Cleveland's Water

The Greater Vancouver Water Board began operating in 1925 - bringing with it an amalgamated sewer system. Dr. E. A. Cleveland was put in charge and he began building the vast watershed and distribution system that gave Vancouver one of the finest water supplies in the world. It remains a monument to his name.

Cleveland liked to boast, "No case of disease has ever been traced to this city's water supply." He assured this by completely isolating the watershed with meticulous exclusion of all possible human disease carriers. 

During the Second World War, at the U.S. Navy's insistence (they were contracting port facilities here) the water was first chlorinated. Vancouverites were NOT happy about this. Many citizens travelled far afield to get untreated water.

Cleveland was heartbroken. The water system was his life's work and it all seemed for nothing now. Some public officials stated that the coliform bacteria count made chlorination mandatory. Cleveland fired back and said that this only proved dangerous bacteria could live in the water, not that it did. As well look to the perfect record of the system.

However, Cleveland was not successful with his arguments and the out-cry over the original chlorination died down, WWII ended and the water treatment continued. Albeit on a much reduced scale and it continues to this day.

According to a 1912 agreement between the CNR - Canadian National Railway - and the city, the CNR was obliged to build a hotel and a $20 million tunnel approach underneath the Grandview to the station on Main Street. The CNR was still using the Great Northern tracks to enter the city and had begun neither the tunnel nor the hotel.

Mayor L.D. Taylor took this project in hand and was determined to ensure that CNR held up its end of the agreement. During negotiations, he did compromise though. He yielded on the tunnel and persuaded Sir Henry Thornton to agree to a 600-room rather than a 500-room hotel. In December 1928, work began on the present day Hotel Vancouver at Georgia and Burrard Streets.

Thanks to the book Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morley for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

And So She Arrives

June Roper's life had taken a sharp turn. Health problems, stress and a changing industry left the young dancer's future uncertain. Her sister, Anne, was now married and living in Vancouver and she invited June to come for a visit. Anne was also interested in having June coach Anne's daughter, Betty Mills, who had started ballet lessons with local teachers. In the summer of 1934, June and Elizabeth Roper arrived in Vancouver.

In Canada during the Depression, ballet training was popular for the daughters of wealthy families. However, the girls were not expected to make a passionate commitment to the theatre.

Vivien Ramsay, an active force in children's theatre and a producer of pantomimes, joined with her friend Yvonne Firkins, a fellow ballet enthusiast and leader in the city's Little Theatre, to open a dance school. They had seen June Roper's photograph on the cover of the February 1929 issue of The Dancing Times and had read all about her European career. When the two read in the local papers about June's visit to Vancouver, they felt that none of the local ballet teachers could provide the kind of high-powered professional training June could provide.

These are photos of the TedVancouver event at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre where I volunteered over the weekend. These shots are taken from the stage as we were tearing everything down.

Firkins wisely avoided any mention of June's delicate health. Instead, she suggests that the reason the dancer was in Vancouver was that she was tired of travelling and did have relatives in the city. The assignment gave June a chance to spend the two-year period required for her divorce from Stewart in a safe environment.

The dance school was evicted from the first studio for disturbing the peace. So Firkins and Ramsay set up the B.C. School of the Theatre at 712 Robson Street where it flourished for nearly a year.

June Roper's formal introduction to Vancouver took place on November 2, 1934 at the "Journalists' Cabaret", a benefit at the Hotel Vancouver ballroom. June appeared with her niece Betty Mills and some of the more advanced students who had transferred from other Vancouver studios. The performance inspired a number of young girls to start training with June.

This group photo of the volunteers is compliments of Agnes Pytko at AgnesPics.

One of June's students was nine-year-old Jean Hunt from Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. She had to take a ferry to Vancouver for her weekly lesson. Several of Roper's students would go on to join professional dance companies: Patricia and Sheila Meyers; Rosemary Deveson, who had recently arrived from Manitoba and was one of the few students who had seen a real ballet performance (Vancouver had not hosted a full ballet troupe since the one-night stand of the Diaghilev  Ballets Russes in 1917)  and Joy Darwin.

Rosemary Deveson joined the new school at the age of thirteen and had fragmentary ballet training as child in Winnipeg and briefly in England. She recalls her excitement when she and her mother presented themselves to the school and were invited by Vivian Ramsay to watch June teach a class. "Frail, sipping a glass of milk - but so gorgeous!" June would go on to become Rosemary's idol and mentor.

Thanks to the book June Roper Ballet Starmaker and its author, Leland Windreich.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Enjoying 1945

On August 22, 1945, locomotive #374 arrived in Vancouver on its last run. The locomotive pulled the first passenger train to enter Vancouver in 1887. It was retired and placed on display in Kitislano. Now I am pretty sure it is on display at Yaletown where the CPR train yards used to be.

September 1, 1945 was the day that Yvonne DeCarlo celebrated her birthday at the Hotel Vancouver's Panorama Roof. As you may remember, DeCarlo was born in Vancouver and here is the entry I wrote on our homegrown Munster.

On September 5, Igor Gouzenko - a cipher clerk - walked out of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. He claimed that there was a Soviet spy ring in Canada many feel this was the start of the cold war.

On September 8, 1945, Henry Reifel died at the age of 76. I wrote all about Reifel in this entry from earlier this year.

A news report from Portland, Oregon stated that "Following consultations with Dr. Gerald Wendt, noted scientist, the Pacific Northwest Trade Association . . . approved appointment of a committee to collaborate with its fisheries committee in consulting with University of Washington scientists and others on the advisability of utilization of the atomic bomb to blast out Ripple Rock, navigation hazard on Canada’s route to Alaska."

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and conventional explosives were used for this job.

On September 14, three VFD firefighters were killed battling a blaze in the McMaster Building on Homer Street.

It was a sad day on October 28, 1945. That was the day that labour contractor and civil rights activist, Tomekichi Homma died in Slocan, BC. Homma was born June 6, 1865 in Onigoshi-mura, Chiba-ken, Japan. At the age of 18, Homma left his country and came to Canada, settling in nearby Steveston. He fished the Fraser River from 1892. From 1897 to 1899, Homma was chairman of the Japanese Fisherman's Benevolent Society

"This group," says the Steveston Museum, "built the first hospital in Steveston to deal with outbreaks of typhoid amongst the fishermen living in crowded, unsanitary housing along the waterfront." In May 1899, with Tadaichi Nagao, Homma began contracting laborers to the CPR. "Between 1900 and 1902,”the Museum continues, "he fought for voting rights for Japanese-Canadians, winning in the Canadian Supreme Court but losing in the British Privy Council. He died in an internment camp in Slocan in 1945 . . ."

Homma started the first Japanese newspaper in Vancouver and a school in Richmond is named after him. He was 80 years old when he died.

Thanks goes to the History of Metropolitan website for the above information. Friday, I will tell you more. You know, I thought one more entry would finish relating this year to you but it seems a lot happened in 1945.

I hope you find the beauty around you.