Vancouver Voyager: Finishing 1942

As I fill you in on a few last events of 1942, I am showing you part of an art display that was featured at the corner of Kingsway and Broadway last winter. It was an outdoor presentation that made great use of an empty lot.

Due to the wartime housing shortages, the federal government issued a order in council to allow Shaughnessy homes to be split into smaller units. This order remained in effect until 1955.

Shipping magnate, Robert Dollar, opened a mill at Roche Point in Indian Arm in 1916. The Dollar Mill was a major employer for many years but closed in 1942.

The lower mainland coastal batteries from Steveston to Point Atkinson were ready for an attack. They were manned by 720 gunners and supported by infantry regiments and auxiliary units. As well, anti-aircraft batteries of 40-mm and 3.7 inch calibre guns were at Point Grey, Little Mountain, Ambleside and other strategic places.

In 1942, Granville Island was closed to the public. It was determined to be crucial to the war effort and the island industries had to be protected from saboteurs.

34 patients died that year at Essendale Mental Hospital. They died of tuberculosis. It was also the year that ECT - electro convulsive therapy - was introduced at Essendale.

One of our city's oldest neighbourhood houses, Gordon House, opened in the west end.

Vancouver's Kinette Club - the women's counterpart to the Kinsman Club - opened.

Straits Towing was formed by Harold Elworthy and Stan McKeen out of the one tug Preston-Mann fleet and McKeen's standard towing.

It took two years of fighting through the Arctic ice but the St. Roche finally made it to Sydney, Nova Scotia. She had left Vancouver on June 23, 1940.

Emily Carr donated 145 paintings and sketches to the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Roy Miki, third generation Japanese Canadian and Vancouver writer, was born in 1942 at a sugar beet farm in Manitoba.

Darshan A. Sangha was born in 1917 in Langeri, Punjab, India. In 1942, he became the first of Vancouver's Hindustani community drafted.

Saba's was Western Canada's largest retail house specializing in silks. They experienced a riot when 500 women showed up to buy 300 pairs of nylon stockings. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

A future publisher of the Vancouver Sun, Stuart Keate, began service as an information officer at the North Atlantic and Pacific theatres. The 29-year-old would serve in that capacity until 1945.

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.