THE TALK OF THE TOWN

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What Do We Have For You This Month?

Welcome to The Talk of The Town for February, 2022. Scroll through the following features (and click on images to enlarge) to find:

Our Lead Story

DANIAL MARKET TO REOPEN IN MARCH

Danial Market to reopen in March.

by Lucas Pilleri
The grocery store located at 1500 Barclay Street is close to reopening after more than a year of shutdown due to structural degradations. 

“The building had major structural problems, including parts of the building that were sinking,” says Nader Malek, the owner’s representative at Millenium Development. “The floor was unstable,” he adds. Consequently, the store had to close in November 2020. At first, tenants Danial and Tony Shah, who have been operating the place since 2001, thought that the repairs would be an easy job. But the work needed was significant.

“The siding, windows, and the building envelope needed to be replaced, as did the roof. We had to lift, reinforce and put the building back piece by piece,” explains Malek.

They also did not expect that obtaining a renovation permit from the City of Vancouver would take so long. “Getting a permit was chaos,” says Tony Shah. What he thought would take two months ended up being a much longer wait.

Based on the City’s public information, the first permit for renovations was actually issued in August 2021, allowing for structural repairs, as well as restoration and repair work supervised by the City. A separate permit was required to replace the projecting neon sign that was located at the corner of the store.

What made things trickier is that the building hosting the grocery store is on the Vancouver Heritage Register.  The place was built in the early 1900s by Ontario-born Albert Blain who took advantage of the waterline along Nicola and the proximity of the streetcar line on Robson. Blain operated the grocery store until the late 1920s and served as a vice president of the Retail Grocer’s Association. 

A store, and then apartments were built, referred to as ‘the Blain Block’ by local historian John Atkin who wrote the Statement of Significance for the building and is a heritage consultant for its rebuild. 

“The Blain Block is valued as a significant local landmark in the West End with its built form incorporating retail and residential uses that illustrate how the lack of land use control enabled locally focussed retail to develop and evolve to serve the surrounding neighborhood,” says Atkin. During its early years, the ‘Blain Block’ was hosting a grocery store, a druggist and a dry cleaner.

“Nicola was one of four West End streets to have water service before 1904 and the proximity of the Robson streetcar was a major factor in the choice of location for Blain’s development,” adds the historian.

Another heritage value of the building is the vintage neon sign that used to read ‘Barclay Grocery’. The sign has been taken down during the renovations, but “is being rebuilt and will return to the corner as part of the project, probably in a month,” ensures Atkin. The company Tops Lighting, located in Marpole, is the one responsible for its rebuild.

Danial Market is expected to reopen in March. The newly renovated store will undoubtedly attract local attention as the neighborhood welcomes back a local landmark.

West End News & Notes

BLUE LIGHT BLUES

by Nate Lewis
What are those blue lights about?

If you frequent mini-parks and public plazas in the West End you may have noticed some bold blue lighting. 

You may have asked yourself, “what are these for?

“Are they for chromotherapy, or to reduce crime? For dissuading drug use, or to keep rodents away? Perhaps they’re shooting a movie.”

Dermot Foley lives at the corner of Haro and Bute, which happens to look out over the Bute mini-park, where one of these blue-tinted lighting fixtures casts its icy pallor. 

Foley had heard different rumors going around about the lights but the time of year when he first noticed them, in late October, led him to believe it was a Halloween safety measure. “When I first saw it, I thought, maybe it was like, for Halloween or something, because kids are trick or treating, and they wear these bright costumes,” Foley said. 

Without any solid information, speculation is bound to run wild. The answer, it turns out, was a rather straightforward one. 

The lights are defective. 

Duminda Epa is the City of Vancouver’s manager of electrical operations. “[The] City does not install blue-tinted lights in the roadway lighting applications. The blue fixtures you are referring to are defective. We had several other places where we faced the same issue,” Epa said in an email. 

Epa added that the color change was due to a manufacturing defect and that the company they purchased the fixtures from would be replacing them free of charge. He expects that all the defective fixtures will be replaced by the end of March. 

Until then, the blue light will keep shining into Foley’s living room. 

“It is fairly disturbing,” Foley said, “When the snow was around it was really bright. The whole area [was] in this kind of ultraviolet light.”

Matthew Bissett takes the lead role at PAL Studio Theatre.

PAL STUDIO THEATRE NEWS

Vancouver Performing Arts Lodge (PAL), site of the PAL Studio Theatre, the West End’s only 150-seat black-box theatre, has announced the appointment of Matthew Bissett, as their new theatre manager. 

Matthew started at PAL in May of 2018 as the theatre’s technical director - moving sets, stacking chairs, and running lighting and sound. How did he get started in theatre?

According to Matthew, theatre has been his passion since the age of six when he played a Tree in an elementary school production of Bambi. He was always active in choirs and shows and reports that he “was certainly the only Grade 9 student I knew with a full collection of Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta records.”

Matthew attended the University of Victoria where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Theatre, specializing in directing and lighting design. He sang tenor in the chorus for Victoria’s Pacific Opera and ended up as their resident assistant director.

Much of Matthew’s career has been spent as an artistic director with various companies and directing plays, musicals, and operas. He co-founded and ran Vancouver’s Epicentre Theatre, spent ten years as the artistic director of Burnaby Lyric Opera, and was artistic director of Public Dreams for a time. He has also worked in film and television - and you may recognize him from one of the many commercials he has appeared in.

Congratulations Matthew!

𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗣𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗟𝗔 𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗠𝗔𝗡'𝗦
𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗗𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦 & FANS

The West End Journal is assisting with putting together a tribute display for the upcoming Art In The City exhibition and sale at the West End Community Centre, May 7 and 8, to honor the late Pamela Leaman.

Pamela was a pillar of the West End for decades and taught painting at the West End Community, Roundhouse, and other community centres. Pamela's family has donated a large number of paintings to the West End Community Centre. Many of them are by Pamela, but a couple of dozen are not signed and we are guessing they are works by some of her students.

If you would like to know more, help with the exhibition, or have a sneak preview of some of the unsigned works in case one might be yours, please email editor@thewestendjournal.ca and we'll talk.

Ellen Silvergieter, longtime director of the St. Paul’s Advocacy Office, was planning to retire next month, but was surprised to hear that the office will be closing.

ST. PAUL'S ADVOCACY OFFICE TO CLOSE

In a newsletter announcement on January 16, Phillip Cochrane, rector at the West End's St. Paul's Anglican Church, announced that the church will be closing the St. Paul's Advocacy Office at the end of March.

This announcement, following an email sent to Advocacy Office volunteers earlier in the week, is the outcome of a report by a consultant who met with staff, volunteers, and clients to evaluate the service. The West End Journal will reach out to Cochrane and others involved in the decision and will have a report in our March issue. In the meantime, you can see our recent "Community Spotlight” feature on the Advocacy Office here: And be sure to follow us on Facebook for timely updates.

Ilena Lee Cramer is St. Andrew’s-Wesley’s new, and first, artist in residence.

A NEW WEST END ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

St. Andrew’s-Welsey United Church has announced their first-ever Artist in Residence, Ilena Lee Cramer. She is known for her work in theatre and ceramics and will be offering workshops until June at the church for anyone in the community who feels drawn to create with clay.

Ilena is a ceramic artist, teacher, technician, theatre artist and writer from a trailer park at the end of the road in Alaska. She says that as such, every road she takes feels like she's moving backwards. She travels through history and picks up artifacts like mud, rusty stuff, and stories to make things that feel comfortable and familiar, yet altogether surprising. 

She is currently the ceramic technician and instructor for the Richmond Arts Centre and her studio practice is two fold—contemporary wheel thrown Chinese/European procedures and traditional hand build and pit fired techniques. Ilena says, "Whether I am making plays, poetry or pottery I am making art that is simple and accessible. I search to find the universal language—touch, laughter, home. My pots are empty spaces meant to hold my day dreams, a loving touch, or a wine-warmed smile." 

Learn more about Ilena by visiting her website. 

West End Moments

Out and about in the West End, you never know who or what you’ll see. Here are a few special moments you may have missed … click on any image to read the story.

West End Street Names

BROUGHTON STREET

Another case of a West End street being named by surveyor L.A. Hamilton after a body of water named after an English explorer. Broughton Strait and the Broughton Archipelago off the north coast of Vancouver Island, was so named in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver after Lieutenant Commander William Robert Broughton (1762 - 1821) who captained the Chatham, the second ship in Vacouver’’s small fleet. His father, Charles Broughton, was a Hamburg merchant and his mother, Anne Elizabeth, was the daughter of Baron William de Hertoghe. Broughton married his cousin, Jemima and they had four children. Broughton began his naval career at the age of twelve, and

Lieutenant Commander William Robert Broughton

The Chatham arrived near Point Grey that year after some exploring in the South Pacific, to find the Spanish already there. Broughton played a key role in the dispute between the British and the Spanish over the Pacific coast region and was the British representative who, along with Admiral Quadra and his men, brokered courtesy 13-gun salutes to each other’s flags. This show of civility between Broughton and Quadra was in marked contrast to the hostilities between their political masters. Following his BC coastal explorations, Broughton was given command of HMS Providence, a ship formerly commanded by Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, crossed the Pacific, and began a four-year survey of the Asian coast including the Kurile Islands, Japan, Okinawa, and Formosa.

In 1821, while in Florence, Broughton suffered an angina attack and died two days later. He is buried in the English burial ground in Leghorn, Italy.

For more West End street name histories visit our “Developing Stories” section here.

The West End - Coal Harbour In The News