Cold Case Vancouver delves into fifty years of some of Vancouver's most baffling unsolved murders. In 1953, two little boys were found murdered in the city's storied Stanley Park, and who remain unidentified to this day. In 1975, a country singer was murdered just as she was on the verge of an amazing career. And in 1994, Nick Masee, a retired banker with connections to the renegade Vancouver Stock Exchange, disappeared along with his wife Lisa, their bodies never found. Cold Case Vancouver is an intriguing whodunit for true-crime aficionados and armchair detectives. Eve Lazarus's previous books include Sensational Vancouver. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A book with many images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
When forty-year-old Esther Castellani died a slow and agonizing death in 1965, the official cause was at first undetermined. The day after Esther’s funeral, her husband, Rene, packed up his girlfriend, Lolly; his daughter, Jeannine; and Lolly’s son, Don, in the company car and took off for Disneyland. If not for the doggedness of the doctor who treated Esther, Rene, then a charismatic and handsome radio personality, would have been free to marry Lolly, who was the station’s pretty twentysomething receptionist. Instead, Rene was charged with capital murder for poisoning his wife with arsenic-laced milkshakes. Murder by Milkshake is the compelling story of the Castellanis, and of their daughter, Jeannine, who was eleven at the time of her mother’s murder and who clung to her father’s innocence, even committing perjury during his trial. Rigorously researched, and based on dozens of interviews with family, friends, and co-workers, Murder by Milkshake documents the sensational case that kept a city spellbound, while providing a snapshot of the Mad Men–esque social and political realities of the 1960s. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
Produced in conjunction with the website Vancouver Is Awesome, this book collects stories and photos about the people, places, events, and phenomena that collectively have infused Vancouver with a distinct flavor and flair and which laid the foundation for the eclectic city that is consistently named one of the world's top tourist destinations. From vaudeville to beatniks, Rudyard Kipling to Hunter S. Thompson, violent squirrels to train-hopping dogs, Vancouver Was Awesome is an entertaining, informative, and at times jaw-dropping tour of one city's awesome past. Lani Russwurm is an historian who runs the blog Past Tense Vancouver.
Literary Nonfiction. Travel Writing. Includes a Walking Tour map of historic Strathcona and Chinatown. Winner, City of Vancouver Heritage Award (2015). #1 BC Bestseller List. BC Books for Everybody pick. Recommended by Peter Darbyshire for Non-Fiction of 2014. History books typically show Vancouver as a pioneer city built on forestry, fisheries, and tourism, but behind the snow-capped mountains and rain forests, the Vancouver of the first half of the 20th century was a hotbed of civic corruption. The top job at the Vancouver Police Department was a revolving door with the average tenure for a police chief of just four years. In those early years Detective Joe Ricci's beat was the opium dens and gambling joints of Chinatown, while Lurancy Harris the first female cop in Canada patrolled the high-end brothels of Alexander Street. Later, proceeds from rum running produced some of the city's most iconic buildings, cops became robbers, and the city reeled from a series of unsolved murders. But Vancouver is more than bookies, brothels, and bootleggers the city also produced legendary women, world- class entertainers, and ground-breaking architecture. SENSATIONAL VANCOUVER is a fully illustrated popular history book about Vancouver's famous and infamous, the ordinary and the extraordinary, filtered through the houses in which they lived. SENSATIONAL VANCOUVER covers legendary women including Elsie MacGill, Phyllis Munday, Nellie Yip Quong and Joy Kogawa; high-end brothels, unsolved murders, and the homes and buildings of artists, architects and entertainers including Frederick Varley, Arthur Erickson, and Bryan Adams. "Lazarus is an enthusiastic researcher, a quirky writer of prose, and an energetic amateur historian in somewhat the same manner as the late Chuck Davis. Her book jumps around like an antipodean marsupial but it's great fun particularly when it deals with dope peddlers, hardworking bootleggers, disgraced mayors, and corrupt chief constables." The Georgia Straight "SENSATIONAL VANCOUVER provides lively social history, appeals to a broad readership, and adds to the growing number of enlightening books about our city's past." BC History "SENSATIONAL VANCOUVER is lavishly illustrated with photographs of people and places, and a map makes it easy to tie things together. This book is filled with great stories, and they are short, so it's easy to dip in here and there as the mood strikes. As a package, they make for fascinating reading." Times Colonist (reviewed by Dave Obee, Editor-in- Chief of the Times Colonist and author of The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia)"
From Hudson's Bay outpost to gold rush fever and coal and lumber barons to political scandals Island-style to the mighty Douglas fir and Pacific salmon and profiles of Emily Carr, Cougar Annie and the Dunsmuir clan, no book is more comprehensive than the Vancouver Island Book of Everything. No book is more fun! Well-known Islanders weigh in on their favourite things about Vancouver Island. Robert Bateman shares his five most inspiring island locales; Michael Halleran tells us the five graves you simply must visit at Ross Bay Cemetery; Ian Vantreight tells us his five Island weather complaints; history teacher and Vancouver Island digital archive editor Patrick Dunae gives us his five essential Vancouver Island reads; professor Barbara Helem Whittington gives us her five favorite memories of growing up on the island. From politics to the country's best weather to the origins behind place names, Island slang, serial killers and the First People...it's all here! Whether you are a lifelong resident or visiting for the first time, there's no more complete book about Vancouver Island. If you love Vancouver Island, you'll love the Vancouver Island Book of Everything!
Heralded internationally as "Canada's Sherlock Holmes," John Vance was an innovative and groundbreaking forensic investigator. Over 42 years beginning in the 1930s, Vance helped police detectives in British Columbia to determine murder from suicide as well as solve hit-and-runs, safecrackings, and some of the most sensational murder cases of the twentieth century.
Amsterdam Exposed tells the true one-of-a-kind story of an innocent exchange student who moves to Amsterdam hoping to write a book about the red light district and everything that follows. "A provocative, enlightening, humorous, and impressively executed guide to Amsterdam's twilight world." -- Kirkus Reviews
'At Home with History' is a collection of real life stories that bring to life the glamorous and not-so-glamorous social histories of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver-stories of brothels and bootleggers, secret rooms, and Shakespearean-style murders. An Italian family survives the depression by selling booze and sandwiches from their eastside home. A Shaughnessy mansion headquarters the Klu Klux Klan and then a children's hospice. A secret radio room is uncovered during renovations. Every home has a social history and a genealogy that tells a tremendous amount about the history of the times and offers up a sense of place. Current home-owners are only temporary custodians, part of the chain in the ongoing narrative of the house. People change, styles change, colours change, cars change, but through it all, the house remains a central fixture and the structure for the stories in 'At Home with History'."Want to know which Shaughnessy mansion was a former Ku Klux Klan headquarters or which Strathcona house guitarist Jimi Hendrix once lived in? You'll find the answers in 'At Home With History'. - The Vancouver Courier
Revised and updated edition of the Globe and Mail and Amazon bestselling book “If you want to understand war in the 21st century, read this to get part of the story.” — Robert Spalding, US Brigadier General (retired) “This book reads like a thriller and is stranger than fiction. Gripping, racy and exciting, it is difficult to put down. A tale of gambling, narcotics, tycoons, criminal gangs and Communists. And the shocking part is that it’s not a novel, it is all true.” — Benedict Rogers, CEO Hong Kong Watch In 1982 three of the most powerful men in Asia met in Hong Kong. They would decide how Hong Kong would be handed over to the People’s Republic of China and how Chinese business tycoons Henry Fok and Li Ka-Shing would help Deng Xiaoping realize the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic and global ambitions. That meeting would not only change Vancouver but the world. Billions of dollars in Chinese investment would soon reach the shores of North America’s Pacific coast. B.C. government casinos became a tool for global criminals to import deadly narcotics into Canada and launder billions of drug cash into Vancouver real estate. And it didn't happen by accident. A cast of accomplices — governments hungry for revenue, casino, and real estate companies with ties to shady offshore wealth, professional facilitators including lawyers and bankers, an aimless RCMP that gave organized crime room to grow — all combined to cause this tragedy. There was greed, folly, corruption, conspiracy, and wilful blindness. Decades of bad policy allowed drug cartels, first and foremost the Big Circle Boys — powerful transnational narco-kingpins with ties to corrupt Chinese officials, real estate tycoons, and industrialists — to gain influence over significant portions of Canada’s economy. Many looked the other way while B.C.’s primary industry, real estate, ballooned with dirty cash. But the unintended social consequences are now clear: a fentanyl overdose crisis raging in major cities throughout North America and life spans falling for the first time in modern Canada, and a runaway housing market that has devastated middle-class income earners. This story isn’t just about real estate and fentanyl overdoses, though. Sam Cooper has uncovered evidence that shows the primary actors in so-called “Vancouver Model” money laundering have effectively made Canada’s west coast a headquarters for corporate and industrial espionage by the CCP. And these ruthless entrepreneurs have used Vancouver and Canada to export their criminal model to other countries around the world including Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, Cooper finds that the RCMP’s 2019 arrest of its top intelligence official, Cameron Ortis, raises many frightening questions. Could Chinese transnational criminals and state actors targeting Canada’s industrial and technological crown jewels have gained protection from the Mounties? Could China and Iran have insight into Canada's deepest national security secrets and influence on investigations? Ortis had oversight of many investigations into transnational money laundering networks and insight into sensitive probes of suspects seeking to undermine Canada’s democracy and infiltrate the United States, according to the evidence Cooper has found. Wilful Blindness is a powerful narrative that follows the investigators who refused to go along with institutionalized negligence and corruption that enabled the Vancouver Model, with Cooper drawing on extensive interviews with the whistle-blowers; thousands of pages of government and court documents obtained through legal applications; and large caches of confidential material available exclusively to Cooper. The book culminates with a shocking revelation showing how deeply Canada has been compromised, and what needs to happen, to get the nation back on track with its “Five Eyes” allies.
