Only a block away from W. Georgia, the stretch of Hornby Street between Cathedral Place and the Bill Reid Gallery seems quiet and staid but thats before Davina Choy takes out her iPhone and taps open the Vancouver in Time app.
Doors open into an exotic cave... it says of why she should stop walking so she can read about the crowds who used to stand in line, right where shes standing, to watch the likes of Sophie Tucker, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, The Supremes, Bette Midler....
She clicks on the maps icon and reads that, where today there is an empty courtyard, the Cave Supper Club once stood. Vancouver audiences were notoriously hard to arouse, the app says. If they could get a reaction at the Cave, Vegas was a cinch.
This was the place to be, the 25-year-old digital media co-ordinator with the Canadian Encyclopedia says with a note of yearning and regret in her voice. She looks down at the 1948 photo of the block-long crowd in front of the Caves marquee. I would have loved to have come to the Cave.
A couple of blocks away, at Robson Square, she pauses again during her informal walking tour of interesting downtown historical sites. Restless ghost haunts old courthouse, the app says.
Shes kitty corner to the Vancouver Art Gallery, which is the same building that once housed the city courthouse. In 1914, an immigration officer who was notoriously mean to newcomers from India was drinking a cup of coffee when a man walked up to him and shot him dead. His ghost is believed to roam the gallerys halls today.
At the corner of Granville and Georgia, Choy points her iPhone towards the London Drugs store. With one quick tap she highlights one of her favourite features of Vancouver in Time the Then and Now button. Now you see a photo of the London Drugs building, then you see a 1913 photo of the absolutely gorgeous Birks building that it replaced. Its not that the London Drugs building is ugly but compared to the glorious 11-storey edifice that was torn down in 1974 to make room for the Scotia Tower, its downright utilitarian.
The app is one of the ways that the Canadian Encyclopedia is re-inventing itself in an age where no one buys the big, heavy tomes of useful information. Created in partnership with 7th Floor Media at Simon Fraser University, the app makes all those facts and figures relevant to a modern audience. There are 45 stories in all, with more to be added in the next incarnation.
Choy says that although she grew up in Vancouver, working on the project made her realize how little of the citys history she knew, and how much the city has changed, even in the past few decades. Thats a big problem who are we? she says. What can we learn by knowing that the building that now is home to Canuck Place was once the headquarters of a short-lived chapter of the Klu Klux Klan?
Because the city is constantly evolving and re-inventing itself, we often dont notice the changes, she says. She likens it to parents who watch their child grow day by day and dont realize how much time has passed until a relative comes to visit and says, Oh my goodness, theyve grown so much.
Robin Smith must know that feeling. In the 1970s, intrepid Vancouver photographer Foncie Pulice took her photo as she walked down Granville with a girlfriend. Dressed in a mini skirt and pea coat, her hair long and straight, her smile warm and friendly, shes one of the thousands of people captured by Pulice, who had been roaming the streets with his camera since 1934. The creators of Vancouver in Time tracked her down and took a photo of her in the same spot, her hair shorter, her mini skirt replaced by pants and her smile as infectiously joyful. Smiths Vancouver, then and now, remains the city she loves.
