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VANCOUVER HAS TREES !

by Monika Forberger

“It’s an evil, evil city!” I smiled to myself recalling the dire warning my father had received from his colleague on learning our family was leaving Calgary to move to Vancouver.

Yet, here we were, mother and I, on a bright morning in April 1956, walking out of the CPR depot on Cordova Street for our first glimpse of the big city that would be our new home. The trip on the CPR was exhilarating and we met a lot of helpful Canadians who were probably surprised, if not shocked, when my mother described our Canadian odyssey, which had started with our arrival at Pier 21 in Halifax in 1949. Again, I was excited about a new city, another new home, and the continuation of our new Canadian life after six years on the bald prairie.

Monika Forberger, 1960s Vancouver nightclub coatcheck girl!

I don’t remember how we came to be in our furnished room at 1754 Barclay Street so quickly, but I am certain my German mother’s incredible organizational talents had been at work.

The West End was the centre of the city then, as much as it is today, but it was a much more sedate neighbourhood, with hundreds of old two and three-storey homes along tree-lined streets.

Ah, the trees. They were what had brought us to Vancouver. After my parents’ first-ever holiday in Canada the year before in this beautiful city, my mother had returned home and announced, “They have trees there. We’re moving.” And so we did.

My Hungarian father had stayed behind at his job at Taylor, Pearson and Carson in Calgary, and would be joining us as quickly as he could get a transfer with the company to their Vancouver warehouse on Venables Street. My father was a warehouseman at the company, which sold auto repair parts. Both my older brothers were working for the City of Calgary and would be joining us as soon as we were settled.

Within days my mother found work at the Aristocratic Diner on Granville and Broadway, and I registered for school at King George, which was then on Burrard Street and Nelson, where today’s Sheraton Wall Centre stands.

My first Vancouver adventures were to explore all the streets in the West End. Streets that had names. In Calgary everything was methodically laid out in numbered streets, except for the elegant and expensive homes high on the hill overlooking the city.

I walked and walked, memorizing the street names from Stanley Park going east. Chilco, Gilford, Denman, Bidwell, Cardero and on. Then from Georgia Street going south. Robson, Alberni, Barclay, Haro, Nelson. To me it was all so romantic. I made up stories of the people I imagined lived in the houses I passed on my walks, and marvelled at the proliferation of flowers and decorative bushes in each yard. What amazed me was that houses in Vancouver were being heated by sawdust, and almost every backyard in the West End would have a huge heap of the wood-scented heating supply. Of course it created an incredible amount of pollution in the city, but apparently it wasn’t a problem for Vancouver’s citizens at the time. It did make for some extremely foggy winter days, much like the famous London Pea Soupers. I recall one wintry November morning when it took me more than twenty minutes to navigate my way from our home on Harwood and Burrard to Burrard and Nelson, something which for me never took more than seven or eight minutes.

Our first home was on the third floor of an older house, just a stone’s throw from the shops and the Bay Cinema on Denman Street. There were interesting restaurants specializing in Italian and Chinese cuisines, but no German or Hungarian eateries, which was the food I knew best because of my heritage. There was a fascinating array of corner grocery stores run by Chinese owners. Goodbye to WASP-land, and hello to the Canadian mosaic. There was so much to learn, and I wanted to learn it all.

On my return from high school, I would often sit at our window and count the cars driving by on Denman. It was a game my brother and I had played often in Calgary, seeing how many different makes of cars we could identify. It was easier then as there wasn’t much choice, definitely no Japanese or Korean cars, and only the occasional VW Beetle.

School was certainly different. King George Secondary at that time was definitely an “inner city” school. One of my classmates carried a knife hidden under his pants leg, tucked into his boot. He terrified me, and I am sure that was what he meant to do. Later I discovered, to my dismay, that one my classmates was a call girl. Yet I made friends, usually after school at the ice cream parlour across Burrard Street.

My first summer in Vancouver’s West End was idyllic. Days spent at English Bay, and far too many hours at the English Bay Café, which had pinball machines. I was hooked. One nickel usually got me at least an hour of playing time, until one day the owner stopped me and said I wasn’t allowed to play any more. Apparently I was playing too well and he wasn’t making any money out of the machine.

That summer I met other students who didn’t live in the West End, but who made the beach and my neighbourhood their summer home. My best friend today was one of them. A group of us used to gather just by the beach house and spend our days lying on the sand, or heading into Stanley Park to go square dancing at Ceperley Park.

At the start of the summer my father had arrived, and we moved from our one-room at 1754 Barclay to our first family home at 1019 Harwood Street, just off Burrard Street. We rented the second floor of an old house from a woman whose husband had been killed in the war. I was never sure she approved of or even liked my parents, but it was a great new home.

I found part-time work at the Safeway on Burrard and Davie Streets. I lied about my age, as I was only 14, but tall for my age. After a couple of weeks of bagging groceries I was promoted to a cashier’s position, working Friday nights and Saturdays. Stores in the city were closed on Sunday. We had to arrive for work early to memorize all the prices on the items that were on sale each week.

For years I remembered a lot of those prices, including nine cents for a can of Carnation evaporated milk.