The Lee Building in Vancouver

After six months leave, we are back in Vancouver,
staying in a small, studio apartment at one of Vancouver's busiest intersections: Broadway and Main. The neighbourhood is called Mt. Pleasant and while it is busy, it's nothing like Buenos Aires.

The Lee Building is an interesting landmark in Vancouver, and it is where the writer, and me, find ourselves for the month of April. Built in 1912 it was among the tallest buildings in the city at the time especially outside the city centre to the north. It was built by and named for Herbert O. Lee. Mr Lee headed a merchant class family in Vancouver, was active in civic affairs and operated a successful grocery business for a number of years.

It was an exciting time in Vancouver in the early part of the twentieth century, with fortunes to be made and lost on the booming cycles of the economic activity. Towards the end of the Great Depression in 1937, the Lee family lost their fortune and the property to the Royal Bank of Canada, though they were allowed to continue to live on the top floor until later in the 1940s.




It is a seven-story building with hardwood floors and over-height ceilings throughout. We are on the fifth floor looking north towards the downtown and the mountains beyond.


Views are impressive and the location is great, if you like this sort of thing.

As for us, we get to enjoy the location, the neighbourhood and some impressive sunsets from the fire escape. No balcony here in the Lee Building, and the elevator has been out of service for four days, which adds to the adventure here in our own home town.

The Crosby Building ~ birthplace to Bing and David

One morning while walking around our new Vancouver neighbourhood, Mount Pleasant, I came across a structure called The Crosby Building. Indeed it is just a block away from our home in The Lee Building.


The Crosby Building is not as impressive a structure as is the Lee, but it has boasting rights as the birthplace of two great musical legends: the Crosby brothers. Though they never appeared together, individually they were towering performers in careers that spanned time and media. Today, the Crosby Building is hoping to raise awareness about this wonderful, and largely unknown footnote in musical history.










Bing came along first and became a big hit on radio and in movies of the day. A crooner to be sure and always remembered as a gentleman with a pipe, and often wearing a sweater.





The younger David took a slightly different track and found fame with the folk-rock group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. CSNY featured great harmonies and some fine acoustic guitar work, to which David contributed in significant measure.



Never did the two brothers record anything together, which is a shame. Memorable though is this rare video showing Bing, ever the gentleman, coming to his brother's aid when David, stricken with one of his numerous afflictions, was unavailable for a studio session recording of one of CSNY's greatest hits. Bing stepped in, and the rest is history. See it for yourself here on this from You Tube:
Crosby Stills Nash & Young 

Remembering April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King's Assassination

I heard the news of this day in 1968 as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan. I was a young teenager and a huge consumer of television. Early that evening, news arrived of the assassination of Martin Luther King, a name and face and voice I knew largely through CBC News coverage of the man and the Movement.

I remember hearing the I have a dream speech, which gave me shivers then, just as it does now. I had already seen the terrible scenes of police beatings of demonstrators, of peaceful marches that were attacked by hooligans and of strange politicians spouting a hatred I couldn't comprehend. I also knew the Americans were at war with a tiny nation in south-east Asia and I couldn't understand that either. Somehow, to me, this man, Martin Luther King, and his message of peace and justice, had something to say about that war too. The reality of America seemed an alien world compared to the America portrayed nightly on its television shows and more importantly, through its commercials.

I remember seeing, probably the next day, Bobby Kennedy's speech at Indianapolis as he broke the news of Dr. King's death to a campaign crowd. That speech too sends shivers up and down my spine. Gently, calmly and eloquently Bobby spoke of memory, justice and peace.

Over the next weeks, and through the year, I viewed  coverage of events in America as they unfolded. I watched, sometimes in shock and sometimes in horror. Today, much older, I continue to view the US as an alien place; a nation seemingly always at war with someone, somewhere, and sometimes nowhere at all. A country still terribly divided by race and class, by money and power, by greed and violence.

In April of 1968 the horror was only beginning. It would continue with another assassination, and more state sponsored violence, and with upheaval around the world. The year would become an powerfully formative one in my young life, and inform my political sense for a lifetime. The dream remains.