The Daring Thieves

Today, I am going to do something different. I follow the blog,Grandview Heritage Blog and Jak King recently published something very interesting. It is an article in the January 10, 1910 edition of The Vancouver Daily World newspaper.  I am going to print the article here for you to read.

"A daring attempted holdup was made on a laundry driver Saturday night at 6 o'clock, when three men pointed three revolvers at S. Robinson and ordered him to hold up his hands. The driver's presence of mind stood him in good stead, and whipping his horse, drove off at a furious gait amid a fusilade of revolver shots.

At the time of the attempted holdup Robinson had $87 on his person, much of it in silver. It is evident that the would-be highwaymen had been following the movements of the rig and its driver for some time, as at this particular point most of his parcels had been delivered and consequently he carried more money. The point of the hold up is at a dark place on Third Avenue, and is frequented by pedestrians but very little.

Owing to the darkness and in his hurry to escape, the driver was unable to learn much regarding the description of the men. He states that the three men are of medium height and build, while one of the men wore a brown slouch hat. Later on in the evening as Robinson was finishing delivering his load of laundry on Park [Commercial] Drive he saw three men who looked very much like those implicated in the attempted holdup get into a buggy and dfrive rapidly down Park Drive towards Venables Street.  Owing to the snow, which was falling thickly at the time, Robinson was unable to state whether the rig turned east or west when reaching Venables.

Within twenty minutes the police were at the scene of the holdup, and although they searched the neighbourhood thoroughly, no trace of the men could be found ... The theory advanced by the police is that a band of desperate characters are camping in the vicinity of the city in Hastings making nightly visits to the city while they spend the day in seclusion in the fastness of the forest somewhere in Hastings townsite.

This is the fourth occurence of this nature within the city within the past three weeks.Two were unsuccessful, while $8.75 were taken from a young man on Victoria Drive under a street light last month, and more recently two masked men succeeded in robbing a street car conductor at the point of revolvers at the terminus of the Powell Street line last week."

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Cotton Homes

This simple, box-like shape with a front-gabled roof, and attached porch is an example of a Gabled Vernacular style home. The 1-1/2 storey house is first listed in the 1908 directory as a vacant new building though it was built the year before - no building permit has been found for it.

1329 Cotton Drive saw its first resident in 1909, a hardware merchant named William C. Haycock. In 1910, James McLennan, a carpenter, resided here.

Across the street, at 1330 Cotton Drive, is a house and apartment building listed from 1913 though, once again, no building permits have been found. I am going to talk about the house.

It is another Gable Vernacular Style house - a simple rectangular building with a front-gabled roof and an attached porch. The glassed in area was probably added years ago to create a more usable space. August Yarco, a labourer, had a shack here from 1907 to 1913 and when part of the area was rebuilt into an apartment building, Yarco was hired as a janitor. (I will have to go back to the area and get some photos of the apartment building!)

These two houses, plus others I am featuring, are in the Grandview district. The story goes that the area got that name due to a resident putting up a sign at the interurban stop near his home at Commercial and 1st. The sign read 'Grand View'. Perhaps the resident was a realtor trying to unload property and wanted to make the area sound special.

The view would have been great; it still is at certain spots. The view was a result of the extensive logging of the forests to feed Hastings Saw Mill. The sights residents of the area would have seen then included the small city of Vancouver to the northwest and False Creek, which at the time covered a lot of the area.  

What a sight that must have been! Of course, the view today is mainly of buildings. With the addition of the interurban line in 1892, the village of Vancouver began to grow a little more. Then large homes began being built in the 'Grandview' area. Originally, it was intended to be an upscale district but when the CPR invested $2 million into the Shaugnessy area, making it the place to be, Grandview settled into a comfortable, middle-class area. 

Thanks goes to the Grandview Heritage blog for the information on the homes and to the book Namely Vancouver by Tom Snyders and Jennifer O'Rourke for the information on Grandview. There is more to tell about this district and I will get to it another time.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Highland Echo

In 1917, a local newspaper, the Highland Echo, began to circulate in the Commercial Drive area. The paper was odd and definitely local. There was no international or national news listed in the paper. Instead, the reporters wrote about economic and personal stories about Commercial Drive and the Grandview area. This weekly publication animated the area.

The Echo ran until 1995 but, unfortunately, the earliest editions have disappeared. The Special Collections department of the Vancouver Public Library have collected and maintained issues from 1935 to 1969 and these have provided information for at least two books on the history of Commercial Drive. There is almost a complete set of issues from 1970 to 1995 at the Provincial archives. Sadly, those archives are in Victoria and it is difficult for Vancouver based researchers to access them.

The location of these copies has been solved though. I am consulting a November 13, 2012 blog entry for the Grandview Heritage Group and the group purchased copies of all twenty-one microfilms of the Highland Echo and donated them to the Vancouver Public Library. Now, Vancouver based researchers don't have to leave the mainland to consult these valuable sources of local information.

When I read this blog entry, I got to thinking. There are so many things in our lives that we consider trivial. I am sure that there were issues of the Highland Echo which many considered frivolous, not worth the time taken to write it or the paper it was produced on. Yet all these years later, historians consider the paper to be a valuable source of information. Funny how life works isn't it?

I hope you find the beauty around you.