Ron Hatch: A Life of Books and Adventure (1939–2021)

Residents involved in The Story of Dunbar remember the kind and professional support of local publisher Ron Hatch, who died in November.

By Carol Volkart, Newsletter Editor

“When I heard of Ron Hatch’s passing last fall, I googled him and found an outpouring – a flood – of appreciation for him and his work coming from the province’s finest writers,” recalls Dunbar resident Helen Spiegelman. “How amazing that he made time to help a little committee pull together a history of their neighbourhood.”

The history was The Story of Dunbar: Voices of a Vancouver Neighbourhood. Ron Hatch was the quiet man who helped his neighbours capture the century-long transformation of their community from forest to suburb in 12 polished chapters, complete with old photographs, and high-quality index and sources sections.

The Dunbar book is among about 300 titles published by Ronsdale Press, the company Ron Hatch and his wife Veronica bought (and renamed) in 1988 after his retirement as a UBC English professor. Headquartered in their West 21st home, it became a strong and highly regarded press in the B.C. and Canadian literary world.

Dunbar’s efforts to capture its early voices before they were gone fit well with Ronsdale’s goals of giving Canadians new insights into themselves and their country.

But why would a world adventurer, mountaineer and lover of the wilderness choose to set up as a book publisher in his retirement? Asked about it when he won the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award in 2014, Hatch said: “I felt I could add something.”

What he added was apparent in the torrent of appreciation unleashed when he died on Nov. 25. Author after author – poets, biographers, novelists – wrote online tributes to his fastidious editing, his kind support, his honest opinion delivered, as one writer said, “with a twinkle in his eye.”

Spiegelman, who took over the editing of the Dunbar book after the death of the original editor Peggy Schofield in 2005, had the Ron Hatch experience first-hand:

 “As I settled into that committee following the death of dear Peggy Schofield, I sensed the presence of invisible forces guiding our work, providing us with behind-the-scenes support that made our project so much more than it would have been, and our work so much smoother and easier to do. In retrospect, it looks like a fairy tale,” she wrote.

“I met with the kindly man on West 21st a few times without realizing that he was the wizard making it all happen. He would be the one who sent us our copy editor, Naomi Pauls, who read our manuscripts and sat with us at weekly meetings at Pam Chambers’ dining room table hashing out details. He would be the one who thought of bringing in a little behind-the-scenes team that distilled out of the sprawling text (400+ pages long) the meticulously detailed index at the back of the book, so people could look up references to things and people that they were interested in. He would have been the one who had the eye and the experience to approve a really great cover image, clear photos, and graceful design inside.

“In all those tributes to Ron Hatch that I read online, I could see the same Ron Hatch that we’d known, smiling, gentle, helping make magic happen.”

Hatch was so notoriously modest that his friend Alan Twigg organized a celebration of the Hatches’ publishing venture in 2013 because he felt that “Ron’s low-key and determinedly non-self-referential manner was being under-recognized.” On Hatch’s death, Twigg, an author and creator of BC Bookworld wrote: “A keen environmentalist, a meticulous proofreader and a courageous soul, Ron Hatch was a gentleman and a scholar who never sought the limelight; always empowering others to do so.”

Dunbar Residents’ Association board member Sonia Wicken recalls Hatch as a casually dressed, quiet man who could be spotted mailing off packages at the local post office or walking his black Labs in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, he’d show up on her doorstep with a royalty cheque for the Dunbar book.

When the DRA and Hatch sat down to negotiate the book contract, there was no drama, says Wicken, who was DRA treasurer at the time. The DRA had to guarantee pre-sales of 2,000 for a 5,000-copy run, which it easily did, and the book sold well afterwards. “He didn’t lose money on it, so we were pleased about that,” she says. Hatch didn’t come across as a salesman, she notes, but he did a great job of distributing the book, working hard to get it into the airport and onto the ferries.

Hatch, born in 1939, grew up in Dunbar after his parents moved here from Thunder Bay, Ont. in about 1947. Except for a few years working for CUSO in India and studying and teaching in Europe, he made Dunbar his home. The house where he lived and ran his publishing operation was a block from where he grew up, his grandson Forrest Berman-Hatch wrote in a Ubyssey obituary in December.

But Hatch was also an adventurer and traveller, with a passion for mountains, wilderness and foreign scenes. As a young couple, the Hatches took “epic motorcycle journeys across South Asia and the Middle East and spent time in the Himalayas so my grandfather could climb among the world’s most legendary mountains,” wrote Berman-Hatch. “He completed multiple first ascents but would never mention them unless pressed.” Later, there were sabbaticals abroad, but always the wilderness too – hiking in Whistler, summers off-grid in northern B.C., and a cabin on Hollyburn Mountain. “He loved that cabin and would go up there to read manuscripts under a propane lantern for decades,” Berman-Hatch recalled.

And underscoring it all, literature “of the kind that champions the values of freedom, decency and critical thinking,” Berman-Hatch wrote. “To my grandfather, literature was about maintaining civilization in the face of darkness.”

Twigg recalled Hatch as “old-fashioned in the best possible ways,” never speaking unkindly of others, saving money on stamps by dropping off cheque payments by hand. “At a crowded literary event,” he remembered, “I once spontaneously introduced Ron Hatch to the person next to me by saying, ‘This is Ron Hatch. He tells the truth and he does things on time.’”

New Pastor on the Side of the Angels

Immaculate Conception Church at 3778 West 28th Avenue has a neighbourhood feel and an ambience that pleases its new pastor.

By Carol Volkart, Newsletter Editor

When the members of Dunbar’s Immaculate Conception Parish welcomed Father John Horgan as their pastor last July, they also welcomed an expert on angels, medical ethics, and a 14,000-volume library into their community.

Plus, of course, a well-known name that surprises cab drivers and requires its bearer to quickly state, “No relation to the premier,” upon first introduction.

Father Horgan, 63, has an impressive background that includes graduation from Harvard University, seminary studies in Rome followed by ordination by Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1986, and an active role in palliative and hospice work with several Vancouver hospitals, including St. Paul’s during the AIDS crisis.

 During his nearly four decades in the Vancouver Archdiocese, the Cambridge, Mass.-born pastor has also served at Saints Peter and Paul in Shaughnessy; at St. Pius X in Deep Cove; and along with his hospital work, 12 years as a priest for the Musqueam Indian Band.

And now he is serving in the pretty cul-de-sac church on West 28th that nestles up against St. George’s Junior School.

 It suits him well.

 “I’m a neighbourhood person,” he says, noting he grew up in a similar environment. He says he’s had a soft spot for the city’s west side ever since his time at the Shaughnessy church, where he oversaw the creation of new stained-glass windows that have since become famous.

“Coming to Immaculate Conception is like coming home. I love the ambience and the people I’ve met.”

He noted that Catholic churches are very neighbourhood-focused, each with their own catchment area, although parishioners may come from outside, too. That neighbourliness shows up in many ways. At Immaculate Conception, it includes the beautifully kept gardens around the church and nearby rectory, which are maintained by parishioners. “The gardens are an important part of our outreach, and good neighbourliness,” he says. “I have a great appreciation for gardens.”

Inside that rectory is a very large library, which includes many volumes related to his fields of expertise, on which he has both lectured and written. One area is moral theology and medical ethics, arising out of his work with hospices and palliative care. A second is saints and angels, a subject of lifelong interest that he studied in Rome. He hosted the EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network) series Angels of God. His 2018 book, His Angels at Our Side: Understanding Their Power In Our Souls and the World, casts angels as an integral part of the world, speaking to humans through moments of enlightenment, inspiration and intuition.

Outside his library is the new parish and community he is getting to know. Although churches saw a drop of 35 to 40 percent in attendance during the pandemic, and only recently returned to full capacity, Masses and services continued, and Immaculate Conception’s doors stayed open for those wanting a quiet moment during the day.

 It’s a “marvellous” parish, says Father Horgan. He sees his goal as continuing to foster the little church’s role as a place of welcoming, strength and neighbourliness in the Dunbar community.

Help Us Save Our Beloved School

Queen Elizabeth Annex (QEA) is a safe and happy community for 70 French Immersion students from kindergarten to Grade 3 located in the heart of Dunbar.  But it will soon be gone if we – parents at the school and the larger community – can’t convince the Vancouver School Board to reject plans to close it and sell the large property it sits on.

The QEA Parent Advisory Committee has taken every available opportunity so far to argue for our school – we’ve written, phoned, attended meetings and even held an outdoor protest. Our efforts will continue, but we hope the broader Dunbar community will get involved too. Trustees are scheduled to make their final decision on May 30, so our request is urgent.

It would be no surprise to us if you haven’t heard of the plans yet, as the school board has rushed them along in an incredibly non-transparent process at the height of a pandemic.  The initial meeting with the board of trustees was Jan. 17, with just 48 hours’ notice, given over a weekend. At that hastily called meeting, the board made a recommendation to close and sell the school, which sits on a large property adjacent to Camosun Bog and Pacific Spirit Park.

There are many reasons why the removal of this site from educational use by the VSB and its subsequent sale – either to the francophone school board or a private school – doesn’t make sense and will negatively impact the Dunbar community.

Aside from the fact that QEA is a uniquely popular, much-loved and successful school, it is illogical to close an elementary school and dispose of these precious lands at a time when plans are progressing to increase family housing in Dunbar and adjacent areas. These plans mean it is likely the VSB will need to expand school spots in Dunbar in the short and medium-term.  Buying sites like the one QEA sits on will be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, in the future. The school board should save this land for future generations of Dunbar-area children.

Another argument is an environmental one. If the site is sold to either the francophone board or to another private school, it would mean many students being driven to the school from other parts of the city, instead of walking there, as our kids do. That means traffic congestion and a strain on the environment, especially as we understand the francophone board plans to build a much bigger, 435-student school on the site.

Ultimately, the VSB is entrusted to manage and maintain educational assets and resources in the public’s interest over the long term. To sell off resources to meet short-term needs during a time of growth is bad planning and a violation of the public’s trust. If we lose this precious community asset, it will be gone forever.

What you can do:

For more information, visit http://www.qea-pac.ca/advocacy/ or contact us at qea.parents@gmail.com.  And please help sign and share our online petition at https://www.change.org/p/no-school-closures-transparent-planning-first/

Remembering George Pinch

by Meredith Kimball, Dunbar Community Patrol Chairperson

On January 7 of this year, George Pinch died at the age of 87. He was born November 12, 1935 and grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan.  He earned an engineering degree from the University of Saskatchewan, where he met his wife, Lorna, at a church function in Saskatoon. They married on May 4, 1957.  After living in Winnipeg and Victoria, they moved to their house on West 22nd Avenue in 1966, where they raised their family.  George worked for years at BC Hydro in the Power Smart program.  For over 50 years he was an active citizen and a well-known neighbour in Dunbar who always had a cheerful word for everyone he met including children and dogs. George was an avid gardener and grew a fine tomato. He served for many years on the Dunbar Residents’ Association Board of Directors and as co-president with Susan Chapman. 

George was a member of the committee that founded the Dunbar Community Patrol in 2005, served on DCP Coordinating Committee for 15 years, interviewed new patrollers, and was one of the most active and enthusiastic of them all.  For 12 years he patrolled the most hours and his records of 102 hours in one year and a total of 942.25 hours over his career still stand.  He and Lorna very generously volunteered their home for our Coordinating Committee meetings from 2004 until the start of the pandemic.

Patrolling with George was never dull.  In addition to watching for problems, he had a keen eye for useful items someone had thrown away in a lane, including bottles to be recycled for money which he donated to Children’s Hospital.  He was always friendly and I was often surprised when someone from the neighbourhood would approach us with, “Hi George, how are you doing?”

He will be missed by everyone in the DCP, the DRA, and many, many of his neighbours. If you would like to find out what made the DCP such a big part of George’s life for many years, please consider volunteering to do walk or bike patrols.  Although the pandemic has made it difficult to train new patrollers, we will resume taking in new members as soon as possible. If you are interested, please leave a phone message at 604-222-9824, send an email to dcp-info@dunbar-vancouver.org or visit our webpage at www.dunbar-vancouver.org.

Sadly, after this article was written, we received word that Lorna Pinch died on February 15, 2022. To the Dunbar Patrol, it feels like an era has passed with both of these wonderful community members gone.

Speak up for Dunbar this Election Year

By Bruce A. Gilmour, DRA President

As 2022 began, I reflected on the DRA’s 2021 accomplishments and the path forward. Much of last year’s focus will continue to influence our agenda this year. That includes an increased emphasis on collaboration with the Dunbar Village Business Association and with Dunbar residents through the newsletter, list serv, and home page. As 2022 is a municipal election year, we must ensure candidates understand that protecting liveability and maintaining stability are priorities for our neighbourhood.

One of the DRA’s major and increasing concerns is what is happening to our once-vibrant retail district. You only have to stroll between West 16th and West 41st Avenues to see the difference between what Dunbar was just a few years ago and what it is now. While some new stores are opening and new apartment buildings are going up, many stores are closing or at risk, and there are far too many vacant blocks and storefronts along our main street.

We must lobby and petition city council to help us protect and attract retail diversity on Dunbar. It makes no sense to be densifying our area while our retail district disappears and transit is cut. While residents succeeded in convincing TransLink not to go ahead with plans to cut 40 percent of the bus stops between 16th and 41st in January, we still lost five on Dunbar, and many on West King Edward and Macdonald that once served Dunbar residents.

Another concern is how little attention the city pays to the voices of communities like ours. Councillors are elected to represent the residents, the neighbourhoods called Vancouver.  But as we saw with the Streamlining Rental plan, which allows four- to five-storey apartment buildings in residential blocks adjacent to arterials, the concerns of many of our residents who opposed this were ignored. We know when it comes to development issues, the deck is often stacked by developers who recruit speakers and generate multiple emails to support their case. Residents are considered obstacles to development.

Which brings me to the Vancouver Plan, where once again the DRA has not been consulted, let alone notified. The Vancouver Plan is described as a single, city-wide plan to guide future growth. Council initiated the plan in 2019, and is scheduled to make a final decision on it this summer.

According to the city website, the plan will “guide future growth in line with the key priorities the community has identified including: housing, climate action and sustainability, employment and economy, environment, transportation, social well-being, arts and culture and infrastructure.”

I have had no details or timelines about the planning process touching down in neighbourhoods such as Dunbar. The DRA did not know! How many Dunbar residents were involved, or even knew this plan was happening?

We have been upgrading our communication tools such as the DRA newsletter, the list serv, our website, and we have started a Facebook page to increase awareness and feedback on issues like this, but it’s a work in progress. Meanwhile, the mayor, council and city staff must be clearer about the process if any neighbourhood is to add value to initiatives such as the Vancouver Plan!

St. Philip’s Anglican Church: A New Chapter

St. Philip’s Anglican Church’s welcoming courtyard at 3737 West 27th

By Debbie Matheson

From its founding in the growing neighbourhood of Dunbar Heights in 1925, St Philip’s Anglican Church has served not just as a place of worship and service, but as a centre of fellowship for the whole community.

The first building, constructed by parishioners, functioned as Dunbar’s community centre. There were dinners, dances, theatricals, sports teams, community meetings, tennis courts on the property, and twice-weekly bowling leagues. Today, that original church is the gym where community groups meet, voters assess candidates, the DRA gathers, and shoppers enjoy our sales. We have hosted Crown and Tom Thumb preschools for over 70 years. The current church and rectory were built during WWII, a time of uncertainty. Later, the Fireside Wing was built to meet the needs of returning servicemen and their families, the rector at the time recalling the stress of his own re-entry into civilian life after WWI.

Along with attention to individuals’ needs, engagement with the whole community continues as a major theme for St. Philip’s. Outreach volunteers have sponsored refugees to Canada, most recently a Syrian family of eight. Neighbourhood Ministry volunteers weekly give out food, clothing, and support to vulnerable people on west-side streets.

During the pandemic, St. Philip’s never missed a Sunday, pivoting quickly to recorded and live-streamed online worship. We even gathered on lawn chairs in Caldecott Park to keep people connected and lift their spirits.

In 2021, online fundraising events were created, the church reopened, community groups reconvened, and hope continued. When Omicron arose, we checked vaccination passports at the door, and sadly cancelled the sold-out live reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

For 2022, ever hopeful, we plan the return of the online Flower Basket Sale in April, a Book Sale in June, a Christmas Fair, and a new “Everything but the Closet” Sale in late May. Watch for news on our website and the Dunbar Neighbours list serv.

Sadly, in the spring of 2021 our rector Stuart Hallam and his family returned home to the UK. Stuart had made many connections and friends in Dunbar; his talents in community building were recognized in a thank-you from DRA President Bruce Gilmour in the spring 2021 newsletter. A chapter had ended.

St. Philip’s is resilient, however, with a committed parish family. In October, we welcomed with open arms our new rector, Reverend Lorne Manweiler. A new chapter has begun.

Hold on tight! Is Dunbar ready for a new 435+-student school across from Chaldecott Park?

By Carol Volkart, DRA Newsletter Editor

Facing the potential closure of their small early French immersion school, parents at Queen Elizabeth Annex are warning of the impact of the closure on their own kids, and on the neighbourhood if a much larger school is built in its place. 

QEA District Parent Advisory Council co-representative Nadine Ho, who is helping organize the campaign against the closure, says the timing of the plan is terrible, as it adds to the instability and daily stress that students are already experiencing during the pandemic. And she’s concerned about the short- and long-term impacts on the neighbourhood if a 435-student school for out-of- catchment students is built to replace the 70-student QEA.

There would first be a lengthy construction period, then the noise and traffic of hundreds of additional students coming and going from the now-quiet school site at 4275 Crown, she says. 

The potential for a 435-student school at the site is discussed in a 2018 Ministry of Education document assessing options for the location of a new elementary school on the west side of Vancouver for the Conseil Scolaire Francophone (CSF), the francophone board that serves students whose first language is French. (By contrast, French immersion students are served by the Vancouver School Board.)

There’s been pressure to find a new school site for the francophone students ever since a 2016 court ruling that facilities for them are inadequate on the west side of Vancouver. QEA has been looked at before; in 2019, Vancouver School Board trustees rejected a similar proposal to dispose of it to the francophone board.

Before that, QEA was also threatened with closure in 2016 and in 2008. 

This time around, parents don’t have long to fight for their school. They were told about the proposal on Jan. 14. On Jan. 17,  seven of nine trustees voted at a special meeting to move the closure recommendation to the VSB facilities planning committee meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 19. If trustees agree to proceed at each stage, delegations will be heard Jan. 24, and there will be another meeting on Jan. 31, leading to a final decision on May 30 of this year. If the plan is approved, the school would close on June 30, 2023.

Regarding the francophone board’s need for a school site, Ho said the VSB is being pushed to solve a Ministry of Education problem on the backs of Vancouver students. Disposing of QEA has also been regarded as a way of raising money. In 2019, then-education minister Rob Fleming said the closure of QEA would allow him to build a long-awaited school in Olympic Village. 

The current staff report recommending consideration of closure says disposal of the annex to the CSF “could realize substantial capital revenue” that the board could use for seismic upgrades or school expansions. It notes the government expects districts will contribute up to 50 percent of the cost of new schools.

Ho says the pandemic raises many issues about the planned closure, especially for a school that has had zero COVID cases to date. Transmission risks are lower at smaller community schools like QEA compared to bigger ones like Queen Elizabeth Elementary and Ecole Jules Quesnel, the proposed alternatives for QEA students.  This pandemic is not over, she notes. Vaccinations are still being distributed for children under 12, and children’s activities are still being cancelled or restructured.

Ho says the closure proposal also raises questions about the kind of longer-term planning the VSB is doing if it gives up a school site that may well be needed in the future. She notes that many major developments are planned for the west side of the city, with the Jericho lands development alone more than doubling the population of West Point Grey. 

District Parent Advisory Council co-chair Vik Khanna says the QEA move is being driven by the need for a new school at the Olympic Village. Originally it was supposed to be fully funded by pandemic recovery funds, he says, but that appears to have changed, and the school board now must come up with 50 percent of the cost. “Pressure is being applied by the Ministry to dispose of QEA.”

Khanna echoes Ho’s concerns about the timing of the closure proposal, saying a pandemic is not the time to be pushing it through. “Our trustees should be ensuring public trust in our public education system and this is super rushed and erodes trust.”

The Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council has previously taken a position against school closures until proper planning is done. At a DPAC general meeting on Oct. 28, 2021, more than 33 Vancouver PACs voted 94 percent in favour of a motion that the VSB should hold off on irreversible facilities decisions until December 2023 or until policies and plans can be based on the latest population data and take into account the many new developments planned for the city.

What you can do:

For more information, visit http://www.qea-pac.ca/advocacy/ or contact us at qea.parents@gmail.com.  Please help save QEA by writing letters to the Deputy Superintendent office (dnelson@vsb.bc.ca or communications@vsb.bc.ca) and trustees (listed below).

  • Chair Janet Fraser: janet.fraser@vsb.bc.ca
  • Vice-Chair Estrellita Gonzalez: estrellita.gonzalez@vsb.bc.ca
  • Fraser Ballantyne: fraser.ballantyne@vsb.bc.ca
  • Lois Chan-Pedley: lois.chan-pedley@vsb.bc.ca
  • Carmen Cho: carmen.cho@vsb.bc.ca
  • Oliver C. Hanson: oliver.hanson@vsb.bc.ca
  • Barb Parrott: barbara.parrott@vsb.bc.ca
  • Jennifer Reddy: Jennifer.reddy@vsb.bc.ca
  • Allan Wong: allan.wong@vsb.bc.ca 

50th Anniversary of Exact Fare in Vancouver

Greetings Everyone, in August of 1969, the week after Woodstock, I started my training as a Vancouver bus driver. First off, my hire photo, AKA Mug Shot. I have been assigned the seniority number 3281 in our class of 6 trainees. I was 21. I made change and sold tokens for 7 months until Wednesday 1 April 1970 when Exact Fare arrived and we no longer had to do so. I worked an evening run on Stanley Park/Nanaimo driving a Brill trolleybus, and sold my last tokens at Cordova and Carrall downtown, and changed a quarter for the final time at Nanaimo and Charles Street. While so many drivers cursed the changers, B.C. Hydro allowed the drivers to purchase their changers, and a large number did so. I bought my 6 barrel Johnson changer. 


Six years later, here I am in a 1947 Canadian Car Brill T-44 trolley coach in the Stanley Park Loop. I have my feet up on Grant Money Meter fare box. Tie was compulsory during winter months. To differentiate between the two types of vehicles, the instructors called a trolley a “coach”, and a motor bus a “bus”. And we were “operators”, not drivers. Photo courtesy of Sean Nelson.


B.C. Hydro took this publicity photo in a “Fishbowl” General Motors New Look diesel bus at the Oakridge Transit Centre to make people aware of the 1st April 1970 date for the Exact Fare policy.  The EXACT FARE card behind the transfer rack was put in the exterior card holder on the front of every bus in the system. Looks like they borrowed the secretarial pool for the photo. Lady standing has a $2 bill in her wallet. You can see the change dish, and the rack for the changer above the transfer cutters. The operator is wearing his Chauffeur’s “A” Badge on his cap visible to the public, a requirement of the commercial driver’s licence back then. I wore mine on my jacket. This photo also shows the Grant Money Meter, a musical fare box


Grant Money Meter fare boxes annunciated the coins and tokens thusly:

1¢ – BUZZ
5¢ – BONG
10¢ – BONG-BONG
25¢ – BING-BING
“A” token – BING
“B” token – BRRRINGGGG
“C” token – no sound. These were made of blue plastic the size of poker chips and had to be collected by operating the lever for the scavenge door.


Fares: Student “A” tokens – 10 for $1.00; Adult “B” tokens – 4 for 75 cents; Child “C” tokens – 4 for 35 cents; Cash fare – Adult – 20 cents; Cash fare – Students – 15 cents; and, Cash fare – Children – 10 cents.

When I tell younger people today that when you bought four adult tokens for 75¢ back in 1969 you saved a nickel over the regular fare, they say: “Why bother?” I respond: “Well, 5¢ was half the price of a cup of coffee.” It also became apparent that we functioned as change machines. If you ran out of a certain coin or token on the road, you could always stop another bus and see if the driver could sell you what you needed.  


The employee newsletter published the following article in 2005:


An excellent film made by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1965 shows what it was like when I started the job few years later, and you can hear the Grant Money Meter tinkling away:


The Grant Money Meters were phased out in 1976 and replaced with Duncans. They in turn were replaced with Cubic electronic fare boxes in 2001, which are still in use. Community Shuttle buses have recently been fitted with drop fare boxes and those drivers issue paper transfers. Over 90% of fares are now registered with a Compass proximity tap card. 


Upon viewing the action here, one man came up to me and said: “This is more fun than watching the parade.”

When I started we drove Brill trolleys with manual steering and no right side exterior mirror. We learned to drive with our left hand and fill the changer barrels with our right. We were trained to climb up on the roof of a trolleybus, walk down the pole and repair a broken retriever rope. Neat trick: If one retriever jammed, you cut its rope and tied it to the other rope. You can put up both trolley poles on the wires with a single retriever rope. I once had this happen and didn’t have a knife with me, so I asked the passengers if someone could help. A man came to the rear of my bus with me and produced a switchblade knife, which did the job.

And if you think climbing up onto the roof of a Brill trolley was adventuresome (see fold-out steps just behind the rear door), check out how we kept service running back in the day. My friend John Day snapped this photo of me riding the back bumper at about 30 km/hr on Commercial Drive for a parade detour circa 1972.


Until 1952 Vancouver’s streetcars had conductors and conductorettes on the heaviest routes to handle fares. Here is Edra McLeod alighting from a streetcar during World War II. She became a bus driver and retired in 1976, two years after a new generation of women operators were hired. The last conductors collected fares on the Marpole to Steveston Interurban in 1958.

All the best,

Angus.

I Remember When…

The Point Grey Bakery was on Dunbar Street

Angus McIntyre

The woman on the right was Dorothy, and the taller one, who had a British accent as I recall, was named Flo’. As it turns out I happen to have the cash register in the photo! When I told them that I had lots of rhubarb in my yard, they said I could bring it in and they could make pies with it, and as payment I got one of the pies gratis. 

In the next photo there is a sign above the door with a little chef’s head and hat. The sign read: LOAFING DEPT. Of course there was always a ginger snap or small cookie handed to the children that came in with a parent. Beside the cash register is a tape dispenser. It had a brush built in that wet the gum on the tape, and that tape was used when the bread was wrapped in light-brown paper. Flo’ lived in the 1950’s apartment building at 16th and Highbury.

I wrote to my neighbour Dave Kileen about the photos, and he responded with his memories. They made a very good malt bread, and also Hovis. I think we should do a little research and list all the bakeries on Dunbar in 1980, and include a short piece on the Ideal Bakery, the oldest one, and currently still a “toney” bakery, which maybe should also be mentioned as the last one standing.

Here’s what Dave said:

The Point Grey Bakery was where my mother would go, often with me, to purchase our bakery items. This is where all my birthday cakes in my early years came from. I remember both of those ladies, the shorter of the two I knew as Mrs. Skinner. She was the primary customer-service person, and my favourite; while the other, also pleasant, was either her sister or sister in law and seemed to take the roll of a backup person during busy times. I have often thought of those ladies, but hadn’t given much thought to the interior of the bake shop, but those interior pictures brought everything back to me immediately, those display cases and especially that faux log cabin back wall with its shingle roof. Mr. Skinner was the baker, but in all the years I went there, I never saw him. I remember that there once was a serious fire in the rear of the building, that required closure of the shop for many weeks, but it was all repaired and continued in business for many years after. There was of course another bakery one block North, on the same side of the street, but while we would look in their window as we walked past, we never went inside and I don’t know why.

Thanks for the pictures, I never thought I’d see them again.
Dave