The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 6 West Vancouver Historical Society November 1999 By: Anne Vemon FEATURE PRESENTATION REPORT The Bright Lights of Vancouver John Atkin, Guest Curator of the Vancouver Museum exhibition City Lights:Neon In Vancouver, shared his fascination with this subject with us in September. Many old and happy memories were triggered by his slides of Vancouver's wonderful neon signage of the 30's onwards. Some of these highlights are covered below. John Atkin, has made many appearances on television - CBC, ITV and the Vicky Gaberau Show. To many of us, therefore, he was a familiar face. John is a self-confessed hoarder of neon signs and what is not housed in the basement of the Vancouver Museum and warehouse, is almost certainly stored in every possible comer in his own home! In the 1950's Vancouver was known as Canada's neon capital and, in fact, Granville Street was called "The Great White Way". To people flying overhead it shone down below them, telling them they would soon land. Although the street was bright with flashing signs and blazing colours on the ground, from the air the colours vanished and only the blazing, cold white light was visible. As well as Granville, Hastings Street and the whole of Chinatown was vibrant with dazzling colour, bringing excitement into the lives of those who worked there and drawing visitors from all over the Lower Mainland. Many in the audience that "Vancouver was known as Canada's neon capital •••• night had memories of the excitement of being brought into the city by their parents just to see the lights, and at the height of neon's popularity local newspapers issued invitations to come and see the switch being thrown to light up a brand new sign! In 1953 it was estimated that there was one neon sign in Vancouver for every 18 city inhabitants (and the population was then around 400 thousand.) Nearly every shop of any size had neon somewhere in or on its premises and the lights were so bright that street lighting was hardly necessary! The signs were on hotels, restaurants, gas stations, theatres and businesses of all kinds. All were dazzling and some were of a most intricate design There were canopies which stretched out over the sidewalk, sea horses, waterfalls, steaming teacups, palm trees, almost anything you can imagine was pictured in neon - dazzling, flashing and exciting and a tremendous boost to the city's reputation. Neon came to Vancouver in the late 1920's and, it brought joy to many hearts and kept the streets alive with people. However, by the late 60's many American cities were losing their population to the suburbs - super highways made it possible to commute to work and enjoy the benefits of suburban "When the lights went out some parts of the city nearly died." living. This resulted in the old business sections becoming very dilapidated and, of course, neon signs which were everywhere, became somewhat brash as the sections drew a different type of citizen. So neon was blamed for many things - vice and sleaze being only two of them! Naturally this brought about a change of heart and it become a battle cry of several people in Vancouver that the city should be rid of this "evil". By the mid 70's local by-laws were very strict and the signs began to disappear, being returned to the local companies which had leased them out and, sadly, being destroyed. The results were surprising. No bright lights actually meant that many fewer people came downtown at nights and business dwindled. First Hastings then Chinatown began to lose their charm and many shops closed. However, today when we are close to a new century, owners of a few of the new projects are specifying that neon signage be used on their shops so perhaps we shall see "The Great White Way" come alive again. John Atkin beautiful slides do not reproduce well in black and white. If you would like to see a little of Vancouver's colourful past, you should go to the Vancouver Museum, visit his exhibit and leave a note of some of your memories. They put up a board specially for that purpose!