Photo: Ghost of Granville Past

For ninety years it was there, hidden, and no one was the wiser until the demolition of the building at the southwest corner of Granville and Robson brought one of Vancouver's ghost signs back into the light. Back in 1922, just before the building that's now rubble was built, some enterprising promoter used its neighbor as a billboard to advertise the upcoming Harold Lloyd comedy film Grandma's Boy, which was to start showing across the street at the Capitol Theatre on October 2nd.

When that sign was painted, the establishment of Vancouver was still within living memory. Since it was bricked away, the whole city has changed around it... the whole world has changed around it, and it won't be long for the twenty-first century; despite the sign's value as a historical curiosity, there's a new tower to be built there. Nevertheless, it's in things like this sign - ordinary, everyday things, things that people at the time never intended or expected to last - that history really lives.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).