Vancouver on the eve of the Winter Olympics

As the countdown for the Winter Olympics went from weeks to days, Kwantlen journalism students spent Wednesday on the streets of Vancouver, capturing images of the city. They went out to explore four different themes: display, excitement, disruption and dissent. The results — more than 80 photos — are presented in the following four slideshows.

Believe it or not: The unexpected history of three Lower Mainland roads

An award-winning racehorse, a severed leg and a murderer are not typical inspirations for street names, unless you live in B.C.

Those three items are the basis of street names in Richmond, Surrey and Vancouver, and among the weirder stories collected by the cities’ archivists.

City archivists collect and record the histories of the various municipalities, and store it for later reference.
Melanie Hardbattle, an archivist with the City of Vancouver, said her job offers a necessary service to those in Vancouver.

“It’s very important for people to feel a connection to the past,” she said.

Many use the archival records to research city events, family lineage, even the history of their houses.
“We provide an important service to those people. If we didn’t have the records, we wouldn’t be able to provide that info,” she said.

Sometimes that provided info can get a little strange. Below are the three of the wildest stories behind street names.

Richmond – Minoru Boulevard

A quick Google Maps search for “Minoru” in Richmond gives about 500 results, covering one area of the map in little red dots. There’s Minoru Chapel, Minoru Place Senior’s Centre, Minoru Laser Dental, not to mention the actual boulevard itself. Minoru is everywhere.

“Most people think that Minoru is a Japanese name, and has something to do with the Japanese-Canadian community,” said Bill Purver, a Richmond archivist. Purver explained that many Japanese immigrants came to the Steveston area in the 1800s to seek out lives as fishermen.

But the popular name has absolutely nothing to do with the Japanese-Canadian community.

The boulevard et al are actually named after the thoroughbred horse Minoru, who, in 1909, was the first horse to win two classic races, the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby, while wearing a reigning monarch’s colours.

In August of that same year, construction on a Richmond racetrack finished. It was christened Minoru Park in honour of the record-holding horse.

The racetrack was a hit, with 7,000 spectators attending the first day, according to a Richmond News feature. The track closed in 1941, but the name’s popularity had spread, leading to the many things Minoru.

Surrey – Hall’s Prairie Way

It was once the best horse-and-carriage road south, with an infamous claim to fame.

Hall’s Prairie Way, now 184th Street, may be the only British Columbia street named for a murderer.
In 1845, Sam Hall and his First Nation’s wife were the first to settle the southeast Surrey district.
Soon after, Hall killed his wife. He later died in prison.

When the next wave of settlers came they called the place Hall’s Prairie, after the homicidal husband.

“Only a mouldering cabin and a legend remained,” wrote Fern Treleaven in his 1981 book Rivers, Roads and Railways.

He also wrote that the children of the new settlers feared the old Hall cabin, believing it to be haunted.

Vancouver – Leg-in-Boot Square

Since late 2007, B.C. residents have been living with a strange occurrence: severed feet washing up on shore.
These feet are unidentifiable and unclaimed, but also not a new thing. This has happened once before.

In 1887, local police found a knee-high boot, complete with severed leg, in the forests of False Creek.
The police placed the limb outside the station, hoping someone would claim it, according to Elizabeth Walker’s Street Names of Vancouver. No one did.

Stuart Cumberland, a 19th-century writer, mentions the boot in his 1887 book The Queen’s Highway.

“Just before I visited Vancouver, a man had mysteriously disappeared; and, on the day of my arrival, a top-boot, containing a foot and portion of the leg, had been found in the forest of False Creek. This, it was surmised, was all that remained of the missing man, a cougar having disposed of the rest.”

The forested area is long gone, but the story lives on. In a 1976 act, the city named the False Creek location Leg-in-Boot Square.

Sidebar:

If you’re looking for a perfect Christmas present, why not get something truly original: a street named after the recipient. Vancouver’s street-naming committee receives about half-a-dozen letters a year from Vancouverites putting forward the names of relatives and major contributors to the city’s development.

Nominations run the gamut from someone’s great grandfather to the recently deceased Jack Poole, former VANOC president.

“We maintain a fairly extensive list of people who have been nominated,” said Marg Coulson, acting city clerk and chair of the committee. When a name comes before the panel, an archivist researches it, determining the nominee’s contributions to the city. “We really don’t want to be too restrictive, because people make contributions in different ways,” said Coulson.

When the merits of the name are proven, the name gets shortlisted. The list has just over 100 names on it, said Coulson.

If a street is created and a name required, the committee peruses the list to see which fits best, usually someone from the related area. A recommendation is then made to city council. The need for a name is rare, as Vancouver has very little in the way of new developments. The panel usually receives only one request a year.

“One thing I should say is that we do not consider people who are alive,” said Coulson, which could create a slight set-back for those considering self-nomination.

“We’ll have to kill you and then we can consider you,” she said, laughing.

Guided by the invisible hand of design: Signage tells commuters more than just destination

Ken Hughes can’t stand it when British street signs aren’t there to do their job.

“Sometimes you’ll come around this traffic circle, looking for the sign that’s always there and there isn’t one. And you go, ‘You bastards! Why did you do that to me?’”

An English expatriate who teaches graphic design at Kwantlen’s Richmond campus, Hughes has an intimate understanding of how important road signs are to modern transportation.

Over the past 10 years, Hughes has been studying signage by photographing lettering inscribed in stone, painted on walls and printed on signs in various places during his travels in Europe.

He knows that street signs, or “wayfinding graphics” in the graphic-design world, have meaning beyond just telling you where to go.

“[Road] signage makes…you feel like you’re being looked after,” said Hughes. “It’s almost like there’s an invisible human being saying, ‘If you want to go to Scotland from London, just follow the signs; you’ll get there. Just follow the signs. Have faith.’”

Street signs, or “directional signs” to City of Vancouver engineers, aren’t celebrated like parks or bike lanes, but are considered a valuable and constantly evolving community service by those who work with them.

Street-name blades, the smaller signs attached to posts on street corners that tell you you’re at Hastings and Victoria, have changed in type size and reflectivity in recent years, enabling safer travel through the city, said Winston Chau, a transportation engineer for Vancouver.

The Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) dictates the overall design of signs in Vancouver, ensuring they conform to a standard: white, sans-serif lettering on black background, bordered by high-grade reflective tape.

Despite TAC’s guidelines, some Vancouver communities have reclaimed their signs and used them to express unique cultural identities.

Business-improvement associations in some of Vancouver’s popular neighbourhood districts have applied to the city to have their blades designed to represent their neighbourhood’s distinct cultural identity, said Chau.

Signs with Chinese characters and a distinct 1940s style distinguish Vancouver’s Chinatown, and signs for the Marpole area near South-West Marine Drive are printed in the language and symbols of the Musquem first nation, who historically inhabited the area. The newly refurbished Cambie Village, the Punjabi market at Main Street and 49th Avenue and posh Kerrisdale have also customized their street-sign blades to express character or historical importance.

All Vancouver street-signs, including pesky regulatory signs telling you where not to park downtown, are printed in the city’s sign shop, located at the National Works Yard just behind Pacific Central Station. Responsible for producing everything from venue signs to traffic redirection signs during the Olympics, the shop is shouldering its fair share of work for the games.

In the little spare time employees have, the shop also prints individual signs for people as part of their Street Signs for Everyone program. People can order plastic or metal signs, ranging in price from $50 to $90, featuring the names of any Vancouver street.

Nick Kazawa, an engineering department employee responsible for managing the shop, said that tourists and locals used to order replica signs of favorite Vancouver destinations such as Robson Street.

These days, however, people are more interested in having their own names printed on the signs.

Hughes said that these sorts of personal affiliations with street signs, and the cultural pride expressed by Vancouver’s custom neighbourhood signs, are evidence that people want street signs to be more than plain infrastructure.

Some designers, such as England’s Why Not Associates, are attempting to embed street signs into walls and sidewalks instead of littering the landscape with more poles, shapes and junk to look at, said Hughes.

Along with wayfinding information, the group is integrating historical information about the people and cities where the signage is based.

“It’s not just telling you where things are, but it’s telling you about what’s there. To me that is developing a sense of civic pride and knowledge of your district,” said Hughes.

“Especially if you’re younger…sometimes we’re so caught up in working on newer technologies that the history of a place escapes us,” said Hughes.
”Picking up information on where you live, just because you have to see it everyday walking down the street…to me, that’s a great idea.”

Outdoor cinema a breath of fresh air

Barb Floden has helped to create a monster, one that emerges at night in summer and is adored in communities throughout Metro Vancouver.

For the last five years, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation communications director has organized the Monsters in the Meadow film events, a series of free public movies screened outdoors at Ceperly Meadow, located close to Second Beach in Stanley Park.

The annual event brings hundreds of people out to watch classic B-rated monster movies in the ominous surroundings after dark.

This year, Monsters in the Meadow screened The Blob, the morbid tale of an alien life form that eats everything that gets in its way.

Floden said that despite some rain, more than 500 people showed up with blankets, popcorn and costumes to take in a bit of old-fashioned, drivein-inspired fun.

She said that event provides a great opportunity for people to come out for some affordable fun that isn’t the usual programming offered by the park board.

“Recreation is not just sports or fitness oriented,” she explained. “It’s anything to do with engaging people at the community level and bringing them together in a positive way, and arts and culture is also part of our mandate. And this is not the traditional public art and crafts and painting.”

Since Monsters in the Meadow began in 2004, localities throughout the Lower Mainland have promoted similar free movie screenings.

With the help of Fresh Air Cinemas, an events promotion and logistics company, White Rock, Langley, Burnaby and Coquitlam all hosted public movie screenings this past summer. The cities provide the right park
or accessible space and Fresh Air comes in and sets up sound, projection and a huge inflatable screen for viewing.

Floden acknowledged that sponsorship and support for free movie events like these come from many sources, and the public support is obviously there.

She said that the West End Community Association’s showing of Momma Mia at Harbor Green Park brought out more than 1,000 people.

In Surrey, free movie events have taken on a life of their own over the past five years.

Bonnie Burnside, manager of special events and communication for the Surrey Downtown Business Improvement Association, said that she has watched their annual summer movie events grow from a small get together near the Gateway SkyTrain station to a series of full-fledged community parties at Holland Park. Burnside said that this past summer, more than 2,000 people came out each night to see family films such as The Lion King and Hannah Montana: The Movie.

Burnside said she thinks that the events fill a void in summer-events programs in Surrey and provide members of the diverse community with an opportunity to come out and meet their neighbours.

“In our area, there weren’t a lot of events going on in the summertime and there particularly wasn’t a lot of events going on in the evening,” said Burnside. “What we wanted to do was show everybody that this was a great place to come and be a part of an event.”

Public response to the films has been overwhelmingly positive, but Burnside said that it is a costly venture that comes with some strings attached.

This summer, Burnside was able to finance the Holland Park movie events, pre-show entertainment included, for about $23,000. However, she knows the cost for next year will be higher and that it will be difficult to come up with the extra funding from her budget.

In Vancouver, Floden’s concerns have less to do with funding and more to do with organization and legalities. Responsibility for advertising for the movies was shared between business associations, community associations and Fresh Air Cinema, which made it difficult to find out where and when the events were happening.

To make matters worse, she said that many community associations bought the wrong public-screening licenses, which prevented them from advertising the names of the films screened. She said that things will be organized differently next year.

“We’ll do a group marketing effort that can show people ‘here is all of the events happening in our parks this summer,’ because people don’t really care who sponsors them, they just want to go see a free movie,” said Floden with a laugh.

“They can come out and just hang out at the park with their friends and neighbours and don’t have to open their wallets at all.”

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