For twenty-four years the same fierce socialist represented Burnaby in the provincial legislature. He is remembered, if at all, as the father of a man who nearly became premier. His own monument is quieter: a fourteen-storey tower in Edmonds, still full of people who need a cheap place to grow old.
Artom Butenko · 6 min read
The trail Dugald Patterson cleared across his homestead became an avenue; the wooden tram platform he built became a SkyTrain station. The man himself left far less behind than the places that carry his name.
Artom Butenko · 5 min read
On 24 July 2007, an excavator bucket on Inlet Drive punctured a crude-oil pipeline that had been in the ground since 1953. The cause traced back to a drawing made in 1957.
Artom Butenko · 6 min read
On 23 April 1988, minutes into the grand opening of a new Save-On-Foods at Station Square, a section of rooftop parking deck fell into the produce department. Nobody died, and the reasons why still shape how buildings get approved in British Columbia.
Artom Butenko · 6 min read
Joe Sakic turns 57 on July 7, born in Burnaby to Croatian immigrants who spoke no English at home. He is the anchor of a small, verifiable list of people who actually started here — and a correction to two names the city keeps claiming by mistake.
Artom Butenko · 5 min read
On the shore off Barnet Road, a few poured-concrete piers are all that is left of a mill town that had its own school, post office and telephone exchange — a settlement of some 350 workers that voted to strike in 1931 and never reopened.
Artom Butenko · 5 min read
Behind a plain door at the Harry Jerome Sports Centre is a wooden track banked at 47 degrees — a near-vertical wall you can walk up to and touch. It is the only indoor velodrome west of Ontario, and almost nobody driving past knows it is there.
Ilarion Bohatyrov · 4 min read
He was the first architect to live and work in Burnaby, and he wrote two books that trained the profession in England. His finest houses still stand around Deer Lake, one of them serving dinner most nights of the week. His own name has slipped almost entirely off them.
Ilarion Bohatyrov · 5 min read