The Year...1948

On January 3, 1948, two Vancouver Sun photographers, Art Jones and Ray Munro, formed the freelance photography business, artray. For some unremembered reason, the two were angry with Hal Straight of the Sun. Many of their photographs have been donated to the Vancouver Public Library website and I have used a few in blog entries.

January 12, Gordon Campbell - future mayor of Vancouver and premier of BC - was born in Vancouver.

On February 9, the go ahead was given for motel construction along Kingsway.

(these photos were taken on Tuesday. You can see the apple blossoms starting. Here comes spring!)

On March 6, 1948, the Province newspaper featured a photo of a sad looking young man sitting on the rubble of the partially demolished Giant Dipper roller coaster. The story below read: 

“THEY'RE TEARING DOWN the Giant Dipper at Vancouver's Hastings Park today to make room for the extension of the racetrack. This may be good news to adult followers of the galloping bangtails, but it's something close to a major tragedy for thousands of youngsters. Shown viewing the crumbling skeleton with nostalgia and sorrow is 14-year-old Bob. Said Bob, ‘If they want to rip things apart in this town, why don't they start in on a few schools?’ The Giant Dipper has been a top attraction at the midway since 1925. It cost $65,000. It was almost a mile long, and the cars reached 40 miles an hour. The longest sheer drop was 60 feet—a thrill credited with having hastened the ripening of many a beautiful friendship. In 1927 the Duke of Windsor, then the Prince of Wales, tried out the Dipper one afternoon and liked it so well he returned in the evening.”

Remember the band, the Ink Spots? Okay, that is going back a ways for some of you. On April 18, 1948, the group - starring Vancouver's own Bill Kenney - started a two-week engagement at the Palomar.

April 26, 1948 was Vancouver's first boat show.

May 9, 1948, the Women's Auxiliary to the Air Service dedicates a Remembrance garden in Stanley Park “as a living memorial in honoured tribute to the service, sacrifice and achievement of our gallant airmen.” A poem on a plaque in the garden reads:

Not here they fell who died a world to save Not here they lie but in a thousand fields afar 

Here is their living spirit that knows no grave 

Not here they were — but are

I am not ashamed to admit that poem brought tears to my eyes. So beautiful.

Thanks goes to The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

First Gas Station

If you went to the southeast corner of Cambie and Smythe Streets in Vancouver around 1907, you would have seen the first gas station in Vancouver. Actually, the first gas station in Canada. (It was started in or before 1907. The first car to appear in Vancouver was a Stanley Steamer in 1899 and the first gas powered automobile showed up in 1904.)

James S. Matthews was in his late 20s at the time the gas station opened. He was an employee of Imperial Oil and went on to become a city archivist. In 1955, he remembered the opening of the station.

“There had arrived in Vancouver a queer-looking vehicle called an automobile. We had read about them in magazines. One day, the telephone rang. The call came from the Hastings Sawmill and the speaker asked me if we had any gasoline which could be used in automobiles.

“The office boy replied that we had three kinds: One was ‘74’-brand Baume gasoline and was supplied to drug stores, who sold it to ladies for cleaning their gloves; the second kind was deodorized stove gasoline, used in plumber's firepots for heating soldering irons, and the third kind was benzine, used for dissolving lacquer in the salmon canneries along the Fraser to prevent the salmon cans from rusting. 

“The office boy went to the warehouse and told the foreman to send a four-gallon can of '74' down to John Hendry, manager of the mill.

“That can was the first gasoline ever sold in British Columbia for motorcar use.”

The number of cars on Vancouver streets increased dramatically not long after that and it was decided that the method of fuelling them - using pails dipped into large barrels of gasolline - was not only inefficient but also dangerous. So they got a 13-gallon kitchen hot water tank and attached a garden hose to it.

Now they needed an attendant. The night watchman, J.C. Rollston, was in poor health and Imperial Oil thought maybe fresh air and sunshine would help him recover.

“We got a barroom chair,” Matthews recalled, “and my wife made a cushion.” A corrugated tin shed was built for shelter and Rollston was installed as attendant.

The gas station was now open for business.

“The fresh air and the sunshine soon banished the pallor from Mr. Rollston's cheeks,” Matthews recalled. “and, ofttimes as I passed and waved good morning, he would call out, "I've been busy this morning!”

‘How many?’ I would call, and he would answer back, ‘Three cars this morning!”

There were also two bicycle shops that started selling gasoline. They would buy it for 20 cents a gallon from Imperial then sell it for 40 cents a gallon.

News of this new way to delivering gasoline to cars soon spread. Apparently in Florida the attendants were using garden watering cans. A dealer in that state wrote asking for details.

Now you know how the modern day gas/service station started!

I would like to thank the History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the information above.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Case Closed

When I finished on Friday,  Roy Lowther had just stated to Detective Chapman that he did not kill his wife, Pat Lowther.  That afternoon, Detective Hale flew back to Vancouver in an R.C.M.P. helicopter. With him were the mattress and hammer taken from Lowther. These items were taken to the Crime Detection Laboratory for analysis. Human bloodstains were found on both.

On October 20, Detective Hale accompanied Constable Joe Mikita of the Identification squad when he went to conduct a thorough examination of Lowther's Vancouver home. The two officers went over the master bedroom, inch by inch. Mikita found a number of small spots on the walls, floor and furniture. Random samples of these spots were removed, analysed and found to be human blood. There were one hundred and seventeen spots on the wall above the bed, eighty-five on the headboard itself, twenty-three on the other walls, twenty-three on a chest of drawers and others on the floor.

The next day, October 21, Detective Chapman and Sergeant Randall of the R.C.M.P. returned to Mayne Island to have a discussion with Roy Lowther. They told him they were investigating the death of his wife and that there was evidence she was murdered and they believed he was responsible. Roy Lowther was informed he was going to be arrested and held without charge for homicide.

After acknowledging he understood the official warning, Lowther was asked if he could explain why blood was found on the hammer. His comment, "No explanation." He gave the same answer when asked about the blood on the walls, mattress and bedroom floor.

On the trip to the ferry, Roy did offer one theory for the blood. Perhaps it was menstrual blood.

Roy Lowther spent the night in Vancouver's City Jail. The next day, Detective Chapman paid him a visit to formally charge the man with the murder of Patricia Lowther between September 22, 1975 and October 14, 1975.

This case was solved in a large extent upon scientific evidence. In addition to the evidence I have already told you about, mud-stains on a pair of Lowther's pants found in the hamper in his house were analysed and were identical to mud at Furry Creek.

To add to his perceived guilt, Lowther was also inconsistent in his statements to the police. For example, he told the detectives he hadn't been to Furry Creek since 1973. However, a letter he had written to the provincial government in February of 1975 was found. In this letter, Roy complained of the creek being polluted by a nearby gravel pit. This situation didn't exist in 1973.

Motive. Well, there didn't seem to be a definite reason for him killing his wife although perhaps it was due to jealousy of his wife's success, and lack of his own as a poet. Or maybe it was because he thought she was having an affair.

The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to Life Imprisonment.

Roy Armstrong died in prison in July of 1985. He always maintained he was innocent.

Thanks to Joe Swan and his book, Policebeat, for the information above.


I hope you find the beauty around you.