Can You Help Build Vancouver’s History?

There are very few photographs of Commercial Drive in the 1930s through to, say, the 1980s.  If you have seen my book and the earlier work by Tammy Tupechka, then you have seen just about all the pictures that are available.  That’s not many.

But this was also the period that — before the introduction of digital cameras and cameras in cell phones — created the consumer camera market with the ever-improving Brownie and similar point-and-shoot models. The Drive itself was never without a local photo finishing business serving all the family’s film and developing needs. That being said, there must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photos of Commercial Drive in that period. Perhaps they are sitting in your old family albums, or in shoe boxes in the storage closet.

As an historian of the neighbourhood, and as a member of the Grandview Woodland Area Council’s Heritage group, I’d love to see some of them. They will help in the Heritage group’s inventory of potential heritage buildings; and they will help me make the upcoming “Biography of Buildings” more accurate. Moreover, snapshots of this era will help us understand the style of window dressing and signage being used, and their change over time.

The idea is to collect these images, scan them for our use, and then return them straightaway to the owners.  No images would ever be published without the express written consent of the owner. If you think you have photographs that may be useful, please contact me at thedrivepress@shaw.ca and I’ll be in touch as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance!