November 27th, 2021 — City worker checking the storm sewers in the 1300 block of Howe Street.
Category: Work
Beachcombing in English Bay
This picture was posted as a single a number of years ago and is re-posted today so it will link to the rest of the pictures I shot that day which are HERE. April 2nd, 1975 — A group of beachcombers remove a log from English Bay Beach. The log, one of hundreds, separated from a boom during a storm the previous night. What’s interesting about this picture is that the beachcombers, normally an independent and cut throat lot, are co-operating with each other. Possibly it was the number of logs that came ashore that morning and they felt there was plenty to share. The boat Gale Winds was and is still owned by Bob Lamont. He can be seen on the deck of the boat with his wife Ruth.
Birth of a newspaper
November 7th 1978 — When the employees of the Vancouver Province and Sun newspapers were locked out in November of 1978 they knew it was to be for a long time. In preparation they rented space at 554 East 15th Avenue near Kingsway in Vancouver and set up a strike newspaper called The Express. The lockout began on a Tuesday and the first edition came out on the Friday. Within weeks it was making a profit, in fact it was making so much money many of the reporters didn’t want to return to the Province or Sun when the strike ended 8 months later.
The stories about this newspaper are endless. Ros Oberlyn had a front page story in the first edition and she was on the corner of Granville and Broadway the next day as a newsie selling the paper on the street. Towards the end of the strike there was so much advertising and so little newsprint available the Express began stealing it from other newspapers.
Above, Lance Secret looks on as the publisher of The Express, Don Brown, types the lead editorial for the first issue of the newspaper. Below is a slide show of pictures from the first day of The Express. The people in the pictures include, Patrick Durrant, Mike Beamish, Bob Ross, Rod Mickleburgh, Wyng Chow, Jake van der Kamp, Sun editor Bruce Smilie, Larry Emrick, Genevieve Westcott, Ashley Ford, Linda Hossie, Kent ‘Cookie’ Gilchrist, Geoff Wellens, Gerry Bellett, Bob Stahl, Scott Macrae, Ros Oberlyn, John Olding, and Carol Volkart.
NOTE: This story was originally posted in 2009 but the pictures somehow vanished and the only way to recover them was to repost everything.
Nurse
June 21st, 1973 — This picture is from a Vancouver Sun story about a typical day for a public health nurse in Vancouver. Shortly after the nurse arrived at an elementary school a number of students came down with some sort of allergy which caused their eyes to swell and turn red. Normally on these sorts of stories the day the photographer shows up nothing happens but in this case I was very lucky in getting some real pictures. However, a funny thing happened when I got back to the Sun and started printing in the darkroom. The chief photographer for the day, George Diack, wanted to know how I got the kids to cry. I was shocked he thought I set the pictures up and told him I just photographed what happened. All of a sudden there was great concern on his part about using the pictures, I guess because he thought it would be an invasion of privacy. If I’d kicked the kid in the shins to make him cry or told him his dog just died that would be OK for some reason. As it was the pictures from this part of the story didn’t run.
Vic Foisy, truck driver
January 1974 — It was a time when the myth of the truck driver was being born so Nicole Strickland and I followed Vic Foisy on his regular run from Sardis to northern BC, this time to Prince George, with a load a canned goods. Even with picking up apples in Osoyoos on the return trip it was supposed to take just over a day but the truck overheated on the way back and there was a 16 hour delay waiting for parts and repairs. As usual with Province assignments the planning was poor. Nicole and I left with less than $10 between us for expenses and no extra clothing but we survived, if somewhat smelly, to return home 4 days later. The story ran January 26th, 1974. Click on the thumbnails below to view the pictures.
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