Yaletown Tour

 I am a supporter of Heritage Vancouver!  There, I've said it...I've come out of the closet.  Heritage Vancouver is actually an old pal of mine, we once almost got me involved in a heritage house in Mole Hill - that's part of the West End, a site saved by resident activists.  If it had taken I would be operating a B&B Museum and Tea Room!  Wouldn't that be fun?

I was invited by my friend Arlene - I call her Arlenela and she calls me Evanala, which pretty much means we are special people.  And you'd have to be special to be invited to a walking tour of Yaletown.  The tour started out in the old Round House, part of the Canadian Pacific Railyards in Yaletown, named after Yale, British Columbia - you know there is more to tell, but I'm not going to.  If you are interested contact Heritage Vancouver www.heritagevancouver.org/‎, they will have all the answers.  The Round House was where the locomotives were repaired - look for the photo of the three garage doors, the locomotives would be driven onto a piece of railway that would spin around and then the loco. would be off loaded and driven into the garage - repaired and then back to work.

Yaletown is a busy section of Vancouver and I didn't realize how much planning went into it.  I just thought it grew organically from warehouse and streets with rail lines to a community of over 10,000 people.  When I was a teenager my Mother used to drive through this area as a short cut to get to our apartment on Beach Avenue.  I remember a couple of saw mills, bumpy roads, closed roads and fierce looking workers not appreciating the invasion of the lime green Toyota Corolla stationwagen - with a hatch back!  Then a decade and a half later there were some clubs down in this area and then a few years later than that we had Expo 86 and the whole area seemed to come alive but as soon as it did it died again and was kind of sad place for about 8 or 10 years and then in the early 1990s the community we know as Yaletown popped up.

If you are interested in some pretty good eats like Cioppinos - famous Italian Seafood, or BlueWater Cafe, Minami - according to Arlene, the best Japanese restaurant in Vancouver, Opus Bar - stylin' drinks, Rodney's Oyster Bar - fun and noisy and fun....did I mention that?, Yaletown Brewing Company - we make beer in Vancouver!  Oh, there are more and more.  And there is nice shopping - check out www.yaletowninfo.com for lots more information - anything from clothes to Minis.

The tour was about 90 long and was $12.  They do tours of the West End, Gastown/Japan Town and various other places but mainly Heritage Vancouver is the force behind preserving the earlier years of Vancouver.  I'm proud to to be a supporter. And I'm so glad Arlene asked me out!

This is a safe in an old warehouse building now used for offices.

These groovy houses would have been built after the great fire in 1886 and before my house was built in 1906. Very Victorian wouldn't you say?

Not the best photo of either the boxy building below which has been around for 100 years or the highrise which is considerably newer, but this marks the Western border of Yaletown. The street is Hamilton.

Stopped by Chintz & Co to look at some fabric for a new room I am going to do in the fall. And there was a stack of cook books by Sylvia Main, the host and chef at Fairholme Manor in Victoria...planning a trip to Victoria and want great lodgings and perfection on a plate...check out www.fairholmemanor.com/