Six years after a police raid on the BC Legislature, the fraud and breach-of-trust trial of Dave Basi and Bob Virk seems poised to begin in BC Supreme Court. Unfortunately, after what the Vancouver Sun deems “last-minute snags” (which can’t be reported on due to a publication ban), the proceedings are postponed by one more day.

After years of similar delays, Basi and Virk (ministerial aides to Finance Minister Gary Collins and Transportation Minister Judith Reid) stand accused of leaking confidential government documents related to the privatization of BC Rail to lobbyists, in exchange for money and favours. The case is alleged to stretch much further into the Liberal Government than simply Basi or Virk, and the witness list provided by the Crown includes many of the key players in the first Campbell administration. However, by October, after the testimony of only two witnesses, both Basi and Virk will suddenly plead guilty, receive two-year house arrest sentences, and have their $6 million dollars in legal fees will be passed on to BC taxpayers. Much of the evidence in the proceedings (pointing to far deeper involvement in corruption, bribery, nepotism, and media manipulation by Gordon Campbell and the provincial Liberal Party) will never see the light of day.

“David Basi and Bob Virk are guilty alright — guilty of being unwitting pawns in a much bigger chess game where all the other players came out winners,” reporter and trial observer Bill Tielman will later write, in an article for The Tyee.

Tielman will add that “Basi and Virk do not deserve to spend a single day under house arrest, let alone the two years less a day they were sentenced to last week under a guilty plea bargain agreement,” going on to liken them to “the ill-fated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — a pair of minor actors working for the corrupt King Claudius who are sent off unsuspectingly to their deaths by the scheming Danish prince Hamlet — Basi and Virk were simply hung out to dry after police raided the B.C. legislature.”

After the abrupt end to the trial, and with mounting evidence of direct intervention in the judicial process by Gordon Campbell, deliberate mishandling of the case by the RCMP, the involvement of  Bruce Clark (brother of Christy Clark), and the appointment of a Special Prosecutor who had ties to the Liberal government, Tielman, and others, (including Dave Basi himself), will continue to call for a public inquiry. These calls will go unheeded, and none of the other corporate or political players involved in the process will be charged, or penalized.

“I want my kids to know that their dad had integrity, that their dad does sleep with a clear conscience at night,” Basi will say, at the conclusion of the trial. “I know some people who don’t, I’ll tell you that much, and they’re very relieved today.”

Image: A mock trial, being performed by members of Vancouver Heights Presbyterian Church, circa 1922. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

The roof of The Dependent’s old house was slippery as hell, and when we cleaned the gutters in springtime we’d tie a rope around the bumper of our wood-paneled station wagon until that fateful day when mum went out to get groceries and didn’t notice the rope… We mention this unforeseen and unfortunate interdependence because Vancouver parking meters consume but fail to honour the new loonies and toonies. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, freshly-minted coins and obsolete parking meters. The world is a great big web, isn’t it just?

Inside the undercover world of catching a pedophile. Wait a tick – did The Globe just go Dependent?

Legendary Lougheed park job.

Victoria-born Ryder Hesjedal has slipped into second in the Giro D’Italia after three stages in the pink jersey. Helmets off to the great rider Ryder, the first Canadian to hold such an honour. Rubber side down, friends.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

“Special Attraction at The Pantages”, reads a small advertisement in The Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser. “Manager George Calvert, of the Pantages Theatre, takes great pleasure in announcing that there will be an extra act on the bill this afternoon and this evening, namely ‘Jeff,’ the Boxing Kangaroo. This animal is claimed to be an adept in the boxing line, in fact almost as good if not better than an ordinary boxer and he has proved a great attraction wherever he has appeared. This is an act that will greatly please the ladies and children and there should be a large turnout of them at all the performances to-day.”

Other notable advertisements run in the same week include: “A Neat and Attractive Home in Grandview” for $3,600; “Teleconi, The Great Vibratory Treatment” (claiming to cure paralysis, rheumatism, and a number of other ailments), and; a product known simply as “Coke”.

“Just the thing at this season of the year,” the ad reads. “Coke meets the ease exactly. A little kindling and a shovel or two of coke will take the chill off and make the house comfortable. Try a ton or half a ton, and judge for yourself.”

IMAGE: Pantages (later The Majestic) Theatre, at the corner of Hastings and Carrall, circa 1964. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

“Opening Closes Bridge” writes The Vancouver Sun, as, with little fanfare, the Arthur Laing Bridge is officially opened – even though it’s been in use since the previous August.

“The official opening of the $23 million Arthur Laing Bridge will disrupt traffic between Vancouver and the airport on Saturday morning,” the paper reports, bitterly, as traffic is rerouted to the nearby Oak Street Bridge.

The bridge itself has been at the centre of a number of larger controversies since it was first discussed in the late 1960s. Originally planned as a toll structure, heavy opposition from locals forced the federal government to instead pay for the span out of general revenues. In addition, due to disagreements at the federal, municipal, and provincial levels, the bridge offers no increased access to the city for residents of Richmond and Sea Island, with two proposed ramps abandoned in favour of a circuitous route designed to discourage commuter use.

A bridge has existed in the Marpole area since 1889. The original Marpole Bridge – a road level span constructed out of timber and steel that was in place for only three years – was later replaced by a notoriously inconvenient swing bridge, which stood between 1901 and the late 1950s (records show that it was opened 7015 times in 1954 alone). The current structure (originally known as the Hudson Street Bridge) was named in honour of Senator and former Liberal Party Leader Arthur Laing, a longtime resident of Sea Island, and a man who, according to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, served as a longtime advocate for B.C. “with the ferocity of a hopeless addict.”

The battle over commuter use of the “Arthur Laing” will remain ferocious for close to 10 years, with Richmond and Sea Island residents supporting the construction of local access ways, and the city of Vancouver and GVRD bitterly opposing it.

“Once we allow general traffic on it, it will ruin the prospects for light rapid transit in the area,” Alderman Warnett Kennedy will warn, in a 1978 Sun interview. Kennedy will go on to note that opening the bridge to commuters would create “an irreversible situation in the city”.

“It’s part of a long-standing dispute between the federal government and the municipality of Richmond,” a 1979 Vancouver Province article will explain. “According to [Tory MP Tom] Siddon, the $23-million structure operates at only a tenth of designed capacity while adjacent Oak Street bridge ‘chokes on peak traffic volumes”.

The bridge will be opened to bus and truck traffic in 1977, and in 1985, on-ramps to facilitate Richmond traffic will finally be constructed.

IMAGE: The Marpole Bridge, circa 1905. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

The Dependent’s upstairs neighbour has lost her wallet and climbed onto a thin ledge outside her window. The police are attempting to talk her inside.

Premier Christy Clark has acknowledged that her jobs plan will likely require changes to the province’s strict carbon emission targets, The Globe reports. The news comes as Clark travels to Japan seeking investment in a string of liquid natural gas plants to be constructed along the B.C. coast.

The Globe drops an interesting story on the police’s evolving and unorthodox strategy for dealing with the region’s gang violence.

A prescient look at the grip developers have on Vancouver City Hall: Vancouver Ltd, circa 1975. “The choice is clear: to continue on the mindless drive toward a high-density prestige ‘executive’ city — a Manhattan with mountains; or to redirect itself toward providing adequate housing and a decent environment for all classes of people.”

And finally, the B.C. Liberals will announce legislation ending the HST today, CBC reports.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

Following a botched heist, notorious bandit Bill Miner (who holds the distinction of being Canada’s first train robber) will be captured by Mounted Police in his camp outside of Kamloops.

“The three bandits who held up the CPR westbound express near here last Tuesday night, and who have given the provincial police so hard a week’s work, were run to the ground in a secluded thicket near Douglas Lake late yesterday afternoon,” reports The Vancouver Province. “The entire gang was captured, and their leader nurses a wounded leg as a result of a short but sharp skirmish with Provincial Constable Fernie and a small detachment of Northwest Mounted Police.”

Even though Miner – known as “The Gentleman Bandit” due to his impeccable manners while committing robberies – has become infamous over the course of his long career throughout the U.S. and Canada, his capture is a relatively unimpressive affair.

“The camp was quietly surrounded, and we commenced to close in on them,” explains North West Mounted Police Constable William Fernie, in an interview with The Province. “A fusillade of shots from the brush showed that they had spotted us and intended to put up a fight. This intention was altered after some score of shots had been exchanged and one of the men, supposed to be the leader, had gone down with a bullet in his thigh. They surrendered without further resistance and we took them into custody.”

Despite Miner’s notoriety, it takes several days for police to even identify him; having gone to ground after his last robbery, he has lived quietly in the interior under the name “George Edwards”, planning the failed train heist, and recruiting a posse. (The Province initially writes that the gang’s leader is “George Edwards”, a man who has “been around Aspen Grove for some months, and has some mining interests there. Little is known of him.”) However, Miner will be identified several days later, and sentenced to life imprisonment in New Westminster’s British Columbia Penitentiary.

He will stage a daring escape just over a year later, and will never be recaptured in Canada.

IMAGE: Bill Miner, in a photo taken shortly after his capture. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

A petition is presented to City Council, requesting that the residents of District Lot 301, otherwise known as “No Man’s Land”, be allowed to become a part of the city of Vancouver.  “This district is a sort of buffer between Vancouver and South Vancouver,” claims The Vancouver Daily World, referring to the land (which will one day be the area between Main Street and Clark Drive). “A good many of the residents in lot 301 work in the city and might as well be citizens.”

According to The Vancouver Province, “ninety percent of residents” are said to favour annexation, “praying that this district be included in the city limits.”

”Mr. William Ives, a resident of 301, pointed out to-day that there were fully twelve hundred residents,” The Province continues. “Mr. Ives also pointed out that there is no debt on the district, and that over fifty new buildings are now under way, and fully the same number were being planned.”

However, despite the hopes of “No Man’s Land” residents, Council votes against annexing the district. It will take a further four years of petitioning before they are incorporated into Vancouver’s city limits.

The city of North Vancouver is also incorporated on the same day, but this fails to warrant a mention in any of the major papers.

IMAGE: Students of Charles Dickens School, Lot 301, circa 1902. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

In the courthouse on Water Street, the second meeting of Vancouver’s first City Council takes place. Its main order of business: “That the whole of that part of Coal Harbour peninsula now known as the Government Reserve be conveyed to the City of Vancouver for a public park.”

Urban greenspaces have recently become a fashionable concept in North America (as part of a move away from the heavy industrialization in the British Isles), but, as Jean Barman will explain in her book “Stanley Park’s Secret”, the driving forces behind the petition to lease the 1,000-acre peninsula are land values and the CPR.

“In January 1885, CPR’s vice-president requested ownership of the southern half of the peninsula, including Brockton Point, or as much as the government ‘can spare us’,” Barman will write, “but the Dominion had not yet decided what to do with its windfall. Rebuffed in its attempt to secure the peninsula – or at least part of it – for development, the CPR was determined that no one else would do so.”

The CPR has been heavily involved in the sale of real estate (acquired at no cost from the government) in the fledgling city, and, rebuffed in their attempts to secure the land for themselves, and fearful that the release of such large portions of property would ultimately drive their own land values down, they begin using their influence to turn the area into a public park.

The proposal is made to council by Alexander Hamilton, CPR Land Commissioner and Vancouver’s first city planner.

“Hamilton did not act on his own initiative,” Barman will explain. “The mayor of Vancouver was brother-in-law to MP [Arthur Wellington] Ross, who had made the same request on behalf of the CPR six weeks earlier, and had been turned down.”

After a year of behind-the-scenes maneuvering and petitioning of government, the city’s request will be granted in June of 1887.

“The Minister reports that he sees no objection to this proposal,” an Order-in-Council will read, “provided the Corporation keep the park in proper order, and the Dominion Government retain the right to resume the property when required at any time.”

Image: Entrance to Stanley Park, circa 1891. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

Also, the population of B.C. seniors is set to double by 2030, CBC reports.

That’s it, I guess.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

Vancouver Mayor “Friendly” Fred Hume runs into considerable opposition from both City Council and local contractors, as he suggests scrapping plans to construct the Cambie and Granville Street Bridges, and instead fill False Creek with concrete. While Hume’s initial idea calls for filling in select portions, at the site of Granvile and Cambie streets, and building low-level spans in those areas, his ultimate plan states that “eventually, the entire False Creek area could be filled in for secondary industry.”

Hume, who opposed the construction of both bridges in his election campaign, continues to press for engineering reports and feasibility studies, despite the fact that contracts have already been signed, and that construction is due to begin within the month.

”I’m amazed that the Mayor would come up with such a suggestion in view of previous engineering reports that the cost of filling in False Creek would be prohibitive,” says Alderman Alex Fisher. “The contracts for the bridge have been signed AND SEALED, and that’s the end of the matter.”

Alderman Archie Proctor has a slightly more succinct view on the matter, stating unequivocally:

“The Mayor cannot stop the bridge program.”

Alderman R.K. Gervin, on the other hand, supports the Mayor’s ideas.

“Filling in of False Creek is the natural answer to the problem of traffic and industrial congestion in that area,” he explains. “Industry would move either to Burrard Inlet or the Fraser River. I predict this will eventually happen, but it won’t be overnight.”

Hume will serve as Vancouver’s Mayor for the next seven years, donating all but a dollar of his annual salary to charity. He will also be the first owner of the Vancouver Canucks, and one of the primary reasons the team will eventually become a part of the NHL.

Image: The second and third Granville Street Bridges, side by side, before the demolition of the second, circa 1954. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

One week after the fledgling city’s first civic election – one which saw Malcolm MacLean defeat Richard Alexander by a margin of only 17 votes – Vancouver City Council meets for the first time.

“There were insufficient chairs,” Vancouver pioneer William H. Gallagher will recall, in a conversation with city archivist J.S. Mathews. “Charlie Johnson found some in the prisoners’ cells and passed them out into the court room; there was some agitation, some shuffling about; Mayor MacLean was standing at the head of the table. Then he sat down, and was the only man sitting down when he called the meeting to order. His Worship was very business-like and prompt.”

However, as Gallagher will recall, the meeting stalls when it is realized that neither the Mayor, nor any of the aldermen have any experience in politics.

“Charlie Johnson, who up to that time had been master of ceremonies all day, whispered to me, ‘What do we do next?’,” Gallagher will recount. “I was a young man, it is true, but I had once been through a similar experience in Wolseley, Manitoba, and had a general idea of the procedure. I replied, ‘If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll show you,’ and I went out into the street and around to Tilley’s Stationery Store, bought a pen, a bottle of ink, a pad of paper, and, returning, wrote down on the head of the first sheet, ‘City of Vancouver.’ Then I said to Charlie Johnson, ‘Better elect a city clerk.’ Then I wrote something brief about ‘Meeting of City Council, sworn in by Chas. Gardner Johnson,’ and pushed the pad in front of Tom McGuigan.”

“The second appointment,” Gallagher will later recall, “was G. F. Baldwin as City Treasurer, but they had not, as yet, twenty-five cents of civic funds for him to take care of.”

IMAGE: Painting by John Innes, of the first City Council meeting.

Vancouver photographer Jeff Wall’s 1992 photo “Dead Soldiers Talk” sold at auction for $3.6 million, making it the most expensive Canadian photograph ever sold, The Sun reports.

Unexploded World War II ordnance has prompted the closure of a section of Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island, The Globe reveals.

“Police say two cows ran across a busy Metro Vancouver highway and sought shelter in a residential subdivision after an attack by two dogs.” Thank you, CBC.

And finally, Enbridge protesters are pressuring VanCity Credit Union to drop mutual funds linked to the Northern Gateway Pipeline project, CBC reports.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

After three years of work, and several attempts to get a bill through the House of Commons, the Bank of British Columbia is officially launched, and its Board of Directors is chosen. The bank, originally conceived of by Premier W.A.C. Bennett, as a response to Central Canada’s domination of the banking industry, has already raised close to $2 million in funds, mostly from prominent local investors.

“The Bank of British Columbia will be a great national institution. With head office in Vancouver, we hope it will have a strong orientation toward B.C. and toward the Pacific trading rim, which will in fact make us an international bank,” says chairman Einar Gunderson, at a press conference held at the Hotel Vancouver. “As quickly as we can hire and train management and personnel and set up physical locations and administrative controls, we are going to open branches in the principal areas of B.C. on an expanding scale.”

As originally proposed by the Social Credit Party, the bank would have been able to operate with the Provincial government as a primary shareholder. However, the incorporation bill was soundly defeated in the Senate, amidst concerns that it would become a “political bank”. After a clause was inserted, prohibiting the government from participating in ownership or operation of the bank, a new bill was passed in the House of Commons to incorporate the institution.

“It is fair at this point to note that the Premier and members of the cabinet had on numerous occasions stressed that the government’s only interest in obtaining shares was to strengthen and support the bank,” Gunderson states. “While the government or crown agencies cannot now participate in ownership or operation of the bank, your board of provisional directors is assured that the interest and backing of Premier Bennett and the government is as strong as ever.”

The institution will operate until 1986, when, after recurring financial difficulties, it will be purchased by the Hong Kong Bank of Canada.

Image: The Canadian Bank of Commerce, at the corner of Hastings and Granville, circa 1920s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

So, yeah, sorry about that. The British Columbia Government offered up an official apology to Japanese-Canadians interned during World War II yesterday, CBC reports. The news (supplied, incidentally, by The Canadian Press) comes 24 years after the Federal Government issued their own apology.

And finally: some positive press for our friends at TransLink, with Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom announcing yesterday the corporation has been given powers to collect fines from fare evaders, The Province reports.  The embarrassing news that there was no mechanism to collect fines issued to those found on the system without proof of payment broke at the end of March, with officials promising swift resolution.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: The Rise of the Creative Class

Windows are smashed, property is damaged, and a number of arrests are made, as a peaceful “Sip-In”, staged in The Bay’s cafeteria by members of the Youth International Party, degenerates into a full-scale riot.

“The Vancouver Youth International Party demands an immediate end to all discrimination against hip people in the Hudson’s Bay cafeteria,” states a press release made by the group. “In support of this demand, Yippies will stage a peaceful sip-in (sit-in) in the Bay cafeteria this Friday, May 8, from 7 to 9pm. We will remain sipping our coffees in the cafeteria until the Bay management promises – in writing – to end all harassment against hip people. If they refuse to make such a promise, we will remain in the restaurant until the 9 o’clock closing time.”

The Sip-In, which begins peacefully enough, draws close to 200 people (including several plainclothes police officers). But, despite the Yippies’ call for a peaceful protest (the press release encourages attendees to “nurse your coffee along at the rate of an inch an hour”), the crowd quickly becomes so boisterous that employees close the cafeteria.

“The demonstration was loud,” Georgia Straight correspondent “Tony Tugwell” will explain, in the May 13 issue. ”People chanted, banged spoons on the tables and snake-danced around the room.”

Within an hour, word circulates that a large contingent of police have blocked all the exits, and panic begins to spread amongst the demonstrators.

“About 35 cops, many in riot helmets, lined up among coat racks outside one of the exits from the cafeteria,” “Tugwell” explains, “and word was brought down to the demonstrators that about 10 more cops were closing off the exit out of the Bay, which was the only other way to leave the cafeteria.”

Moments later, amidst fears of police brutality, the Yippies leave the building, however once on the street, the protest suddenly takes on a life of its own. The crowd quickly doubles in size, and protestors – many angered by the May 4th Kent State shootings – proceed down Georgia Street, smash windows in the American Consulate, and burn an American flag in the street.

“A dance in the intersection of Granville and Georgia liberated that zone,” an anonymous Yippie will write, in the pages of The Straight. “The pigs again set up around us and again we floated through their lines. Marching arm in arm up Granville shouting and laughing a head-strong undercover pig blew his cover and tried to bust a brother on the sidewalk. This being quickly discovered – us being psychically in tune with each other – he was immediately grabbed and overcome. Here we were, a pig caught under our boots and the memory of four brothers and sisters murdered on the kampus [sic] of Kent. Should we kill him?”

Protestors will continue to Granville Street, smashing the windows of a CIBC, pulling down trolley lines, and finally, marching on police headquarters to demand the release of five people arrested in connection with the demonstration.

“The guy who was inside trying to arrange bail agreed to talk to the crowd,” “Tugwell” reports. “He says it will take at least a half hour before they are out and the police want the crowd to disperse. The crowd doesn’t. Shortly afterwards people at the back of the crowd start to throw eggs at the police. And later a few soft drink bottles are thrown. This is stupid – giving the cops a good excuse to break the crowd.”

Three people are hurriedly released on bail, and the crowd is then broken up by police.

IMAGE: The Hudson’s Bay cafeteria, circa 1930s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

The weather turned exceptional just in time for Sunday’s Vancouver Marathon, won by Ethiopian Gezaghn Eshetu, who completed the 42 km course in two hours, 21 minutes, 51 seconds. Eshetu, who won $3,000 for his effort, is quoted by The Sun as saying his time was “very slow”.

And speaking of weather, according to the Weather Network’s 14-day forecast, Vancouver won’t be seeing a drop of rain until sometime next weekend.

Shortly after noon, a number of Vancouverites are – in the words of The Province, “suddenly stricken with kinetoscopitis”, as renowned filmmaker William Harbeck records a six-minute black-and-white film that willl become famous as the earliest surviving footage of the city.

“The attacks became epidemic shortly afternoon,” the paper explains, “but the results so far have not proved serious. Kinetoscopitis is not nearly as serious in its effects as spinal meningitis.”

Harbeck, a flamboyant and successful Seattle filmmaker who has made his name recording vistas throughout the U.S, Canada, and Mexico, is working under contract to the C.P.R.’s “Department of Colonization”, providing the company with short films intended to “put Western Canada on the motion picture screen in a scenic, industrial and comic form.”

Harbeck shoots 2,000 feet of film from the deck of a moving streetcar, hand-cranking the camera, the paper notes, at a rate of ”sixteen pictures per second for the whole way”, travelling through the streets of Vancouver, beginning at Robson and Granville. And, as the paper notes, with many Vancouverites having never seen a film crew in action, the results are often amusing.

“Well-known businessmen would be walking along the street evidently engrossed in deeply considering some real estate deal,” The Province explains, “but as soon as they caught sight of the big camera they would straighten up, throw out their chest and try to look as if they owned the whole street. Even out in the residential sections fond mothers brought out their babies and posed by the gates as the picture-taking car went past.”

Harbeck will go on to produce 13 such films for the C.P.R., including a similar streetcar picture of Victoria, and “The Ship’s Husband”, a comic feature about a married couple who accidentally switch spouses on board a C.P.R. ferry. In fact, the railroad will be so impressed with his work, that they will renew his contract, and eventually send him to Europe, where he will screen a number of his films, and study with french filmmaker Leon Gaumont.

By 1912, with his international popularity at its zenith, Harbeck will take a contract with White Star Line to film the maiden voyage of its newest and most modern vessel: the Titanic.

IMAGE: A frame from the Harbeck Film, circa 1907.

10,000 customers flock to 41st and Cambie to view the grand opening of what The Vancouver Sun hails as “Canada’s Most Beautiful Shopping Centre”…Oakridge.

“Flags flew crisp in the breeze, commissionaires’ medals glinted proudly in the sunshine, and everyone, it seemed, felt in a bit of a fiesta mood,” the article gushes. “Within an hour of the opening, the 2500-car parking lot was jammed.”

The shopping centre, which, the previous day, was featured on 16 pages and in 46 separate articles in The Sun, contains a 3-storey Woodward’s, as well as “39 specialty shops, banks, drugstores, and other conveniences.”

“Woodward’s is symblolic of Vancouver,” declares Mayor Tom Alsbury, in his speech to the assembled crowd. “As the city grows, so grows Wooodward’s.”

The article continues: “Eagerly clutching their money, the spectators surged forward to the swirl of bagpipes. Cashiers were soon playing a merry tune with their cash registers. Harrassed Department Managers answered questions, gave directions, and, in the middle of it all, tried to get acquainted with new staff members.”

“The huge centre, situated at 41st and Cambie,” The Sun concludes, “is already hailed as Canada’s most lovely centre. Every customer comfort and convenience went into the planning and construction.”

Image: The corner of 41st and Cambie, circa 1968. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

Amidst a storm of anti-hippie sentiment, the first issue of The Georgia Straight appears on Vancouver’s streets, with a cover price of ten cents.

“It was fuelled by large amounts of idealism,” Pierre Coupey, one of the Straight’s original founding editors, will explain, in a 2010 interview with The Dependent. “The idea was to give voice to an anger against establishment values, and their assumption of power.  People were crying for a voice.  It was fundamentally, in the beginning, opposed to private ownership, and was designed primarily as a collective to fight for social justice.  Vancouver had, at that time, a very repressive Mayor, Tom Campbell, and there was a very repressive ethos within the police force.  It was the beginnings of drug culture.  We were finding a sense of ourselves as writers and activists, and we had a desire to work for social justice.  There was a sense among us that the World Order needed to change, and we felt that we were in a position to affect that change.  It was this convergence of energies, where one refuses to knuckle under, and behave oneself.”

The Straight is one of dozens of underground, activist publications that have sprung up all over North America, making up the Underground Press Syndicate, whose other member publications include such papers as the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, and The Inquisition. The paper is tied directly to the city’s growing hippie community, and several of its creators and early contributors -including Rick Kitaeff, Dan McLeod, and “Zip” Almasy, are already well-known counterculture figures, known to both the public, and the police.

“At one time I had an escort of 2 or 3 police cars following me on a regular basis,”Coupey will recall. “We were always getting tickets and getting pulled over for minor infractions.  Rick Kitaeff fought most of that in court; he got more tickets than all of us.”

The paper will create such a controversy, that not a single printer in town will dare to touch the second issue.

However, by the end of 1967, its circulation will be well over 60,000.

Image: Interior image from an issue of the Georgia Straight, circa 1967.

Sock off,

-Liam

The city’s square community and the Vancouver Sun crow with triumph as Jim “Tiger” Batt, spokesman for Vancouver’s “homeless hippies”, gets a haircut and a job – and then disappears sixty minutes later.

“[Batt] made the great personal sacrifice Thursday – he got his hair cut,” reads the article, which appears on the front page of May 5′s Sun, accompanied by a photo spread, “and SURPRISE SURPRISE! He got himself a job.”

Batt, who chose to participate in the Sun’s makeover story (which also included a sauna treatment, and a new suit) in order to raise awareness of “hippie issues”, and to combat the rampant anti-hippie sentiment in both of the city’s major papers, works shoveling sand in a Marpole foundry for roughly an hour before walking off the job.

“He reported for work this morning – 22 minutes late,” the paper gloats, “then he vanished, leaving a trail of sandy footprints behind.”

Other hippies interviewed for the story seem nonchalant about Batt’s employment status.

“Man,” says a hippie, identified as “Steve”, “if Tiger’s got a job, that’s his bag.”

(“Bag,” the article notes, helpfully, “in hippy circles, means ‘choice’”)

Though the article goes into great detail about Batt’s job-hunt “transformation” (“There stood Batt, the ideal image of a young man on his way up”), the actual difference in the length of his hair is less than two inches.

Image: Men at work in the Mainland Foundry at 1707 Pandora Street circa. 1944. Image courtesy of the Vancouver archives.

499 able-bodied men (women have not yet been granted the vote) make their way to the polling station, as the newly-incorporated City of Vancouver has its first civic election.

“The city’s first election campaign now got underway,” explains Derek Pethick, in his book “Vancouver: The Pioneer Years”,  “as two candidates, both men in their 40′s, presented themselves for the mayoralty: Richard H. Alexander, manager of the Hastings Mill, and Malcolm A. MacLean.”

The proceedings are rife with fraud, intimidation, and other underhanded tactics, as both men square off for the mayoralty: Alexander brings over a boatful of supporters from Victoria (accompanied by a brass band playing “Hail to the Chief”), and MacLean’s supporters quickly capitalize on the fact that there is no voters list.

“Everybody who had a lease had a vote,” city pioneer J.T. Abray will recall. “I had a restaurant on Columbia Street, where the old City Hotel was. Upstairs I had thirteen boarders—remember, thirteen roomers upstairs. Then I had a shack on Hastings Street, next to the present Woods Hotel—right between it and the present City Hall; it was only one room, but I made it into four leases; so with the four leases in the shack and thirteen roomers at the restaurant I had seventeen leases, and a lease entitled you to a vote. It did not matter who you were; you could not let a day like that pass without voting.”

When the results are released, MacLean will have won by only 17 votes.

“The new mayor thanked his supporters from the balcony of the Sunnyside Hotel,” Pethick’s book will explain, “and was then taken for a drive through the streets in the city’s only carriage, which had been brought from New Westminster for the occasion [...] The cost of the election had not proved unduly high; amounting to the grand sum of $83.75. This was, however, more of a financial burden than it might sound, as the city, having yet levied no taxes, had not a penny in its treasury.”

“MacLean spoke first,” pioneer George Schetky will recall, “and made some nice remarks, thanked them, and spoke the usual post-election pleasantries. He was well received, and stood back. Then Alexander appeared, and said bluffly and bluntly, ‘Well, I am defeated; it was a case of might against right.’ Then you should have heard the boos.”

MORE ON VANCOUVER’S FIRST ELECTION

IMAGE: Iconic photo of Vancouver’s first city council, shortly after the Fire of 1886. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

“The Party’s On!” exclaims a banner on the front page of The Vancouver Sun, as, at 8:30 a.m., Expo 86 officially opens its gates to the world.

“Welcome. Come on in,” says Expo CEO Jimmy Pattison, welcoming the first paying customers.

Within two hours, 5,000 visitors will be onsite, including Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Premier Bill Bennett, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana (to whose activities The Sun dedicates two separate columns). The fair includes pavilions from 54 countries, and numerous corporations, and the day’s entertainments include a Musqueam welcome dance, the Harbour Symphony (100 boats blowing their whistles and horns in unison), and the comic stylings of mascots Goose and Beaver, “representing Canada’s best-known creatures”.

“I feel like a proud father,” beams Premier Bill Bennett, on hand to talk with visitors. “People have lined up… even in this unusual weather. You bet I am excited. You could feel it on the site all last week as everyone was getting ready for today and I know it will last all summer.”

One person who doesn’t share Bennett’s enthusiasm is Vancouver Mayor Mike Harcourt. Harcourt, who, two days previous, was suddenly dropped from the welcoming party for Charles and Diana at their official arrival ceremony, calls the development “an insult to the mayor’s office.” Harcourt has also been dropped from four other functions set to be attended by the royal couple, even though all indications from the province were that he was slated to attend.

“I think there are more civilized ways of doing things,” Harcourt says.

22 million people will ultimately attend the exposition, making it one of the largest cultural events in B.C.’s history, and leading its organizers to declare the fair an unparalleled success.

Of the $802 million in expenditures, roughly $491 million will be recouped.

Image: The monorail at Expo 86. Image courtesy of Colin Rose, licensed under the Creative Commons License 2.0

“So, everything I’m seeing here, this is all..?” and I trail off, soaking it in.

“I’ve never paid for anything, man,” Percy boasts. “Everything is free. I don’t pay for shit,” and he takes a thick pull from his free blunt. Sensing my disbelief, he adds: “…just blows people’s minds, the type of money involved.”

In 2011, Interac reported Canadian debit skimming losses of $70 million. “Percy”, the young man sitting opposite me, claims his fair share – a senior figure in a crew engaged in the audacious high-tech crime of debit card cloning.

Here’s how it works:

To access your bank account, criminals require data stored on your debit card’s magnetic stripe, plus your PIN code. Until recently, they acquired it through hidden cameras coupled with readily-available card readers known as “skimmers”, installed covertly on ATMs, or put in the hands of collusive staff. Next came the tedious and error-prone task of matching your card data to your video keystrokes. Today there’s a far more elegant solution.

“Back in the day you’d use the skimmers – you’d give it to servers, you’d give it to the [gas] jockeys, whatever – now it’s all about the debit PIN pads,” Percy explains.

By doctoring the terminal handed to you when you make a debit card purchase, Percy and his crew are able to record your card data and PIN right from the machine itself. There’s only one catch:

“You need their machine overnight,” Percy reveals.

“So say you go to a little coffee shop and they’ve got a machine there and it’s not bolted down and you know you can get that thing and you can put it back there, what you have to do is, you gotta be the last customer before that shop shuts down. You go in there, you grab the machine without them noticing and put a dummy machine in.”

Coffee shops come up frequently in our conversation, their high transaction volumes making them a ripe source of card data, and the barista’s head-down work making them prime targets for PIN tampering – a task, Percy insists, far easier than it sounds:

“Order a triple fucking vanilla pump latte, extra froth, two pumps of chocolate, half a pump of caramel, you gotta weigh my sprinkles and count on 16 blueberries. Just order a bunch of shit. They’ll turn around, and honestly, it’s a matter of seconds,” he declares, laughing in a puff of smoke.

“It’s like a phone jack – you just unplug the phone jack, pick it up, put another one in. Then you got the machine all night.”

The card-writing software used by Percy's crew

Fully caffeinated, stolen debit terminal in hand, The Switcher turns the machine over to The Tech – a friend who’s been trained to snip a few wires and solder in a bluetooth-enabled snooping device purchased from a remote criminal engineer. The Tech’s work done, The Switcher returns the next morning to replace the merchant’s machine.

“Say someone else comes in there and they try to use the debit machine and it doesn’t work: out of order. They [the barista] grab it and put it behind the counter. You go there and you can’t do your switch. That’s why you gotta be the last guy there at night and the first customer there in the morning.”

Modified machine in place, the riskiest phase of the fraud is complete, and the store’s debit terminal now transmits customers’ card data and PIN via wireless signal to a laptop outside.

Fast forward a couple weeks. Data downloaded, sorted and scrubbed, it’s written onto blank white debit cards using a USB card writer, the PIN number printed on the front with a label maker. Synchronizing watches, a team of low-level criminals, drug addicts and friends of the fraudsters then fan out across the city, hitting specific financial institutions at preordained times. Pockets bursting, The Hitters retreat into the night to meet with the crew and divvy the spoils.

If it all leaves you feeling rather helpless, keep reading.

“It’s coined as a ‘blitz attack’,” explains Justin Hwang, Associate Vice President of Fraud Management at TD Canada Trust. “The fraudster hires ten runners and then gives them instructions saying here’s your ten counterfeit bank cards, go to this machine and at 9 a.m. start. So yeah, we’re pretty familiar with that.”

TD and other Canadian financial institutions employ sophisticated pattern analysis software for detecting this type of fraud.

“Blitz attacks are pretty quick,” explains Hwang. “They’ve got a window of opportunity probably in the seconds.

“That obviously alerts us. Why all of a sudden, in the span of nanoseconds, are we getting all these withdrawals coming from this set of bank machines within this geographic area? That’s a blitz attack; let’s work to shut it down,” he says.

Hwang, and the entire financial industry, is fiercely protective of the specifics of these systems, speaking only in general terms. His opaque speech is a nod to the ongoing battle of probes and countermeasures taking place between the fraudsters and the banks.

Back in his apartment, Percy elaborates: “We used to smash ‘em,” he says – meaning they would attempt each card in rapid succession – “and we were like, ‘Something’s not working here.’ We talked to these other guys who did it back East – another crew – and they’re like, ‘No man, you give me 100 TDs and I’ll give you 30k every time’. And we’re like, ‘No way, they’re shutting down quick’.

“You gotta do the trick – you gotta do one every five to ten minutes. You swipe one that’s declined, you wait. Five minutes. Go to another machine. It’s tedious. There are certain people running around doing it, and they’ll come back with 37 grand.”

But perhaps more significant in this escalating battle is the quiet roll-out of Chip and PIN technology in Canada. Capturing mag stripe data from swiped cards is trivial, but Percy’s crew, as yet, have no answer for chip-enabled cards, if inserted rather than swiped. After five years of the figures tilting in the fraudsters’ favour, financial institutions appear to be gaining the upper hand: peaking at $142 million in 2009, Canadian debit losses have declined by more than 50 per cent over the last two years.

“We can’t fuck with the chip yet,” Percy confirms. “I know guys who have put in $150, $200k – more – trying to break this fucking thing. It’s all through the magstripe. They insert the chip – we can’t do it. So we gotta go to places that don’t have the chip shit yet.”

Percy’s revelation comes as no surprise to Interac, Canada’s largest network for point of sale debit. Following the European lead, the company will require chip-enabled cards for all debit PIN pad transactions by the end of 2015. The deadline for bank machines on their network looms at the end of this year.

From the Interac perspective, the results from Europe are promising: in the UK, cloned card fraud has fallen a stunning 79 per cent over the last three years, thanks largely to the implementation of Chip and PIN.

But as Justin Hwang over at TD points out, the magnetic stripe on Canadian debit cards is a long way from being completely phased out: “Our neighbours to the south, they haven’t migrated to the chip yet. If TD got rid of the mag stripe, we couldn’t do any business down in the States. That’s preventing customers from using their money where they want it, how they want it, when they want it.”

So while transactions moving across the Interac network may become more secure, the continued presence of the magnetic stripe on Canadian cards leaves them vulnerable to skimming coupled with foreign cash withdrawals or online transactions. And while the European lesson may prove fruitful for card cloning, it also demonstrates the resolve of the fraudsters, who have begun moving their illicit transactions from bank machines to online venues.

“We’re never going to fully get rid of the problem,” conludes Hwang, “but I think we’re at a good spot, where we’ve got a good handle on it and we’ve sorta corralled the problem a little bit.”

With the battle set to rage well into the future, some sage advice for anything you hold dear: careful where you stick it.

Nowhere to go but up for the embattled Christy Clark, The Globe suggests. Polling alongside the upstart Conservatives, fresh off two by-election drubbings at the hands of the NDP, and with the Premier’s approval ratings in a free-fall, there’s little room to slump further.

 A young woman has fallen to her death while hang-gliding near Agassiz, The Sun reports.

CBC Radio 3 host Stephen Quinn offers up an imaginary audio walking tour, highlighting the great civic blunders of our time: freeway ramps to nowhere, two-toned skyscrapers, dysfunctional public toilets and free access to SkyTrain.

Police are warning Metro residents of a possible escalation in violence after well-known drug trafficker Tom Gisby was executed in a Mexican Starbucks, The Sun reports.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: I Think You’re Fat

“TCA Three to Vancouver tower. By the range at 7000 on instruments. Westbound at 11:13.”

With these words, a Lockheed Lodestar carrying fifteen passengers vanishes into thin air in the skies over Vancouver, less than twenty minutes before it is due to land.

“The message to the control tower indicated the plane was inbound, would be landing within a matter of minutes,” reports The Vancouver Sun. “Clearance – permission to land – would have been asked when the plane was over Point Grey, three to four miles from the field. The call for clearance never came.”

The plane, inbound from Lethbridge, is reported to have been carrying seven Vancouverites among its passengers and crew.

“What happened to the plane and its passengers after Capt. W.G. Pike made his routine check to the range tower 2.5 miles east of the airport on Lulu Island may never be known,” the article continues. “Unless the plane and its passengers are found safe it will be the worst accident in British Columbia history.”

The search is focused on the area around the Strait of Georgia, and although a number of clues are spotted, and scores of reports are called in, from as far away as Saltspring Island, Nanaimo, and Ganges Island, no sign of the aircraft is found.

It won’t be until 1994, on Mt. Cheam (near Chilliwack) that the wreckage will be at last be discovered.

Image: A small airplane, crashed into the roof of a home at 755 Bute St., circa 1918. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

All Images by Jonathan Dy

Music by Martin Krykorka

Zines Available at Cargoh.com

Rod Mickleburgh over at The Globe laments the death of the picket line, and in the next breath offers up an apt sailing analogy for the ever-changing direction of Captain Christy Clark: “There’s a small tack to the left.… Now, she’s veering towards the centre.… A stiff wind from the polls is coming up, and the Premier responds with a hard tack to the right.…” Now who said The Globe wasn’t hip?

Eight B.C. mayors have joined the growing chorus calling for regulation and taxation of marijuana, CBC reports. Mayors from Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver, Vernon, Armstrong, Enderby, Lake Country and Metchosin have penned a letter to B.C. politicians calling the prohibition of pot a failed policy.

Dust is the prime suspect in the recent Prince George sawmill explosion, which saw two workers killed and dozens injured, The Sun reports. Particulate from dry, beetle-killed timbre is believed to be a factor in the Lakeland Mills explosion, as well as a similar blast that killed two workers in nearby Burns Lake.

“Sky Wishes is a baby miniature horse. She is one day old. And she’s wearing a horse sweater while taking her first steps outside,” Postmedia coos, reminding us of the age-old adage in journalism: four legs good. B.C. miniature horse rescue facility likely only one in Canada. Now that’s a headline.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: The Descriptive Camera

Joachim Foikis, Vancouver’s self-appointed “Town Fool”, spends the last $500 of his Canada Council Grant money on a street party for Downtown Eastside residents.

“A fool’s music broke the drab routine of Vancouver’s skidroad Sunday,” reports The Vancouver Sun. “About 200 derelicts danced, sang, wore daffodils, and even laughed as they took part in a ‘happening’ at Pioneer Park. Their faces brightened as Town Fool Joachim Foikis handed out bongo drums, flutes, tambourines, daffodils, and even food.”

“They [the homeless] have not had so much fun in the last 20 years,” says a grinning police constable, stationed nearby to “keep the peace”.

Foikis, who received the grant in 1968 (fittingly enough, on April Fool’s Day), for promoting “self-awareness of the entire community”, is a common sight in the downtown area, strolling the streets in his “Fool’s motley”, showing up to dance at nuclear demonstrations, and giving strangers a ride down city streets in his wooden donkey cart. He also makes a point of attending city council meetings, and enlivening the proceedings by speaking only in rhyme. In fact, his willingness to poke fun at city officials and raise awareness of important issues is so successful, he will eventually be profiled by the New York times.

While more conservative taxpayers observing the “skidroad party” scoff at Foikis’ use of public funds, UBC Fine Arts teacher Herbert Gilbert, claims that the Fool has earned his grant money.

“Foikis has sparked a vitality here where everything else has failed,” he says. “I have traveled around the world but nowhere have I found this kind of an atmosphere. It’s like something you would expect in Tangiers or Istanbul, but it’s right here in Vancouver. Foikis has done a good job. He has planted the seeds of a relaxed humanism. He has peeled off the masks of fear. He’s done something to get people mixing together as human beings.”

Image: Joachim Foikis, from a Vancouver Province file photo, circa 1967. Image used under Federal and Provincial Fair Use Guidelines.

She said she didn’t feel like I was actually “making love” to her, and it hasn’t felt like that for awhile. I was stunned, since in my mind nothing had changed in the whole time we’ve been together (6 months). I’m not into ‘rough’ stuff, so I have no idea how she could feel this way. We haven’t talked about it since, but my question to you & any female readers is… What is the difference between just having sex and truly “making love”? How do you have sex as opposed to “make love”?

23 & confused (Richmond)

For me, the difference between having sex and “truly making love”, is that the first option sounds like fun, whereas the latter makes me inclined to gag over the toilet. It’s possible that someone has tried to ‘make love’ to me before, but I think I’ve wisely blocked it from my memory. Hollywood-style, hushed breathing, kissing-each-other’s-eyelids type sex is something girls might want when they are 16, but most women grow out of it once they start appreciating sex as fun. So her hang-up is probably just due to lack of experience.

There’s no way to know what’s going on in her head from what you’ve told me (and what she’s told you), but if I had to speculate, I’d say she has a need to feel more special, desired, and appreciated. We always want to feel like our significant other’s favourite, so figure out what that looks like to her. Sex is supposed to be fun, and yes, is also important for establishing a meaningful bond, so you’ll have to find the balance between having fun sex for sex’s sake, and making sure the other person knows how awesome/special/desirable you think they are.

Also remember, it’s only been six months. It may have nothing to do with anything you’re doing -instead it might just be the fact that the infatuation period that comes with a new partner is wearing off. That intensity doesn’t last, but you can keep those things going in simple ways: take each other out, have sex in different places- car, beach, public places, be creative… Just don’t get comfortable yet. It’s too early to start behaving like married people. If you want to keep the relationship sexy, you’ll need to stay on your best behaviour, the way everyone is when they’re getting to know someone.

If I were only going to say one thing (and I am), it would be this: Get her to be fucking specific. Saying you don’t feel like someone is “making love” to you is about as helpful as saying “something isn’t working”. Communication is the key to any successful relationship, and until your lady can articulate, you won’t have any idea how to address her needs. Simple as that. So, sit her down, and ask her point-blank, in as respectful a way as you can, just exactly what the hell she’s on about. Until you do that, anything we say is just going to be conjecture. Her distinction is silly anyway, borne of the ridiculous expectations placed upon sex and romance by novels, theatre, and movies since the first of forever, and since there’s no universal standard for “making love” vs having sex (other than, apparently, the lady’s gag-o-meter), you’re stuck with whatever your “s/o’s” characterization of that is.

So, rather than getting our opinion, go and fucking ask her. Sex is (and should be) an important part of every relationship – as important as an spiritual, emotional, or intellectual connection, and there are too many people that let it ride. Don’t be one of them.

Oh yeah. And don’t knock the rough stuff. Romance – like sex, is all about passion, and sometimes nothing says “I love you” like tossing somebody around a little.

A Vancouver start-up has launched a new social app titled This is Our Stop – a kind of anonymous digital chalkboard for bus stops that utilizes TransLink’s open data and encourages users to interact online, The Globe reports. Beats the hell out of actually talking to people, I suppose.

New Westminster the new Gastown? As consumers place new value on heritage architecture and urban density, New West’s downtown core is experiencing a revitalization, The Straight reports.

A new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll shows that Canadians are increasingly losing faith in the RCMP, with British Columbia reporting the lowest approval ratings in the nation, The Sun reports. See: Constable Geoff Mantler. See also: Cpl. Benjamin “Monty” Robinson. And for a trip down memory lane, see: The Robert Dziekanski Taser Incident.

Lastly, several communities in B.C.’s Southern Interior are on evacuation orders as heavy rains push rivers over their banks, CBC reports.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: Does this actually work? The 30-second hiccup cure.

The Vancouver Sun quotes from a report made by The Anglican Journal, which reveals that, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a portion of First Nations children in residential schools were used for “health experiments”.

“The authorities deliberately denied native children basic dental treatment and scientists ‘tinkered’ with their diets, [by adding or removing vitamin supplements]” the article reports. “The government did not inform all of the parents who should have been informed of the research the government was conducting on their children.”

Dr. L.B. Pett, the physician in charge of the Health and Welfare Canada experiments, defends his experiments, saying: “It was not a deliberate attempt to leave children to develop caries (tooth decay) except for a limited time or place or purpose, then to study the effects of vitamin C or fluoride.”

For close to a century, B.C.’s residential schools were responsible for forcibly removing tens of thousands of First Nations children from their parents, and, in the course of their “education” and assimilation, they were exposed to disease, malnutrition, and often subjected to physical and sexual abuse. In fact, according to a 1907 government report prepared by Dr. Peter Bryce, (a physician hired by the Department of Indian Affairs) an overall mortality rate of 50% was documented in B.C. residential schools, where healthy pupils were often deliberately exposed to tuberculosis. Upon discovery of these findings, Bryce was fired, and his report suppressed.

In 2009, the Canadian Government will officially apologize for their involvement in the Residential School System, and roll out a $1.9-billion compensation plan for its survivors.

Image: Studio portrait of three unidentified First Nations people, circa 1860s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

Video – Duncan Vogel
Audio – Andrew Spindor/Lee Lockwood/Will Watson
Produced by Andrew Spindor at The Habitat Recording Studio

Two people have died following a massive explosion at the Lakeland Mills sawmill in Prince George, The Sun reports. It’s the second lumber explosion in three months, with a Burns Lake sawmill going up in flames and killing two people in January this year. For their part, WorkSafe BC has ordered an inspection of all B.C. sawmills.

Roberto Luongo has announced he will waive the no-trade clause in his 12-year, $64-million deal, The Globe reports. The news comes as no surprise, as Canucks’ coach Alain Vigneault opted to start second-string keeper Cory Schneider over Luongo in the team’s first-round exit against the Kings.

Hot on the heels of a Province editorial titled, “The sooner the DTES is fixed up the better“, Vancouver’s Development Approval Board gave the go-ahead to a highly controversial condominium development in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, The Globe reports. Sequel 138 is a six-storey development to take the place of the demolished Pantages Theatre. According to a press release from developer Marc Williams, the project includes 79 units of “affordable housing”, and 18 units of social housing to be managed by a charitable foundation. Critics say the project will displace low-income people and disrupt the neighbourhood drug trade.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

“Gunmen stage two holdups; obtain $197”, reads a headline in The Vancouver Sun, as thieves embark on a weekend citywide crime spree.

“Criminal gangs came out of hiding over the week-end to perpetrate two daring hold-ups and a number of burglaries, escaping with more than $200 in cash and a large quantity of cigarettes, tobaccos, jewelry, and other goods.”

The eight weekend robberies, some committed within fifteen minutes of each other, include goods as diverse as cigars, clothing, and “honor medals,” and involve thefts from homes, businesses, and individuals.

“Startled by a harsh command to put up his hands, Lee Ing, employee of Ah Chong Company in Chinatown, wheeled about and found himself confronted by two men carrying revolvers,” The Sun reports. “About to make a delivery to 1851 West 3rd Avenue at 9:35am, the Oriental was unaware of the presence of the hoodlums until he heard the threatening order. He raised his hands above his head and while one gunmen kept him covered the second went through his pockets and removed $80 in cash.”

One man is later arrested in connection with the robberies. Another is detained, charged with “carrying an offensive weapon for a purpose dangerous to the public peace”, and later released for lack of evidence.

Image: Police constable in the midst of performing his duty near City Hall, circa 1925. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

“Steel Rails Carry Final Load,” reads a headline in The Vancouver Sun, as the paper reports on the retirement of the last of the city’s streetcars, after more than 60 years of operation.

“Sunday was a day of pleasant nostalgia, optimistic future gazing and talk of the last, the first, and the best for thousands of Vancouver citizens who joined with B.C. Electric in celebrating ‘rails to rubber’ day,” the paper writes. “’The last streetcar ride is the best,’ was the unanimous opinion of old and young alike as they grabbed the nearest of a steady stream of streetcars without any waiting, got on without paying and rode without a grouch or a frown from fellow passengers.”

The streetcars, which are being replaced by “trolley coaches” in a citywide conversion, have operated since 1890, and to honour the history of the system, several vehicles are made available specifically for “the oldsters – only those who were pioneer residents of Vancouver before 1900.”

“Today, work crews are already busy ripping up sections of the track and tearing down the single electric wires that were the streetcars’ source of power,” the article continues. “Sunday night the last of the streetcars were pulled across the Kitsilano trestle over False Creek to their resting place at the Kitsilano barns.”

The conversion of electric rail-based public transport to bus lines has been an ongoing theme throughout North America since the mid-1930s, with automakers and tire manufacturers such as General Motors involved in (and later convicted of their involvement in) elaborate operations to purchase and dismantle streetcar system across the United States. While GM’s involvement was by no means the only factor in these conversions, and no evidence exists that they had any direct influence over Vancouver’s “rails to rubber” movement, it nonetheless fuelled a broader push toward car dependence and celebration of personal auto ownership. Speeches canonizing the past and celebrating the future were given throughout Sunday’s “day of celebration”, including ones by B.C. Electric head Dal Grauer, Mayor Fred Hume, and Donald Hyde of the American Transit Association.

“And then,” the paper explains, “the people and the streetcars, the never-to-be-seen-again streetcars, went home. They went with a fond farewell. Now, on with the completion of 109 miles of repaving to make way for the new trolley coaches.”

IMAGE: Streetcar, circa 1900s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

Canucks lost.

The legal battle over Vancouver’s float plane terminals continues, with PavCo declaring the new facility unsafe for operations after Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre sued to shut the competing temporary terminal down, The Globe reports. Alls I know is, I can’t ride my bike around the dang Seawall.

A happy end to the hair-raising ordeal for an orange tabby cat stuck in a Port Moody tree, The Province reports. After the SPCA and fire departments refused to help, neighbours raised $100 and hired an arborist, who scaled the mighty evergreen and stuffed the cat in a backpack, returning it to the safety of terra firma.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

Conflict ensues between politicians and police in the suburb of Port Coquitlam, as The Vancouver Sun reports on a city council decision to impose a curfew on all children under the age of 15.

“Each night at 11 o’clock the fire department will sound a siren to warn juveniles to get off the city streets,” reports the paper. “Council instructed its staff to finish drafting a bylaw that would carry a $5 maximum fine for parents or guardians who permit their children or wards to habitually contravene the bylaw.”

Mayor Jack Campbell is in wholehearted support of the bylaw, explaining that it will “draw to the attention of the proper authorities parents who are delinquent in their responsibility to their children.”

“He said the bylaw would show youngsters who now are left to roam at will that someone cares about them and wants them home,” reports the paper. “Ald Phil Ranger, in supporting the bylaw, said it was a safety measure for young teen-agers who have not as yet become hardcore delinquents and would teach them they must learn to respect the law.”

Local law enforcement, however, is less enthusiastic about the move, with the RCMP’s Marvin Young claiming that the bylaw would do little besides “result in the RCMP becoming a taxi service to return young people to their homes.”

“[Alderman George] Laking said there are enough laws at present and they need only to be enforced,” the paper continues. “The curfew would break down the good relations that exist between the police and most of the city’s juveniles, he said. He added that the word habitual is hard to interpret in the courts with regard to hardened criminals and would be equally as hard to interpret in curfew violations.”

“He said,” The Sun concludes, “that since the RCMP say they meet with little success in having charges laid against juveniles, the curfew would be just more unenforceable legislation.”

IMAGE: Policeman serving as a school crossing guard, circa 1960s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

The Vancouver News-Herald announces that, after a three-year battle for funding by “prominent Vancouver citizens”, $100,000 in grants from the provincial government will furnish Vancouver with a brand-new aquarium.

“All types of B.C. fish will be on display,” notes the article, “as well as fish from all points down the Pacific, and tropical varieties.”

C.I.A. Lietze, President of the Vancouver Public Aquarium Association, (and its co-founder, alongside fellow UBC fisheries and oceanography professors Murray Newman and Wilbert Clemens) tells reporters that “Vancouver’s aquarium will have a setup second to none on this coast,” adding that “the San Francisco aquarium, regarded as one of the finest in the U.S., have [sic] no tanks as large as some of those planned for Vancouver.”

“We have the whole-hearted backing of the whole fish industry in the province,” Lietze says, “as well as UBC officials.”

The original aquarium – a single room containing several small fish-tanks.

Two years later, (with additional financial assistance from timber baron H.R. MacMillan, as well an additional $100,000 from both the federal and civic governments), Canada’s first “official” public aquarium will open its doors, and, in 1964, will become the first facility in the world to house an Orca. It will remain one of the five largest aquariums in North America.

IMAGE: The original “Vancouver Aquarium”, circa 1922. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

The Vancouver News-Herald announces an upcoming plebiscite to determine the favourability of a six-day shopping week.

“If a work week not exceeding 40 hours is guaranteed all retail employees, are you in favour of a six-day shopping week?” the referendum question will ask, when it is attached to the ballot in the December civic election.

“There are conflicting views on this question from the merchants,” says Alderman Earle Adams, who supports the idea, “but there may be enough evidence to show public thinking has changed.”

After a 6-1 vote in City Council, the referendum question is drafted, intended to affect all Vancouver-area business, which are, by law, closed on Wednesdays and Sundays. Nathan H. Singer, a representative of “200 downtown stores”, alleges that the city’s current five-day shopping week “leaves the city wide open to attack from outside areas – West Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster,” and causes “catastrophic traffic and parking problems, especially in the downtown area.”

J.W. Cornett, the lone committee member who opposed the referendum, cautions that 40-hour-week legislation be introduced for retail workers before any action is taken.

“There should be legislation to protect retail employees,” Singer replies, “but it is our democratic right to be able to operate our businesses at maximum capacity.”

A six-day shopping week will be approved in the December referendum.

Image: Women shopping at a local clothing & shoe store, circa 1942. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

The bad news keeps coming for the B.C. Liberals, as the NDP steals two seats in yesterday’s by-elections, including a win in the historically-conservative Chilliwack-Hope riding, The Tyee reports. It’s been fascinating watching the tone of the B.C. Liberal media coverage evolve – an odd day indeed when The Globe is absent a scathing editorial. Yesterday’s: Desperate Liberals spawn attack-dog atmosphere.

Abbotsford police have issued a rare and specific warning, imploring citizens to stay away from local gangster Chad Weber, Kim Bolan at The Sun reports. Perhaps even more interesting is Bolan’s link to a fascinating court document detailing a 2006 judgement involving Weber.

In response to the passage of Bill 22, restricting teachers’ labour rights and bargaining power, the BCTF has voted overwhelmingly in favour of abandoning voluntary extracurricular activities, CBC reports.

And finally, and with a depth of analysis more suited to politics and business, The Globe examines the contractual and interpersonal nuances affecting a trade for the contract-heavy Roberto Luongo.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:Drumpsters are a great place to keep crab fraish