Celebrating Heritage Week 2019

Join us in recognizing and appreciating Mount Pleasant’s “Living Heritage” in celebration of Heritage Week 2019 in Canada and the theme “Heritage: The Tie That Binds”. 

Heritage exists in both tangible (physical) and intangible (non-physical) forms. Tangible heritage, such as objects and buildings, are easy to see. Intangible heritage, such as beliefs, traditions and uses of space, are qualities that contribute to the cultural landscape of a neighbourhood and are no less important. It is the combination of both tangible and intangible heritage that are at the heart of Mount Pleasant’s distinct village character, commercial identity, affordability and diversity. To discover more visit the Mount Pleasant Community Centre and check out our exhibit in the display case of the main lobby. It is up until March 15, 2019.

This heritage week project brought to you by Jennifer Chernecki, Christine Hagemoen, Alyssa Myshok and Danielle Peacock.

Mount Pleasant Heritage Lives!

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Vancouver’s Treasured (And Threatened) Old Mount Pleasant Village – A Video Story

Created during grunt gallery’s 2018 Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen Digital Storytelling workshops with Mount Pleasant residents. Mount Pleasant Heritage Group’s video highlights our popular and historic area of Vancouver, also known as the “Heritage Heart.” Please enjoy! and share with friends and lovers of heritage.

https://digitalstories.ca/video/vancouvers-treasured-old-mount-pleasant-village/

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!

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!

The Naming of Mount Pleasant and Its Map of Canada Streets

Here are a couple of highlights from our discussion of Mount Pleasant’s early days.  This discussion took place at our April monthly meeting and we used our Mount Pleasantries as a guide.  A previous post, Brewery Creek Ravine As A Playground At The Turn Of 1900, is another.

Mount Pleasant was named in 1888 after a small Irish village outside Dublin – the birthplace of the wife of Henry Valentine Edmonds. In 1869 Edmonds, the clerk of the municipal council in New Westminster, had acquired District Lot 200A, the wilderness south of False Creek in the future Mount Pleasant. “He was speculating that Vancouver’s unusually fine natural harbour would someday become home to the terminal of a transcontinental railway, since he had witnessed first hand the pandemonium that ensued when San Francisco had been declared a transcontinental railway terminal.”

Map by Bruce Macdonald based on the Dakin fire insurance map, 1889 (City of Vancouver Archives: AM54-S23-2– /Major Matthews Collection)

By 1888, a year after the arrival of the railway, Dr. Israel Powell, one of the people who had negotiated British Columbia’s confederation with Canada in 1871, was a co-owner of the lot. “The first street in Mount Pleasant had originally been an ancient First Nations and animal trail, now known as Kingsway…the super-Canadian and Ontario-born Powell named all his streets in Mount Pleasant after Canada’s provinces to create a representation of the map of Canada…The centre street of Vancouver’s grid system is Powell’s Ontario Street, in the 000 hundred block going east-west, probably since Ontario is known as central Canada…The western Canadian Streets are west of Ontario Street, and the eastern Canadian streets are east of it.”

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.

 

 

Brewery Creek Ravine As A Playground At The Turn Of 1900

Gladys Schwesinger describing her childhood years playing in the Brewery Creek ravine:

Mount Pleasant Historical Signage at 298 East 11th Ave & Sophia St

Corner of East 11th Ave & Sophia St

 

The Sophia

The above quote is from “Recollections of early Vancouver in my childhood, 1893-1912” by Dr. Gladys C. Schwesinger (Vancouver City Archives PAM 1960 – 29 – Recollections…)

You can read the full quote in the Mount Pleasant Historic Context Statement on pages 13 & 14.

Map highlighting Brewery Creek that was put together from smaller sections of the 1897 – 1901 Fire Insurance Map by Claude Douglas.  He founded the Brewery Creek Historical Society in 1988 with Charles Christopherson.  The map and colouring are courtesy of Bruce Macdonald, who was a member of the society.