Haunting British Columbia by Mike McCardell

Author:Mike McCardell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: British Columbia, History, Anecdotes
ISBN: 9781550179569
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Published: 2021-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Peter Pantages

It was so different in those days. Can you imagine East Hastings without the drugs and decay and crime and overwhelming ugliness? I wish you did not have to imagine it, but if you were alive a hundred years ago you would have seen sights that would have made you proud to be alive, especially in this city.

Restaurants squeezed between clothing shops and newsstands. Crowds on the street all dressed for work or dining or shopping and streetcars pushed through the Model T traffic, mostly jitney cabs that would take you home for a nickel.

And there were the theatres, many of them, but especially the Pantages.

There were no bad seats in the house. The sightlines were so good that you could see everything from anywhere and the acoustics, well just imagine in this age of blasting mega speakers that a simple voice talking from the stage could be heard in the back row of the balcony. That is if everyone was quiet, and they usually were—except when John L. was there.

It was next door to the Carnegie Library where half the kids in the city did their homework and waited while their mothers went shopping at Woodward’s.

The theatre was built in 1907 by Alexander Pantages, an immigrant from Greece at a time when many Greeks were coming here. The stage held song and dance routines and some plays. But this is not about the entertainment but about a kid who worked there.

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