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Vancouver Was Awesome: The Bum, 1923

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense . Rocky was a well known dog-about-town in 1920s Vancouver.

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Rocky was a well known dog-about-town in 1920s Vancouver. The massive 182 pound Great Dane toured the Granville Cafe circuit every night before returning to his home with Mrs Gulliver at 311 Smythe Street. Bert Mahoney, proprietor of the Granville Lunch, explained:

The Bum, we call him, comes to the entrance every night between 8 and 9 o'clock. He has hardly missed a night in the last 13 months. He won't come in -- just stands there looking through the glass and waits until we take out a tin of meat scraps to feed him. We dump the scraps on the pavement and he gulps down every bite of them. Then, without a smile, a wag of his tail or a "thank you" of any kind, he turns tail and moves off to the Capitol restaurant and the White Lunch, which he plays every night.

The Sun likened him to the Industrial Workers of the World, or the "I Won't Works of the World," because Rocky seemed to "believe the world owes him a living." But as it turned out, Rocky's pedigree was thoroughly bourgeois. He was a purebred who had won dog shows and his father belonged to Montreal's Chief of Police. Rocky also reportedly worked guarding a liquor store and sometimes got paid gigs as a thespian, including a role as a bloodhound in a production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" that played at the Empress and Orpheum theatres.

Source: Vancouver Sun