Arthur Delamont

Musicians

Arthur Delamont

April 1976 — If anyone ever doubted my abilities as a photographer there was an instant rebuttal which I held in reserve. It was that once, during a band practice, I photographed Arthur Delamont smiling. There are probably not many people alive now who remember Delamont, leader of the Kitsilano Boys Band, winners of the world band competition in 1933 as well as more than 200 other awards and serving as a Vancouver ambassador on 15 European tours. Delamont had a legend as a tough band master, shouting, waving, grimacing, until it was right. One of my uncles played in his band and said that Delamont was not adverse to hitting the producer of a wrong or late note with his cornet. These pictures of the Alumni Band practicing in the basement of a church at 67th and Hudson appeared in the Vancouver Province April 27th, 1976 shortly after Delamont had received a civic award from the city of Vancouver. The smile picture is the last one in the series.

Cyclocross championships

Bicycle racing cyclocross

2013 Cyclo-Cross Canadian Championships held in South Surrey, BC.

Nov 30th, 2013 — The 2013 Canadian Cyclocross Championships were held this past rainy, cold, and dark weekend on a course next to Softball City in South Surrey. A rider warming up before his event carries an umbrella attempting to at least be dry on the starting line even if he knows it won’t last more than a few pedal strokes into the race.

Carallyn Bowes

Pictures of the day

Carallyn Bowes runs across canada

Aug 26th, 1976 — The first woman to run across Canada, Carallyn Bowes, arrives at Second Beach in Stanley Park, Vancouver, 133 days and 3,840 miles after leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia. She wore out 13 pairs of running shoes on the trip. At one time Carallyn Bowes was an entry in Wikipedia but it was removed because this was the only thing she ever did that was noteworthy. Picky, picky, picky.

Birth of a newspaper

News, Work

Don Brown publisher of the Vancouver Express

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.