Photo 1 of 13

Tyee Photo Essay

Vanishing British Columbia

7 Dec 2006, TheTyee.ca

  • Vanishing British Columbia 01

    Skookumchuk Village's Holy Cross Catholic Church, north of Harrison Lake, from Michael Kluckner's Vanishing British Columbia. Built in 1905, the church has been called "a masterpiece of hand-crafted folk art."

  • Vanishing British Columbia 02

    Doukhobor houses on May Creek Road near Grand Forks. Few of the communal Doukhobor settlements remain, despite their importance in B.C. social history. This property is now used for "eco-camping."

  • Vanishing British Columbia 03

    At Britannia Beach, Union Steamships once brought young men to work at the huge copper mine, which is now home to a mining museum and a lingering pollution problem on the route to Squamish from Vancouver.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 04

    An old Okanagan home, which was floated to the Peachland site from Kelowna in 1904.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 05

    Powell River's Patricia Theatre, one of the rare surviving B.C. theatres of its era, and according to Powell River's Townsite Heritage Society, the oldest operating theatre business in B.C. The Patricia was designed by Henry H. Simmonds, who also designed Vancouver's Stanley Theatre.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 06

    Gas For Less on the outskirts of Lytton sure looks like heritage, and it is of a sort. After Michael Kluckner painted it in 2001, he saw it in the Jack Nicholson film The Pledge. He posted the image on his website, and then learned that the building was a movie set built from scratch.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 07

    Wong's Market at 44th and Main is one of the neighbourhood groceries created along Vancouver's original streetcar lines. It was originally the Reeve and Harding General Store, then became Blyth's Cash Grocery, and was purchased by the Fukuhara family in the 1930s. Of course, they lost the store during the Second World War internment of Japanese-Canadians. The family was billed $70 on the grounds that the cost of liquidating the store's inventory exceeded its value.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 08

    The house at 808 Gore Street, painted in 2005, from Vancouver Remembered. In the 1960s, this land was to become an eight-lane freeway. An arsonist destroyed the house this fall.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 09

    Chinatown and Gastown as they would have appeared around 1950, from Vancouver Remembered. The False Creek spur that extended under the Georgia Viaduct was filled in 1964. Artist Michael Kluckner frequently dreams of flying over the city.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 10

    A 1906-07 apartment and store, most recently the francophone Zizanie Bistro, recently demolished. The building was beloved by Michael Kluckner as a remnant of old Kitsilano/Fairview, and he painted it five or six times. This image is from Vancouver Remembered, looking down from a Granville Bridge off-ramp.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 11

    The Celtic Shipyard in Vancouver's Southlands neighbourhood, painted in 2005, from Vancouver Remembered. This year, Vancouver city council allowed the Musqueam band, which owns the site, to replace the buildings with residential development.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 12

    The only surviving house from Eburne, before it became Marpole in 1916, near Vancouver's Oak Street Bridge. The house, built by Samuel Flack in 1912 with money from a Klondike mining fortune, was painted in January 2006, a month before it was demolished.

  • Vanishing British Columbia 13

    Michael Kluckner in front of a 1905 cottage at West Eighth Avenue and Oak Street. The house was built by carpenter Charles J. Tilly, and a painting of it graces the cover of Vancouver Remembered. Charles Campbell photo.