Past Tense

Unpublished draft #2: Here were have an illustrated invoice for Diamond Cabs, owned and operated by Eagle-Time Delivery Co. Ltd., 1019 Seymour Street, and dated 1942. This invoice implies a pretty ritzy lifestyle, with a 1938 Cadillac taxi in front of a cafe/club, complete with uniformed doormen and men in top hats and tails! This particular artifact was found at Antiquarius books, courtesy of Tom Carter. Antiquarius is a great repository of our local history, and although they’ve relocated to Falkland, BC, I’ve purchased numerous bits of obscure ephemera from them. Special thanks to the tireless work of their proprietor, and all independent used book sellers!

You might recognize that 1019 Seymour Street is the address for the Penthouse Night Club, and it was in fact Joe Filippone who started out with a company called Eagle Time Delivery. He then expanded his operation to Diamond Cabs, and eventually, the Penthouse. In fact, MA 2111 also becomes the number of the Penthouse years later, as seen in a program from the Avon Theatre from 1954. More from Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street by Keith McKellar:

Joe Filippone gets The Eagle-Time Delivery service going with bicycles in 1934. He delivers a parcel up to 15 pounds and collects C.O.D.s — all for 8¢. The delivery boy gets 4¢. He buys the house on Seymour Street in 1938 and moves into the upstairs suite. Along with brothers Ross, Jimmy and Mickey, the family opens a supper club, The Steak Loft, in 1941. They serve charcoal-cooked steaks on wooden platters. The delivery service advances to motorcycles with sidecars, and then trucks. Eagle-Time Trucking Company is born. Joe buys Sid Cann’s three-car Diamond Cab Company that works from Birk’s Clock stand up the street…The Filippone’s have, apparently, a lark — a thing about keeping their Diamond Cab drivers in a supply of fresh diamond socks. “I’ll take all the diamond socks you can get…I need them for my drivers…but nothing else!” It’s a class act.

Retired Province photographer John Denniston captured this image of Dunlevy Street near Powell in 1974.

Those are wood block pavers and this is what we mean when we say that Vancouver used to be a mill town.

Isabel Sweeny (1889-1974) was born in Vancouver and, in this audio clip, recalls seeing the Kitsilano First Nation being displaced to Squamish in the earliest years of the 20th century.

Source: Voices of British Columbia: Stories From Our Frontier by Robert Budd

Photo source: BC Archives PNO8924

Public artwork by Digital Natives appears on the electronic billboard beside the Burrard Street Bridge. In 2002, the Squamish Nation regained control of part of its former reserve and in 2009 erected the 21-metre tall sign in defiance of Vancouver bylaws.

Photo by Barbara Cole

Idle No More photo source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Vancouver’s Sherlock Holmes, Wednesday 21 March 1934 

John F.C.B. Vance was a scientist hired by the City of Vancouver in 1905 as an analyst. His early work for the City was pretty mundane, things like testing milk and water quality. But at some point the Vancouver Police started calling on Vance for his scientific expertise, and he was on his way to carving out a niche as a pioneer in police forensics. Before long he was given the honorary title of Police Inspector.

Inspector Vance solved numerous cases in his lab (where the Police Museum is today) using techniques that are now fairly routine, at least on CSI, like ballistics testing and, in at least one case, matching the dust on a suspected yegg’s clothing to dust from a blown safe. Vance was proud to point out that his work more often decisively exonerated suspects who would otherwise have to live under a cloud of suspicion even if they were acquitted in court.

Vance occasionally helped solve cases in other jurisdictions and became a well known expert in the field who was often referred to as a “modern Sherlock Holmes.” His work brought considerable positive publicity to the VPD, though he wasn’t always appreciated by his bosses, who were more concerned with politics than crime fighting in the 1930s. After National Home Monthly Magazine did a feature article on Vance in their September 1935 issue, Chief Constable Foster issued a memo:

In the attached paper is an article upon the work of Inspector Vance.  The publication of such articles by those outside the Department is of course beyond control, but I think it should be generally understood that where reference is made to anything concerning the work of this Department by active members of the Force, approval should first be obtained.

This is not a matter for General Order so much as a little talk on the subject so that the general policy may be understood.

Herbert Darling, a PR savvy RCMP superintendent who was helping the inexperienced Foster restructure the police force, thought Foster’s memo didn’t go nearly far enough. “A General Order should be published,” Darling wrote to Foster,

to the effect that under no circumstances should any person in any way connected with the Vancouver City Police Department give information or material to the press, magazine publishers or broadcasting agencies except on the authority of the Chief Constable.

In the next police budget, Vance was only given $4000 for new equipment instead of the $10,000 he requested. 

One gauge of Inspector Vance’s effectiveness was that six attempts were made on his life in the 30s, including mail bombs, car bombs, and an attacker that threw acid on him.

J.F.C.B. Vance retired in 1942, but he continued working on his longtime pet project of developing a method of criminal identification using scent, based on the idea that everyone emits an odour that is as unique as their fingerprints, but which can’t be easily covered with gloves.