This is one list you don’t want your name on.
Crosscut, a blog out of Seattle, released it’s Heritage Turkeys of the Year list, what it calls “who did most to raze, wreck, uproot, neglect and generally trash our historic treasures in 2011”
Metro Vancouver made the cut twice.
The Pantages for demolition of historic theatre and “Vancouver’s Highway to hell” for “historic cannery demolition, threat to archaeological and burial grounds.’
The South Fraser Perimeter Road
Our “Highway to hell”—Crosscut aptly calls it a “car wreck”—is the $1.2 billion South Fraser Perimeter Road section, a four-lane highway that hugs the Fraser River’s shoreline from Delta to Surrey and cuts through BC’s oldest archeological site, aboriginal burial grounds and has already taken out the 1896 Glenrose fishing cannery, as well as a shitload of trees.
Heritage Vancouver called the destruction of the Pantages Theatre one of “demolition by neglect and by indecision” and a huge needless loss to the heritage of our city. Located at Hastings and Main, the 1908 theatre was left to rot for years, and finally torn down in December, its 750,000 unique orange bricks sold to a developer in Annacis Island and broken bits going to roadfill. Owned by Alexander Pantages, the Vancouver theatre was the second oldest in a chain of about 30 vaudeville theatres across North America. Alexander (actually his name was Pericles, but he called himself after Alexander the Great) settled in Seattle in 1902, but a huge clan of his relatives lived in Vancouver. Alexander’s nephew Peter, made his own stamp in town, founding the Peter Pan Café on Granville Street and the annual Polar Bear Swim.
Peter Pantage's cafe -- May 1934
If you’d like to see our heritage while it’s still standing, you can sign up for Heritage Vancouver’s annual bus tour of the Top 10 Endangered Sites for 2012 on May 5. Tickets are $30 or $25 for members.
