Wrapping up 49

December 23, Vancouver's Seaforth Highlanders held a farewell parade for their retiring commanding officer, Lt-Col D.M. Clark. Part of the ceremony included an inspection by Brig. J.M. Rockingham of the Seaforth's ski company. These special troops would train on Mount Seymour.

On December 29, 1949, a strange thing happened. The leaders of the Polar Bear swim club put out a box called 'The Thing' in English Bay. On January 1, 1951, it was brought to shore - during the annual Polar Bear swim - and opened. Inside was an effigy of Stalin, which was ceremoniously burned.

1949 had other things occur.

The radio station, CKNW moved from 1230 on the dial to 1320.

The 1949 thriller, Johnny Stool Pigeon, starring Howard Duff, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea and Tony Curtis, among others, told of international drug dealers tracked to their downtown Vancouver lair by a heroic U.S. Treasury agent. One of the few American movies that used Vancouver as a backdrop and set the story to actually take place here.

One of the big hit songs of 1949, There's A Bluebird on Your Windowsill was written by a Vancouver nurse, Elizabeth Clarke. It became the first song written by a Canadian to sell a million copies.  This was also an "indie" recording - Mrs. Clarke spent $600 of her own money to record the song.

In 1949, S.V. Smith became president of the Vancouver Real Estate Board.

1949 was also the year Charles Edwin Thompson became mayor of Vancouver. Thompson was born on May 17, 1890 in Grey County, Ontario.

Donna Jean McKinnon writes Thompson “was a teacher, rancher, automotive dealer, and from 1945 to 1948 an alderman. His apparently contradictory combination of progressive and regressive policies make him a hard character to pin down. He felt that improvements to public transit, roadways and sewer lines and efforts to equalize civic taxes should be provided to law-abiding and politically correct citizens. However, civil liberties were impaired during his term through a policy requiring all civic employees to be screened for communist sympathies.”

I wrote on Thompson and his term as mayor in this 2011 blog entry if you want to read more.

Writer George Woodcock, was born in Winnipeg and moved to BC in 1949.  He first published a collection of poems in 1938 when he was 26 and his final book, published in 1994, was a history of B.C. Woodcock wrote a biography of George Orwell called The Crystal Spirit won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction in 1966. His writings on anarchism were well-received. In total, George Woodcock gave the world 120 books.

Clyde Gilmour was born in Calgary on June 8, 1912 and in 1949, he began writing film and music reviews for the Vancouver Sun, a position he had held with CBC radio in Vancouver since 1947. He stayed with both jobs until 1954 when he went East to earn national fame.

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

49 Ain't Done Yet!

On August 15, 1949, newspapers described the newly re-opened Kingsway highway as "strikingly handsome". It was now six lanes between Vancouver and New Westminster.

Also on August 15. Radio host, Jack Cullen, did his last show on CKMO and his first show on CKNW AT THE SAME TIME!!! How did he manage that? He taped his CKMO show beforehand and did the CKNW one live.

August 21, 1949. B.C.'s biggest earthquake, that we know of, occurred off the Queen Charlotte Islands. Fortunately, the major force of the quake occurred in uninhabited sections of the islands and there was minimal damage.

"While hardly anyone in Vancouver felt the tremors, reports of the quake poured in from throughout B.C. . . . Prince George residents ran into the streets shouting ‘earthquake, earthquake,’ as cafe signs swung and poles swayed." Centres 1,500 miles (2,400 km) apart felt the quake, and it was even detected in Jasper, Alberta. Seattle measured it at 7.2. The Province reported on Page One that a clock had stopped in the home of Mrs. Laurie Sanders, Imperial Street in Burnaby.

Gloria Cranmer was born on September 10, 1949 in Alert Bay, BC. Cranmer would go on to become a film maker and linguist. She was the first First Nations woman to attend the University of British Columbia - graduating in 1956 with a degree in anthropology. In 1996, Cranmer was awarded the Heritage Society of British Columbia's Heritage Award and her contributions to British Columbia native live are remarkable.

October 22, the first "official" tree was planted at Queen Elizabeth Park, then known as Little Mountain Park. The park was carved out of a stone quarry and chosen as the site for Canada's first civic arboretum.

“The tree looked lonely and a trifle battered,” the Province wrote. “Fittingly enough, it was a Pacific dogwood, the only tree emblematic of B.C. It stood in a grassy spot overlooking the smoke and skyscrapers of downtown Vancouver.” The original idea for the arboretum, the paper reported, “was suggested by Leander Manley, secretary-manager of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, western branch.”

November 2. The Hope-Princeton highway officially opened for traffic. The highway closely follows the old Dewdney Trail, which was a trail used to move provisions north and gold and furs south.

“When the Hope-Princeton highway opened,” says the Manning Park website, “it not only provided a major transportation link between the coast and interior, it also made accessible to people everywhere the premier provincial park in British Columbia.”

A civic banquet was held at the Hotel Vancouver on November 2, 1949 for the visiting Prime Minister Nehru of India.

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

More 1949

March 23, 1949 was when the Vancouver Rose Growers Association was formed.

March 29. The sale of margarine was approved. The dairy industry - rightly fearing this would reduce the sale of butter - lobbied for margarine to be coloured white not yellow.

April 1, 1949 - Newfoundland entered the Confederation of Canada.

Also on April 1, First Nations people get the vote. However, those living on a reservation would not get the federal vote until 1960. Japanese citizens were given the provincial vote.

The Princess Marguerite entered BC on April 6, 1949.

On April 22 margarine went on sale. They weren't allowed to make it yellow but the manufacturers got around that. It was packed, coloured white, into plastic bags. Included inside the bag: a small pill of food colouring which had to be popped open inside the bag by the consumer and kneaded into the margarine to make it yellow. 

The new Labour Temple opened on West Broadway on May 31.

On June 15, a fire on the False Creek waterfront caused $1 million damage.

June 25, 1949, sod was turned to begin building a Woodwards store at Park Royal.

Canadian Pacific Airlines launched its inaugural flight to Sydney, Australia on July 1. Then, on the 13th, they carried the first all-Canadian airmail to Australia.

July 23, 1949:

The Province, in a story on local tourist activity, ran a photo of “travel advisors” Doris Young, Alyse Francis and Anita Zanon.

“They reply to all queries, even stupid ones, with courteous, sensible information.” Hedley Hipwell, president of the Vancouver Tourist Association, referred to “Vancouver’s $30 million tourist industry . . .”

The VTA’s travel advisors, Hipwell explained, deal with from 600 to 700 visitors a day. “In 1948 they answered 120,000 phone calls. In 1927 there were 24,000 . . . Last year, the girls gave out 160,000 travel folders and maps, answered 11,400 direct and 50,000 letters from other tourist bureaus, 8,000 coupon advertisement enquiries. They wrote invitations to 9,000 convention prospects . . .

One of VTA’s biggest jobs is finding rooms for folk who arrive in Vancouver without reservations. It takes the full time of one advisor to find accommodation for them.”

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill