A picture certainly can be worth a thousand words of nostalgia, discovering an old Vancouver post card at a garage sale or thrift shop. Oh my, that old Ma and Pa store, city view motel. Those years still reach the shore, powerful images that ring many a bell. From Robson Street to Commercial Drive, Kits and Kerrisdale they help our memories survive, perhaps printed by Grant Man, Evergreen Press, published by Gowen and Sutton, Coast, Natural colour cards by Vancouver Magazine. Such wonderful feelings they can reprise one must confess, printed perhaps when you and I were just a teen. Do you still feel more comfortable with pints, quarts, miles per hour, farenheit, yards and feet. Do you recall how the Imperial system was drummed into us way back when in elementary school. Find Dan's books HERE.
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I see that many of the daily, free newspaper boxes in Greater Vancouver are suddenly sitting empty. The papers are no longer, ironically, using paper and either going online or saying goodbye. Some of us folks are going through withdrawal symptoms. I still have fond memories working for a few publications during the old rubber cement, non digital era. THE RUBBER CEMENT DAYS
Servicing display ads for the Richmond Review, just a few years ago, in nineteen seventy three. Herb Gates, the publisher, an old cigar he would chew. In the rubber cement days that’s how the biz used to be. The basic display ad. One would have to sketch and then attach, with rubber cement. Computerization was in its infancy and manually us humans with typewriters would basically manually toil. With these heavy monstrosities still with-out electricity everything hopefully clicked, perhaps Underwood or Royal. Then later at The Surrey Leader, in Cloverdale, the job was to chase the news with a film camera like a Minolta. Not a reflex Pentax Spotomatic, just a basic rangefinder for focusing, trying visually always being Johny on the spot, it would entail capturing local events to see what developed. With good old Kodak Tri-x film. Images of fire engines, sports, local politics in that darkroom with glowing safelight, I would have to process the rolls, screen, print and caption the essential local news pics. What an adventure, and those old community newspaper days still wets the old appetite. Search for Song CDs by Dan Propp via cdbaby.com and also www.soundcloud.com Find Dan's books at here. Motorola, Admiral, General Electric, Westinghouse, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Agfa, Fujichrome. In our hard drives behind our ears, they are still familiar realities, like Donald Duck, Little Lulu and Mickey Mouse. Many of those words still bring back warm thoughts that take us back home. The old Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Rambler, Hillman, Vauxhall. The Lincoln, Fargo, Chrysler, perhaps those amazing fins on that 59 Cadillac. These are vehicles that help reprise memories to recall. Like those flickering eight mm home movies. Home movies sure can take you back. The people you knew, school events, holidays, hopes and dreams. Learning every good boy deserves fudge, those fun piano lessons...ouch. The struggle with classical sharps and flats and then before you knew it we were rewarded Elvis, rock and roll and your fantastic teens. We also ate up all those Swanson TV dinners, the black and white shows on that huge twenty one inch screens, while relaxing...instead of doing school home-work....on that comfort-able, well worn, living room couch.
Phil Gaglardi's famous BC Dept of Highways sign, Sorry For The Inconvenience. Oh sometimes not so paved highways of BC for us can pine. Those roads can take us back and it sure doesn’t take a genius. It was in many respects possibly a simpler more down to earth time. Five cent telephone booths everywhere and friendly newspaper stands too. Real humans were dispensing the daily papers. It was a lifestyle kind of rhyme, a poetry us golden agers...youngsters enjoy with nostalgic thoughts of Vancouver to renew. Names like Jack Wasserman, Ed Murphy, Pat Burns, Jack Webster, of course who "precisely" he often said. Those great cartoons from the Vancouver Sun's Len Norris, one yearns. Do you remember all that great rock and roll with Red Robinson on CKWX that we were fed. How about the the BC Electric building...Wow!
The Hotel Vancouver, was still amazing to perceive, when you and I were per-haps eighteen. High rise buildings were just a drop in the bucket, compared to now. Oh my, what fast changes, compared to those days seniors have seen. There are fewer trails of yesterday in Vancouver town. For many of us seniors, we remember them well. One of them is the classic building downtown that today houses the Vancouver Art Gallery. I still remember the original art gallery further west on Georgia Street and its director, Tony Emery. Time sure does, like a canvas splattered with memories, go by or sometimes bye bye. By the way, this old goat still remembers Jack Shadbolt who coordinated the art program at City Hall, thanks to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's national LIP or Local Initiatives Program. It really helped the arts to begin flourishing in Canada. My job was to drive three or four Vancouver east end elementary students all over the city to take pictures with film cameras supplied. What an enriching fun experience that was! Some of the films, we developed ourselves, and others were commercially processed. The best were blown up to huge posters, displayed at kiosks all over the city, with the names of the young artists proudly printed. In those days, seat belts weren’t required. I don’t think my old clunker had any! Try that today, eh. If memory is correct, the city planner was Jonathan Baker who worked together with Jack Shadbolt to make this special LIP photographic program a successful reality. A book was also published called Awareness through photography. Today photography outside the current Vancouver Art Gallery (formerly the old court house) is often a Hollywood North favourite on location movie shoot. Continuing with the visual theme of yesteryear, a bit of rhyme follows to help perhaps develop a short nostalgic Vancouver thought.
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AuthorDan Propp's books are available on Amazon, Kindle, and other E-Book retailers' sites. To contact Dan please click HERE. Archives
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