Item AAAB3071 - Gordon C. Lewis interview

CALL NUMBER: T2814:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Strathcona neighbourhood : roads, buildings and activities, 1905-20 PERIOD COVERED: 1905-1920 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1977-10-20 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Gordon Lewis discusses: street paving on Hastings; grading and levelling of Hastings, Pender, Keefer; details of building altitudes at the corner of Pender and Jackson; B.T. Rogers' noontime route home from sugar refinery along Keefer. Gully running length of Campbell Ave, viaduct or bridge along both Hastings and Prior. CRP station at Heatley Avenue, signal house there. Hastings Mill: site, quality of lumber and size of lumber in old days. Details of construction of sugar refinery using Hastings Mill lumber. Neighbours in 600 block Keefer Street 1907-14. Old Georgia viaduct and its poor construction. Packed streetcars from Main along Harris at 5:00pm. Cattle-herding along Pender. Vickers family store. Repairing (pneumatic) flat tire. TRACK 2: Discusses: mountain ash in neighbourhood; Westminster Bridge -- bascule bridge; filling-in of False Creek and the dredging of it; CN and GN stations; Salvation Army houses on Prior backing onto False Creek; sewage in False Creek. Discusses Chinatown: originally only around Abbott Street, tenements, near Brackman and Keefer stables; Chinese badly treated; Chinese cooked on refinery's sugar beet farms; bringing wife from China; gradual extension of Chinatown eastward. Talks about Strathcona School: recalls various teachers and principals Rines and Brown; school building; snowslide in schoolyard; how various nationalities got along together. 1918 flu epidemic. Mansion on Victoria Drive. Move to Cordova Street. First jobs: deliveryman for Drysdale Drygoods; messenger for sugar refinery. Depression times: boarders, working at sugar refinery. CALL NUMBER: T2814:0002 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Strathcona neighbourhood : anecdotes about incidents in 1912 and the 1930s PERIOD COVERED: 1910-1920 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1977-10-20 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Continuation of Depression story about a bicycle. I.W.W. assembly on Powell St. grounds in 1912 when L.D. Taylor read Riot Act. Salvation Army's violation of no-assembly rule. (End of interview)