Oak Street a rough rural road in 1950?

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Vancouver has changed a lot in the last 75 years. This film follows the #17 Oak Street line from Victory Square downtown to Marpole. The film was made in about 1950.
The streetcar line was operated by BCER (British Columbia Electric Railway). The line was operated until April 1952. The nature of Oak Street as a road changed shortly thereafter with the construction of the Oak Street Bridge, originally called the New Marpole Bridge.
I am astonished that Oak Street was not much more than a goat track south of King Edward. This is filed 15 years before I was born. I have memories of Oak Street in about 1970. Hard to believe how undeveloped it was.
It is also interesting to see how often the service ran. Even with a single track, they could have ten-minute headway.
This was filed by Kenneth Hodgson. He was a rail enthusiast and amateur filmmaker. This is one of five of his films that are in the City of Vancouver Archives
The film footage is public domain.
The music is Acoustic Groove from AudioHero
You can find the raw footage at this link:
searcharchives...
A version with a voice over annotation for a former driver:
• British Columbia Elect...

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26 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 46

@russallert Год назад

Vancouver grew quickly in the postwar era, and infrastructure took a while to catch up, especially in building and/or upgrading roads and highways. The only really modern bridge over the Fraser at that time was Pattullo Bridge, with the rest being old wooden structures that sometimes closed due to accidents and mishaps (the old Fraser Street Bridge being a good example). Like them or lump them, the WAC Bennett govt of the 50s and 60s really pushed the building of new roads and highways and upgrading existing ones.

@BCHistory Год назад

I remember the Fraser/5 Road bridge

@ant-1382 5 месяцев назад

Love these old films. The how it looks today is a nice touch.

@MissionHomeowner 3 месяца назад

Oh my! Thanks for this post. My Oak Street, my 17 route. My, it's changed!

@stephaniebeaton3939 Год назад

5:24 Should be "Passing by the current location of Van Dusen on the RIGHT"

@BCHistory Год назад

Opps, sorry, you are right

@andrewwood2345 11 месяцев назад

Shaughnessy Golf Course on the left. The course was moved In 1960 to its present location on Marine Drive. The old site became Eric Hamber Secondary School, where I attended in the 1970s. Amazing how rural it all was and not that long ago!

@oldgordo61 9 месяцев назад

Very cool watching this old footage. Although I have never been to Vancouver I can imagine a lot has changed. Coquitlam the town where my brother lived in the 1990s and 2000s probably didn't exist back in 1950.

@MissionHomeowner 3 месяца назад

It's all condos, or demolished houses turning into condos. And one day the condos will be demolished to build.....ever seen the movie "Blade Runner"? Like that.

@Stikkelsbær Год назад

Fantastic footage.

@snoopybluejeans Год назад

Electric, trams or buses. We need to bring THEM back. I think many streets still have the tracks.

@BADBIKERBENNY Год назад

The tracks are gone. Except for one small section of Quebec Street and a scar where they were on Francis. But yes, they should bring street cars back, especially the interurban.

@russallert Год назад

I see this comment occasionally on various pix and videos posted about the old trams and the Interurban railway. Nostalgia is nice, but it can be deceiving. Would streetcars really work practically in today's Vancouver - or any other city today? It would be impossible (and suicidal) to try to either go out on the street to catch a streetcar or exit from one, when you consider how insane drivers are now. An LRT type of transport (as seen in many cities around the world) would be nice, but Vancouver long ago committed itself to the Skytrain model of rapid transit - some of which follows the route of the old Interurban trains.

@darb4091 Год назад

@@russallert Toronto still runs a streetcar network. At the busier stops there are islands, but yes it takes a while to get used to driving with them and anticipating their stops. Luckily the operators are almost always on top of it.

@darb4091 Год назад

@@BADBIKERBENNY The cost on laying track again would be prohibitive. Capacity wise, an articulated bus probably rivals a streetcar.

@JulieHolden23 Год назад

@@russallert Works great in San Francisco

@JulieHolden23 Год назад

The people responsible for removing this system should have been forced to take transit everywhere for the rest of their lives. This was such a great concept and a network that was better established than anything we have now.

@BCHistory Год назад

There are many logistical reasons why the system as it was could not really endure. Some of the lines should have been kept, especially the linger into were urban lines. The Central Park line became the Expo line just over 30 years after closing.

@Kim-the-Dane-1952 Год назад

Excellent video. Thanks... yes that is amazing to see how rural it was. I once worked with a guy who told me that he was born on a farm on 49th and judging by his age that would have been sometime in the mid 30ies. I came to Vancouver in 1976 and change since then is also quite astonishing.

@BCHistory Год назад

I grew up in Vancouver and this film is no more than 20 years before my memories start. The change on Oak blows me away

@Carolus_Tsang 11 месяцев назад

I sure would like to live a week in that era. Things went much slower back then, much less hectic than these days, would make for a great vacation, and get to experience the past live in person.

@snoopybluejeans Год назад

How did people survive, no crosswalks, very little traffic lights. lol.

@darb4091 Год назад

@@skypup77 Yah, there is a segment of a kid riding his bike along the dirt road alongside of the street car; that would send a great many parents into a panic attack now.

@derekcourt425 11 месяцев назад

My neighbor was from Smithers. His grandfather came to Vancouver in the early 1900's about 1920 looking for work.. He moved back to Smithers in the 1930's and raised a family. One day grandpa was visiting his grandson in Vancouver in the 1980's They were driving along Broadway and Granville when the old guy blurted out, " I remember when a herd of pigs got loose here and they paid us 50 cents to help round them up and take them to a firehall somewhere near here." So they drove around looking for the firehall. Sure enough. It was about a block away. His Grandpa used to sell cut, split firewood at $4 a cord at Broadway and Cambie. Tough way to make a living.

@markstevens1729 3 месяца назад

By the time I got there in the 80’s that was all full.

@BADBIKERBENNY Год назад

This must be 16mm, the quality is too good for 8mm.

@BCHistory Год назад

Yes, 16 mm 18 fps

@darb4091 Год назад

What was the hand off at 4:22? Looks like it is just before the single track, perhaps a procedure to travel down the single track?

@darb4091 Год назад

Answered at 6:00 ....

@althunder4269 7 месяцев назад

Whoever had possession of the baton had authorization to use that block of single track. No baton no proceed.

@johndonaldredmond3990 Год назад

The past is, indeed, a foreign country. Excellent footage (but where did they get a latte? 😉).

@BCHistory Год назад

Lol

@MissionHomeowner 3 месяца назад

My first espresso was in Toronto in an Italian "pool hall" which I later learned was a M*f** front. The extremes we had to go through to just wake up, lol.

@KingMoogoe Год назад

I bet thing were alot more affordable back then.

@BCHistory Год назад

The average family home was much smaller and the families larger. Food was a larger portion of the average family costs. A radio was the only electronics. 73 years ago life was different

@darb4091 Год назад

@@BCHistory Yes, the family gathered around the radio in the evening to listen to radio shows on the am band, then came the TV and over the air signals, then cable, then cell phones and the internet ... Even 25 years ago life was notably different; you know you are getting old when ...

@visaman Год назад

@@darb4091TV didn't come to Vancouver until 1953..

@oldgordo61 9 месяцев назад

Really? I would imagine tvs would have been on display at shops or bars in downtown Vaancover by then not yet in the homes and people would watch the fights or games where there was a tv set.@@visaman

@visaman 9 месяцев назад

@oldgordo61 Seattle had TV in November of 1949. It was the only TV station north of San Francisco at the time. KVOS 12 in Bellingham, predated CBUT, channel 3, by a few weeks. Saskatoon, where my parents grew up, didn't have TV until December of 1954.

@leniszameit Год назад

very nice

@BCHistory Год назад

Thanks

@earthjustice01 4 месяца назад

Try jaywalking on Oak nowadays! It looked like a dusty country road back then.

@frederickma2193 3 месяца назад

S-bend is at 15th and Oak. You see the drivers passing a schedule as they pass! East side of Oak St. at 33rd heading South was still forested. Oakridge Mall was not completed til 1959. So that area was not much deforested until Eric Hamber School was built in 1962. South side of Oak past Shaughnessy was not much developed at that time!