This story sank from sight long ago, when Vancouver was awash with a tide of Austin A40s. Very glad to see it surface now. (Blogger’s note: all puns fully intended.)
The Great Austin A40 Fire Sale of 1952
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Noir-era photos emerge!
There’s a great Flickr site hosted by blizzy63 with some terrific Noir-era street scenes. Some, like this one are delightfully and instructionally interactive. Well done. I’ll try to post one or two here shortly.
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BC Studies review of Vancouver Noir
Another review, this one from BC Studies. Captures nicely the intellectual context of Noir and shows a real appreciation for the 1940s.
Second Printing!
Thanks to our readership! Vancouver Noir is going to a second run after only four months in print. We remain hopeful that we’ll soon be gathering stories from readers who have recollections of this era.
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Rebecca Bollwitt on Athletic Park, courtesy of Miss 604
A nice little piece on Vancouver’s old church of baseball. Athletic Park was moored on the south hillside above False Creek, right about where one of the cloverleafs onto the Granville Bridge is now. It served the whole city as the premier venue for baseball, but it was widely (wildly?) supported by the men and women who worked in the local industries. The only trace of that era of smoke and steel and noise is the architectural palimpsest of Granville Island. In the 1940s, during the war, there were about 17,000 shipyard workers in the city, most of them labouring along the Creek. Nipping off for an afternoon game or an early-evening doubleheader would have been just the thing.
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Vancouver Noir made the Top Ten sales list at Book Warehouse in February 2012. Huzzah. Now the bad news: Book Warehouse is closing down. Lovely people, great and quirky books….
The Alma Dukes
The 1946 novel, The Amboy Dukes (subtitled, “A Novel of Wayward Youth in Brooklyn”) was a bible of style and stance for youth gangs across North America. In Vancouver it was — consciously or not — the model used by the first wave of baby-boomers to become adolescents. This wasn’t just an east-side phenomenon: even starchy Dunbar and Point Grey had their gangs, the most notorious of which was clearly literate — the Alma Dukes.
Literacy continues to be a hallmark of life out at Point Grey, as evidence by the fact that The Ubyssey has provided something of a Q&A review.
Meanwhile, back at the city desk….
Vancouver Province writer Stewart Derdeyn caught up with us last week for a quick interview, the results of which appear in today’s online edition and in tomorrow’s print edition. Next up: The Ubyssey.
The Spreading Darkness….
Vancouver Noir is one of the titles listed in the Literary Press Group of Canada’s ‘Feature of the Week‘. Very gratifying, as is the feedback we’ve been getting from readers. This includes one reader’s identification of the photo of Scott’s grocery store as that of his granny’s shop. This is the stuff we’re after: additional tales from the Terminal City. Keep it coming. We’re also noticing a growing — serendipitous? coincidental? — interest in the Noir era, principally in the form of books. One of these, The Drive (The Drive Press) by Jak King, we dearly wish we could have had in our hands while writing Noir; it describes Commercial Drive between 1935 and 1956. There’s two new collections of photos, including Fred Herzog’s coffeetable-crushing tome but also Tear The Curtain, an Arts Club Theatre production at the venerable Stanley Theatre last year. We’ll identify others as they come along, but please wade in. Is there a pattern?
CBC.ca | On The Coast
Here’s the interview. We learned a couple of things. First, Stockwell Day’s really, really skinny. Second, the traffic report woman almost certainly fakes it.
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