This Day In Vancouver

The City of Vancouver has been through a lot in its first 125 years. It's a city that has played host to the likes of Mark Twain, Alice Cooper, Elvis Presley, Winston Churchill, The Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Howard Hughes, Expo '86, and the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. It's the birthplace of Canada's first female MLA, the country's first (and largest) clothing-optional beach, and the reason for the first nationwide prohibition legislation. It was the final resting place of Errol Flynn, and the city where two of his genital warts were briefly (and posthumously) kidnapped. It has been a hotbed of political activism, technological innovation, and bitter racial tension. It is the site of the West Coast's first electric light, and the nation's first female police officers, as well as home to world-renowned actors, deadly snipers, twisted serial killers, UFOs, the founders of Greenpeace, an official Town Fool, and even the headquarters for the Canadian Ku Klux Klan. It's a city on a journey; a journey that has taken it from being an unrefined, out-of-the-way, frontier logging village, to its current position as one of the most livable cities in the world.This Day in Vancouver will be the story of that 125-year journey, one day at a time. Adapted from The Dependent magazine's highly successful online column of the same name, and drawn from more than 13 months of research, each of the book's pages will be dedicated to a day of the calendar year, featuring a noteworthy event,historical curiosity, or ridiculous headline from Vancouver's past. Seeking to capitalize on renewed interest in the city's history--an interest fostered by recent 125th anniversary celebrations--each entry will seek to relate the day's events to the history and development of the city as a whole, thus providing not only a historical snapshot, but a broader understanding of many of the individuals and locations that have contributed to the creation of Vancouver's unique cultural identity. In addition, many of the entries will be accompanied by a relevant full-sized historical photograph on the facing page, selected from the thousands of images available in the city archives.

BC Bestseller!Even before it was a city, Vancouver was a property speculator's wet dream."There are more speculators about New Westminster and Victoria than there were in Winnipeg during the boom," CPR Chief WC Van Horne warned a friend in 1884, "and they are a much sharper lot. Nearly every person is more or less interested and you will have to be on your guard against all of them."Ever since Europeans first laid claim to the Squamish Nation territory in the 1870s, the real estate industry has held the region in its grip. Its influence has been grotesquely pervasive at every level of civic life, determining landmarks like Stanley Park and City Hall, as well as street names, neighbourhoods, even the name "Vancouver" itself. Land of Destiny aims to explore that influence, starting in 1862, with the first sale of land in the West End, and continuing up until the housing crisis of today. It will explore the backroom dealings, the skulduggery and nepotism, the racism and the obscene profits, while at the same time revealing that the same forces which made Vancouver what it is, speculation and global capital, are the same ones that shape it today, showing that more than anything else, the history of real estate and the history of Vancouver are one and the same.And it's been dirty as hell.About the Series: Land of Destiny is the first title in Anvil's new series "49.2: Tales from the Off Beat," an ongoing series dedicated to celebrating the eccentric and unusual parts of city history. From Jesse Donaldson, author of the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award finalist book This Day In Vancouver, and a host of other local historians, the series will be an in-depth examination of the weird, the wonderful, and the terrible, injecting fresh details into well-worn local lore, or digging deep into the obscure people, places, and happenings of the last 130 years. From psychedelic hospitals to town fools, from communist organizers to real estate scumbags, 49.2 will take pains to break down the myths surrounding the City of Glass.

The best views, biking, beaches, and outings for kids--they're all here in an updated edition of the Lower Mainland’s favourite guidebook for day-trippers, described in the clear, upbeat, observant prose that is Jack's trademark. From Delta to Whistler, West Vancouver to Harrison Hot Springs, detailed directions (including driving distances and times, as well as special information about wheelchair access) help you find your way and enjoy the sights en route. This fourth edition includes two brand-new chapters: Callaghan Valley in the Whistler mountains, and 1,001 Steps Park on Surrey’s beaches.

"Vancouver in the Seventies presents 149 exclusive photos from the Vancouver Sun's extensive collection along with fascinating essays."--

A history of the music entertainment venues in Vancouver, British Columbia.

CANNON/ROMANCE READERS BOOK CLUB

Once an almost inaccessible logging town, Vancouver has grown into a major North American urban center and a jewel of the Pacific Rim. Within a mere century, it has metamorphosed from a little-explored rain forest to a thriving and cosmopolitan metropolis that will host the 2010 Olympics. This book shares the city's extraordinary coming of age through 150 striking images. Carefully reproduced, they capture Vancouver in every phase of its growth, from the coming of the railway to the intense urban expansion that has taken place since the 1950s.

Vancouver is a startlingly beautiful city of dreams and desires. Its mountains, rivers, ocean, and islands are arresting to the eye and exciting to the soul. The long and varied human history of this magical place is irresistibly grand and eventful. Vancouver -- the city, the land -- has al-ways been a place of appetites, of licenses offered and liberties taken. Since the time the humans crossed the Bering Strait and journeyed down the Pacific Coast seeking a fabled land of plenty, Vancouver, caught between soaring mountains and a vast ocean, has been a destiny for the spirit. Beginning in the dying era of the last Ice Age, Vancouver unfolds with the story of Tooke, the last survivor of a Siberian people and ancestor to the first nations of Vancouver. Moving through history in a rich, ever-expanding tapestry, Vancouver reveals a fascinating cast of characters. Long before recorded history, a young girl faces the terrifying prospect of marriage into a faraway tribe. Hundreds of years later, a Georgian cartographer aboard a Spanish exploration fleet nearly meets his end at the hands of her descendants. In the passing of the next centuries, a Scottish trapper becomes the reluctant leader of a fur-trading outpost on Vancouver's shores, and a Chinese peasant boy seeks an elusive fortune. The burgeoning colony of Vancouver lures a turn-of-the-century British adventurer and a German noble. In modern times, a superstar singer and film actress meets her destiny in the form of a young native girl struggling to free herself from the city's impoverished downtown eastside. The characters of Vancouver are all vastly different, yet they all share something -- a powerful attraction to a grand and giving land. Their stories intertwine, touching the extremes of human experience: riches, bravery, betrayal, crime, passion, and forbidden love.