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VANCOUVER WAS a very different place when
North Vancouver’s Connie O’Dell camped on
English Bay beach with her family for a whole

summer in 1899.

The 90-year-old O’Dell

remembers the popular beach was a campground

then.

‘‘My brother and | used to
get up in the morning when
the tide was out and dig
clams ,’’ says O’Dell.

The family used to take a
small boat over to Greer’s

LOOKING back through memory lane, North Van resident Connie O'Dell remembers what Vancouver life used to be like
when she was a little girl. Now 90-years-old, O'Dell still has vivid memories of the turn of the century, and of how things

beach, now Kitsilano beach,
and spend the day. ‘‘I had
my first bottle of soda pop
over in Greer’s beach,’’ she
remembers. ‘‘It was pink.

‘‘l remember the first tele-

have progressed and changed with time.

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Remembering the good old days

By LINDA CALDWELL

vision, radio and the first
gramophone with the big
horns,’’ she continues. ‘All
the neighbors used to come
and sit around on cushions,
listening to the gramophone.

**It was 72 years ago that |

_ wednesday news :

August 15, 1984

kept going to heat the iron.
A knock sounded on the
door and a man gave O’Dell
an electric iron to try out.
“If it got too hot you had to
pull the plug out,’’ she says.
‘‘That iron still worked five
years ago when I gave it
away.’’

used the first electric iron,’’
O’Dell says. July 17, 1912
was a hot day, made hotter
by the fire that had to be

O'Dell saw the first mov-
ing picture show in Van-
couver at City Hal! in 1899.
‘“*It was very primitive,’’ she

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remembers.

The residential area of
downtown Vancouver went
from Pender Street to False
Creek. The houses were built
as close together as possible,
with just room for a side-
walk in between,in order to
get all of them hooked up to
the limited sewer system.

**You could reach out and
with your
neighbor ,’’ O’Dell says.

There was an arcade qn
Hastings that was a precur-
sor of today’s shopping
malls. ‘‘That was really the
beginning of the malls
because you could come out
on either side and be in a
store,’’ she explains.

In 1900, Granville Street
used to end at Broadway,
and in winter people used to
toboggan down the
Shaugnessy hill.

‘‘They couldn’t run street
cars across the Granville
Street bridge because they

weighed too much,’’ she
remembers.
Point Grey and = south

Vancouver were not part of
Vancouver in the early past
of the centu d all the
street lights’ Were turned off
at 1 a.m. O'Dell used to
have to walk from the end of
the street car line at 16th and
Heather to her home at 21st
in the pitch black.

O’Dell and her brother
took a paddie wheeler up the
Fraser river to Chilliwack to
visit an aunt and uncle on
their farm. ‘‘We used to
have to get up and be down

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at the station at the corner
of Carroll and Hastings at 7
a.m.,’’ she says. ‘‘We’d
catch the tram and it took us
an hour to get to New
Westminster. ‘‘We’d catch
the paddle wheeler at the
wharf there and we’d get to
Chilliwack at 5 p.m.’’ On
the way, the boat criss-cross-
ed the river, picking up
cargo and livestock.

‘‘Sometimes the bank
would be quite high up and
they'd take on cordwood.
The men would work in
relays, throwing wood from
one man to the other. |
always thought they’d drop
it, but they never did,’’ she
added.

Vancouver used to have
fogs similar to the infamous
Landon fogs, O’Dell says.
They were so thick because
geople used to burn sawdust
and coal for fuel. ‘‘One day
in 1925, | was out on East
Broadway and it took .me
half an hour before | real-
ized | was driving on the
wrong side of the road,’’ she
laughs.

O’Dell remembers a two-
week period in December of
1940 when driving was im-
possible because the heavy
fog froze on the streets and
formed a thick sheet of ice.
Unfortunately, she had to
move at that time, and it
took her three hours to drive
15 blocks.

O’Dell kept working after

See Page C2

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