• Protesters march on Granville Street against the war in Vietnam. October 30, 1970 by Glenn Baglo.

  • Ten-year-old Steven Miller gets a lift from his twelve-year-old brother Craig at a downtown department store. January 2, 1970 by Dan Scott.

  • Rod Stewart struts his stuff for a packed house of concert-goers at the Pacific Coliseum. April 12, 1971 by Glenn Baglo.

  • The cast of the hit Arts Club Theatre show “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” From left, Ann Mortifee, Pat Rose, Leon Bibb, and Ruth Nichol. June 28, 1972 by Vladimir Keremidschieff.

  • Canadian jazz great Oscar Peterson with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. April 10, 1975 by Ian Lindsay.

  • Vancouver Canucks player (and future coach) Pat Quinn and eight-year-old Bobby Whitty at a Pacific Coliseum practice. The Canucks played their first NHL game before 15,062 fans on October 9th. December 28, 1970 by Deni Eagland.

  • Glenn Baglo’s photo of a woman unable to get into a faith healing meeting at the PNE Agrodome won a National Newspaper Award. April 10, 1970 by Glenn Baglo.

  • The former Margaret Sinclair of Vancouver with her husband Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau the day after their hush-hush North Vancouver nuptials. March 5, 1971 by Dan Scott.

  • Paul Watson of Greenpeace. August 12, 1971 by Peter Hulbert.

  • On her B.C. centennial year royal visit, Queen Elizabeth visits Vancouver City Hall with Mayor Tom Campbell, B.C. Attorney General Leslie Peterson, and federal Consumer Affairs Minister Ron Basford. May 7, 1971 by George Diack.

  • Students Denise Quakenbush and Mimi Maier on their way to Henry Hudson Elementary School in Kitsilano. October 13, 1971 by Ken Oakes.

  • Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, sings to the crowd at the Pacific Coliseum. June 3, 1972 by Brian Kent.

  • The signs of an eclectic city dot the storefronts on West Broadway between Trafalgar and Blenheim. October 5, 1972 by Steve Bosch.

  • Early in the morning, a mom and her children cross East Pender Street in Chinatown. August 30, 1973 by John Mahler.

  • A streaker takes the microphone at the annual Easter Be-In in Stanley Park, an event attracting a crowd of ten thousand. April 14, 1974 by John Mahler.

  • Spanish Banks lifeguards Jim Harris and Glenn Schultz demonstrate an amphibious beach buggy and walkie-talkies to Bonnie Stefanko and Lois Tomlinson. June 19, 1974 by Ralph Bower.

  • Tina Turner puts on a show with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue at a B.C. Institute of Technology dance. February 8, 1975 by Glenn Baglo.

  • New Westminster Bruins Don Hobbins (left) and goalie Carey Walker with the Memorial Cup after beating the Ottawa 67s at the Pacific Coliseum. May 15, 1977 by Ralph Bower.

  • From left, Murdo McDonald, Art Jones, Syd Clarkson, and skip Bert Walker at the annual B.C. Week lawn bowling tournament at Stanley Park. July 30, 1977 by Brian Kent.

  • Sonny and Cher arrive at the Vancouver airport on the Playboy jet they chartered from Hugh Hefner for a concert at the Pacific Coliseum. August 29, 1973 by Dan Scott.

  • Before there was the smartphone, there was the pay phone, like these well-used ones at the Vancouver airport. February 15, 1972 by Glenn Baglo.

“Vancouver in the Seventies”

Pivotal decade.

The following foreword, written by Douglas Coupland, is excerpted from “Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from a Decade That Changed the City,” an historical book by Kate Bird with an introduction by Shelley Fralic. Chronicling the protests, the fashions, and the businesses, the book highlights some of the best 1970s photos taken by the Vancouver Sun’s photojournalists. Reprinted with permission.

Vancouver in the nineteen seventies: hippies, complaining, dirt, environmental degradation, and an attitude to sex that looks surprisingly innocent in hindsight. The images in this book bracket my own life from the ages of eight to seventeen. It feels odd to look at them as I have a personal memory or a connection to almost every photo, and yet it all feels like a million years ago. Is life really that long? Was the city once so innocent and bumpkinish? It’s not like we’ve morphed into Manhattan, but boy, how naïve it all was then. How low-tech.

The way we see ourselves is not necessarily what we really are. While we flatter ourselves that Vancouver is green and perfect, in the seventies, at least, the city was all about grime and unhappiness but at least everyone was trying to come up with new solutions to longstanding problems. Hence all of the protests (which really defined the social texture of that decade).

Bobby Lenarduzzi’s soccer haircut

Prism

The Amchitka Blast protests

Protesting

The civic black hole called Granville Mall that somehow inexplicably continues to exist

The Ambleside oil spill

Night skiing on Grouse

Margaret Trudeau

Andrés wines

Bill Bennett

More protesting

I have this belief that Vancouver becomes a new city every ten years, and since the seventies we’ve been four other different cities in between. No wonder it all feels so far away. I was looking at Expo 86 photos the other day and it looked like the entire thing took place overtop a lazily power-washed parking lot.

There was a kind of freedom that existed in the seventies that’s gone and that’s sad. We used to hitchhike everywhere. There was a magical folk art form called the automotive mural, and teenage boys airbrushed castles and dragons on the side of their vans, lined on the interior with carpet made of fairest shag. Ideas took forever to get from A to B, and in any given year society only used to generate a single meme, like Pet Rocks or streaking. And back then people seemed to puke more, too, but maybe it’s just that there weren’t iPhones to document it all.

In the seventies when you broke a rule, it felt like breaking a rule; society was still monolithic enough to have clearly breakable boundaries, but it was eroding quickly (all that protesting) and by the eighties the world began to take on the feel of the postmodern mess we still currently inhabit.

Dreamboat Annie

Construction cranes

Gene Kiniski

Urban cowboy

Robsonstrasse

Greenpeace

I’m not nostalgic for the seventies but I miss them. Is that possible? I used to sell souvenirs at the Whitecaps games at Empire Stadium, and after the crowds left, the Ukrainian ladies who ran the concession stands came and dumped leftover ice cubes over the grates, and then they’d pour the leftover hot dog water onto the ice cubes, which made a hissing sound, and then afterwards there were clots of grey hot dog grease all over the ground if you didn’t watch out. That was the spirit of collegial filth that comes to mind when I think of 1977 or 1978 or 1979. The years were grimy and analog and everything took ages to get done but everyone was in it together. That spirit comes across in the photos in this book, and if they don’t evoke memories for you, just remember there was once a land called Vancouver in the seventies, and all of it was true.

Get great stories delivered right to your inbox every Thursday.

Categories:

Tags:

Post Date:

October 14, 2016