This building at 1102 Commercial Drive was built in 1908.
There was a nurse at the Vancouver Hospital for Crippled Children in 1947 who loved to read stories and poems to the children. A young boy was excited one day to see a bluebird on his windowsill and this inspired Elizabeth Clarke to write the poem Bluebird on the Windowsill.
Ms. Clarke set Bluebird on the Windowsill to music and later the song became a big hit. The Rhythm Pals, Doris Day, Bing Crosby and many others recorded it. This could have made Elizabeth Clarke a wealthy woman but she donated all the proceeds from the song to the hospital.
Speaking of Bing Crosby, Crosby came to Vancouver on September 20, 1948 to record his radio show. Before the show, Bing was made a full-blooded Indian Chief and the Squamish tribe that made him a chief named him 'Chief Thunder Voice'.
Karl Norman was one of the performers in an operetta entitled Naughty Marietta, which was being performed at the Theatre Under The Stars (TUTS) in 1948. While the show was going on, the power went out but in the true spirit of 'the show must go on' the orchestra kept playing and Norman kept singing. Light was supplied when some people from the audience "lined up their cars at the back of Malkin Bowl and lit the performance with
their headlights.”
Also in 1948 there were 60,000 daffodil bulbs planted along the Stanley Park Causeway. These bulbs were gifted to our city as a thank you from a city in the Netherlands that was expressing their gratitude for the help Canadian soldiers had supplied in freeing their city from the Nazis.
Jennie Wong won a 'new disc jockey' contest that was held in 1948 and judged by such people as Frank Sinatra. Her prize was a half-hour Saturday afternoon program called Jennie's Juke Joint. Wong became not only the first female disc jockey but also the first Chinese-Canadian one.
Still talking radio here, on August 15, 1949 Jack Cullen was in the process of switching radio stations and on his final day at CKMO, Cullen did two shows that day at the same time on different stations. He taped his show for CKMO then did his CKNW show live.
Six days later B.C.'s biggest quake in history occurred just off the Queen Charlotte Islands. It was 8.1 on the Richter scale and was felt to the uninhabited west of the Islands though damage was minimal.
November 27, 1949 was the day that West Vancouver was isolated from the rest of us for ten days. A rain-swollen Capilano River swept away part of the Marine Road, the only road link at the time to West Vancouver, as well as part of the Capilano Bridge.
I hope you find the beauty around you.
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