A Missing Poet

I'm in the mood for murder so today I am referring to the book Policebeat by Joe Swan and recounting one of the cases he wrote about. 

This case came to the attention of the Vancouver Police on October 1, 1975 when Kathy  Domphousse spoke to Detective Fred Menzies of the Missing Persons Squad. Domphousse was concerned about her mother, Patricia Louise Lowther.

Kathy and her mother had seen each other on September 23 at Lowther's residence at 566 East 46th Avenue. Her mother had been in a good mood and hadn't mentioned anything about going on a trip. However, four days later, when Kathy had gone again to visit her mother, her stepfather, Roy Lowther, told the woman that her mother had left three days earlier to travel back East and he didn't know when she would return.

This didn't seem right to Miss Domphousse. Pat Lowther was a poet with three published poetry books and another to soon be releases by Oxford University Press. She was co-chairperson of the League of Canadian Poets and was organizing a major poetry workshop in Victoria. In addition, Lowther taught a senior poetry workshop at the University of British Columbia's Creative Writing Department. Why would she leave town without arranging a replacement teacher for her students?

Something had happened to the woman who Andreas Schroeder of the Vancouver Province had once described as "the uncontested number one poet in the City."

Kathy was very concerned about the whereabouts of her mother. After her talk with her stepfather, she spent the next few days contacting her mother's friends and acquaintances but none were able to help her. Why would Pat Lowther go away and not tell anyone her plans?

Detective Menzies listened to Miss Domphousse's story. He had listened to many reports about people gone missing from concerned friends and relatives. In most instances, the 'missing person' turned up safe and secure with an innocent reason why they were absent.

In this matter, Menzies had a feeling something was not right. He told Kathy Domphousse he would look into the matter and keep her informed. When she had gone, he phoned Roy Lowther. Menzies informed the other man that he had a report his wife was missing and asked him to come to the police station to discuss the situation. Lowther agreed and a meeting was set for the following afternoon at 2.

Detective Menzies hung up the phone and set about learning everything he could about the backgrounds of Roy and Pat Lowther to get ready for the upcoming interview.

The mystery deepens! Wednesday, I will tell you the history of these two and the interview. 

The photos are of the Commercial Drive area in Vancouver. I was once told that a person could eat from every corner of the world on the Drive and, as you can see, there are lots of food vendors here.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Welcome to my Neighbourhood - Commercial Drive

Today I am starting something new. Sometimes I will take a walk through a neighbourhood, take photos then tell you a bit about that area. The first area I chose is Commercial Drive. Probably because it is close and I didn't have to walk far. Some of the information I am going to relate, I will have already told you but there will new stuff too.

We are starting our journey on the north end - at Commercial Drive and E Hastings Street. Commercial Drive does extend north past this intersection but for this feature, we aren't going to cover that.


Originally, this area was the skid road on which logs were dragged to the harbour. In 1902, its name was Park Drive because it led to Clark Park - the southern border of Vancouver.

This lot has been vacant the entire time I have lived in this area and that is almost 11 years! I wonder if they will ever build anything there? Probably housing, Vancouver needs a lot of that right now. The building in the photo below is empty and borders the lot, which leads to me guess we might see townhouses or condos built there in the near future.

Older homes along the Drive.

This street was part of the Vancouver-New Westminster Interurban Railway route, which was started by H.V. Edmonds and Mayor David Oppenheimer, among others. The rail line generated a lot of traffic so South Vancouver merged Cedar Cottage Road, Edmund Street and Norfolk Road into Commercial Street in 1910 because they were anticipating a big business boom. (Commercial Street is separate from Commercial Drive) 

Nick's Spaghetti House, reportedly the best pasta in Vancouver.

In 1911, the name of the street changed from Park Drive to Commercial Drive and even back then, it was referred to as 'The Drive', which many people still call it.

There was a proposal in 1982 to rename The Drive, Via Garibaldi in recognition of the large Italian population in this area. The name would also honour the revolutionary patriot, Giusseppe Garibaldi. That idea was quashed due to the cost involved and that fact that there is a street named Garibaldi Drive in the Champlain Heights district of Vancouver.

At one time, there were four streets in Vancouver with the name Park. Now there is only one, in Marpole.

Next door to Nick's is the York Theatre. This theatre has recently been revamped since it was an eyesore for many years before. It has a lot of history though, which I wrote about in a 2010 entry.

Before World War I, there were a group of speculators who attempted to turn the Grandview area - the district that surrounds The Drive - into a real estate area comparable with the West End or Shaughnessy. That idea crumbled with the global financial collapse of 1913.

During the 1920s, this area was a prosperous suburb and not far from the centre of town, Main and Hastings, but the Great Depression changed all that. In addition, the centre of town moved further west. But the area has been left with a large number of historical buildings and homes.

Adanac - a bike friendly street. Want to know how that name came to be?  Spell it backwards!

 Lost on The Drive? Perhaps one of these information stands will help.

 
 The number 20 bus runs along Commercial Drive.

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse of my neighbourhood. I have lots more photos and stories to tell you.

Thanks to the book Namely Vancouver by Tom Snyders and Jennifer O'Rourke for some of the information above as well as Wikipedia for other facts.

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.