Park was created, making 4,685 hectares of watershed suddenly accessible to hikers. The rugged wilderness park offers forty kilometres of marked and back country trails in North Vancouver’s back yard.

The Point Grey Curling Club folded because of dwindling membership.

The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club acquired colorful Wigwam Inn at the north end of Indian Arm. It was built by Vancouver realtor Gustav Constantin ‘Alvo’ Van Alvensleben. He was managing investments here totalling around $8 million in wood, coal and land . . . in 1906 dollars. Not bad for a man described by the CPR’s Thomas Shaughnessy as “a hare-brained speculator, nothing more.” Alvensleben built the inn as a resort for his moneyed friends, opened it with a lavish party for 600. It changed hands several times and was once raided by the RCMP as a gambling casino. Among its many guests were John D. Rockefeller and John Jacob Astor.

Ev Crowley Park on S.E. Marine Drive was named for Everett Crowley, the late founder of Avalon Dairy.

The 23-kilometre-long B.C. Parkway began linking about 30 parks, paralleling the SkyTrain route between downtown Vancouver and New Westminster.

The Vancouver Park Board began charging tennis players to pay.

Pacific Ballet Theatre, established in 1969 by Maria Lewis, was renamed Ballet British Columbia.

Hugh Pickett, the Grand Old Man of Entertainment in Vancouver, officially retired at age 72 from Famous Artists, the firm he began in 1947. (Hugh died February 13, 2006, aged 92.)

A small company called TheatreSpace (led by artistic director Joanna Maratta) produced the first annual Vancouver Fringe Festival, described as “a non-juried performing arts smorgasbord that provides venue, technical support and publicity so that anyone who wants to put on a show can.” It has become, says its website, an annual event and a September ritual.

Leila Getz created the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival. For more information, go here.