Thanks For Dropping By Our 5th Heritage Lounge!

It was great to again meet so many heritage enthusiasts at the recent Mural Festival/MPBIA Street Party and to have such keen interest in our displays and take away materials about Mount Pleasant’s history.

Our colouring station with pages created by local artists of key treasured buildings was non-stop busy and we also had one by Priscilla Yu of her mural done this year.

 

 

We very much appreciate all of the encouragement we received to continue our work of celebrating and advocating on behalf of Mount Pleasant’s rich and cherished heritage. Mount Pleasant’s heritage lives!

 

Many thanks to Bruce Macdonald for the loan of his maps and for being our in-house historian, Stan of Rath Art Supplies for the loan of an easel and his ongoing support, Charmaine Carpenter and Neil Wyles of the MPBIA for booth support and the loan of Neil’s tent, Pitt Meadows Museum for the loan of their tent and the Quebec Manor Co-op for the loan of furniture.

The Heritage Lounge crew this year was Christine, Colin, Danielle, Flora and Jennifer with lead-in support from Alyssa and take down help from Erin and Laura of the Quebec Manor.

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Join Us For Our 5th Heritage Lounge Saturday, August 12th from 12 – 6

The Heritage Lounge will again be located in front of Rath Art Supplies at 2412 Main Street, just up from the intersection of Main, Kingsway and 7th Avenue and a part of the Vancouver Mural Festival’s street party. The street party is sponsored by the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Area (MPBIA) and Create Vancouver Society.

Along with displays and maps about Mount Pleasant’s history, including its long and rich tradition of being home to a vibrant arts community, we will have colouring pages celebrating the neighbourhood’s built, cultural, natural and industrial heritage created by local artists.

Jennifer Chernecki created the page of the 1889 James Black Residence at 144 E 6th representing the time when it housed the Gropp’s Gallery Collective (from 2008 until 2014). James Lloyd’s illustration of the 1889 Depencier House at 151 E 8th depicts the Victorian building when it was home to the legendary Bain’s Candies and Fine Chocolates.

This year we will have several new colouring pages as well as a colouring station sponsored by Rath Art Supplies. The pages are free for the taking and if you don’t have time to sit down and do a little colouring we encourage you to take one home.

We will also have some neighbourhood walking tour pamphlets and our Heritage Heart Look and Find to take away.

We look forward to you dropping by and sharing your stories of the neighbourhood. Mount Pleasant’s Heritage Lives!

My Canada Is…In My Backyard

Have you ever wondered why Mount Pleasant’s streets are named after the Canadian provinces/territories & why Ontario Street is the centre/000 block of Vancouver?

In 1869 Henry Valentine Edmonds, the clerk of the municipal council in New Westminster, acquired District Lot 200A – the wilderness south of False Creek and north of today’s Broadway that would later become Mount Pleasant. By 1888, a year after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Dr. Israel Powell, who hailed from Ontario, was a co-owner of the land with Edmonds. In 1871 Dr. Powell had been one of the key people to negotiate the entry of the British colony of British Columbia into the country of Canada, which had been created in 1867.

Dr. Powell named all his streets in Mount Pleasant after the seven provinces that made up Canada in 1888, when the neighbourhood was established; thus creating a representation of the map of Canada. The centre street of Vancouver’s grid system is Powell’s Ontario Street, the 000 hundred block going east-west. He probably did this because Ontario is known as central Canada and it was Powell’s birthplace. The eastern province streets are east of Ontario Street with the western province streets west of it.

“The original map of Canada street name system in Mount Pleasant was later extended to include two new north-south streets after a new province and a new territory were formed: Alberta Street, in the 300 block west (Alberta was formed in 1905) and Yukon Street in the 400 block west (the Yukon territory was formed in 1898).”

Information, quotes and map from the ‘Mount Pleasant Historic Context Statement’ (pages 2-5) written by Bruce Macdonald in 2008 for Donald Luxton and Associates and the City of Vancouver.

MPHG would like to thank the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Area (MPBIA) and Rath Art Supplies for their generous support of this project.

This Heritage Week 2017 project brought to you by Alyssa, Danielle and Jennifer.

Celebrating Heritage Week 2017 and the theme ‘My Canada Is…’

Have you ever wondered why Mount Pleasant’s streets are named after the Canadian provinces/territories & why Ontario Street is the centre/000 block of Vancouver?

For an explanation check out our Heritage Week 2017 banner display ‘My Canada Is…In My Backyard’.

The banner is in the window of Rath Art Supplies, located in the Triangle Building at 2412 Main Street, right in the centre of Mount Pleasant’s ‘Heritage Heart’.

It will be up until February 26th, 2017.

Mount Pleasant Heritage Lives!      

MPHG would like to thank the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Area (MPBIA) and Rath Art Supplies for their generous support of this project.

Mount Pleasant’s Historical Themes

Each year since the Mount Pleasant Heritage Group’s inception we have had a Heritage Lounge (at the Autumn Shift Festival 2013-2015 and at the Vancouver Mural Festival 2016). We have created display boards on different topics including this one on Mount Pleasant’s historical themes. To access the City of Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant Community Plan document, on which this display board is based, click here.

Thanks for Joining Us at the Heritage Lounge!

Thank you to everyone who dropped by the Heritage Lounge. It was lovely to meet so many heritage enthusiasts interested in Mount Pleasant’s history and be part of the Vancouver Mural Festival/ MPBIA street fest.

A feature display this year was ‘My Mount Pleasant: Vancouver’s First Suburb’, put together by the neighbourhood’s grade five heritage ambassador Lauren Lee for BC Heritage Fairs. Everyone was most impressed with her engaging storytelling about our historic neighbourhood and her own heritage home. Click here to see her companion video for Young Citizens.

We had the beginnings of our next project available, which is a colouring book with pages by local artists celebrating Mount Pleasant’s built, cultural, natural and industrial heritage.

Jen Chernecki is colouring James Lloyd‘s illustration of the 1889 Depencier House at 151 E 8th, which depicts the building when it was home to Bain’s Candies and Fine Chocolates. Bain’s was in Mount Pleasant for over sixty years. The Depencier House is currently home to eight 1/2 Restaurant. Jen’s illustration is of the 1889 James Black Residence when it housed the Gropp’s Gallery Collective between 2008 to 2014. The residence is currently home to the James Black Gallery.

Sean MacPherson was on hand to tell about his ‘Remembering Brewery Creek’ project. We are happy to report that he has received a grant from the Chapman & Innovations Fund at UBC to create a website and walking app about the historical creek. We look forward to this new documentation of a key aspect of Mount Pleasant’s history.

Great to have Josh and Finn pouring lemonade for thirsty visitors on a hot day.

Many thanks to Lauren Lee and her family, local artists James Lloyd and Jennifer Chernecki and to Sean MacPherson.

Big thanks as well to Bruce Macdonald for the loan of his maps and photos, Stan of Rath Art Supplies for the easels, the Quebec Manor Co-op for the Lounge furniture and the MPBIA for the canopy.

The Heritage Lounge crew this year was Alyssa, Danielle, Jen and James & Sally.

You Are Invited To Our Heritage Lounge This Saturday, August 20th, 12 – 6

The Heritage Lounge will be a part of the Vancouver Mural Festival‘s street festival being sponsored by the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Area (MPBIA).

It will be located in front of Rath Art Supplies at 2412 Main Street, just up from the intersection of Main, Kingsway and 7th Avenue.

A feature display this year will be ‘My Mount Pleasant: Vancouver’s First Suburb’, a project put together by the neighbourhood’s grade five heritage ambassador Lauren Lee for BC Heritage Fairs.

We will have materials about Sean MacPherson’s ‘Remembering Brewery Creek’ project. He has received a grant from the Chapman & Innovations Fund at UBC to create a website and walking app which will remember historical Brewery Creek.

Our Treasured Buildings 2015/2016 Walking Tour pamphlet will be available to take away and we will also have our Mount Pleasantries of the Arts Realm about the neighbourhood’s rich history of the arts.

Hope you can join us. Mount Pleasant’s Heritage Lives!

Mount Pleasant Is Like A Time Machine

“A walk through Mount Pleasant is like going into a time machine. The past is still around us.” So says Lauren L., a grade five resident who presented her project “My Mount Pleasant: Vancouver’s First Suburb” at our June meeting. She put the project together for the BC Heritage Fairs and we were mightily impressed with her engaging storytelling of our historic neighbourhood and her own heritage home.

Lauren also made a video for the Young Citizens program which is a complementary component to Heritage Fairs. The videos are posted online and students have a chance to win a trip to Ottawa to attend the Canada’s History Youth Forum. Public voting is open until midnight(EDT) July 6, 2016, and the result will make up 50% of a student’s final score.

Please watch Lauren’s lively and personal account of Mount Pleasant’s past and vote for her here. As she says, “We all have something to give, and Mount Pleasant has given Canada a beautiful, historical neighbourhood… and a lot of us Canadians need to know that.”

Thank you Lauren for being such a compelling Mount Pleasant heritage ambassador.

Upcoming MPHG Meeting June 6th, 2016

Please join us Monday, June 6th, at 7 pm for our next regular meeting.

The agenda will include:

a presentation by Lauren Lee, a grade five resident of the neighbourhood, entitled “My Mount Pleasant: A History of Vancouver’s First Suburb.” Lauren put this together for the BC Heritage Fairs

-a warm up to the next Heritage Vancouver’s Shaping Vancouver Conversation, What Do I Want From My Street? Change Is Coming To Cambie, Main, Fraser. We will feature an in-depth presentation on Old Mount Pleasant Village (many of its buildings still exist) as well as consider Main Street’s central role in the neighbourhood’s vibrant street life and gathering spaces

Everyone is welcome to attend and to bring forth any topic of interest to Mount Pleasant heritage. Hope to see you there!

Our meetings take place at grunt gallery – 350 East 2nd Avenue/Unit 116.

Treasured Buildings 2015-2016

Thanks to John Atkin, Christine Hagemoen and Robert Lemon for information and to Bruce Macdonald for all of his support.

Sources:

B.C. City Directories – Vancouver Public Library

Celebrating 100 Years of Learning – Florence Nightingale Elementary, 2012

Grandview Heritage Group– Centenary Signs

James Johnstone – When An Old House Whispers…

Mount Pleasant Historic Context Statement – written by Bruce Macdonald for Donald Luxton & Associates and the City of Vancouver

Street Names of Vancouver – Elizabeth Walker, Vancouver Historical Society, 1999

Vancouver Archives (Water Service Records) and VanMap – City of Vancouver

Vancouver Building Permits – 1901 to 1921 – Heritage Vancouver

Vancouver Daily World

Vancouver House Styles – Vancouver Heritage Foundation

Vancouver Schools  Establishing Their Heritage Value – Commonwealth Historic Resource Management Ltd. for the City of Vancouver & Vancouver School Board, 2007 – pp. 29-31, 80

Vanishing Vancouver The Last 25 Years – Michael Kluckner