A 1919 advertisement in School Days magazine.

The information has been gleaned from thousands of publications, documents, and photographs dating back to more than 125 years ago. A huge range of material has been researched for this project, including exhibition catalogues, personal correspondence, post cards, school annuals, historical newspapers, magazines, and journals, City and Provincial Directories, immigration records, vital statistics for births, deaths and marriages, and archive fonds for groups such as the B.C. Society of Fine Arts and the Vancouver Art Association.

Almost all of the published compilations on artists in Canada have been cross-referenced into BC artists, including the following:
         MacDonald: Dictionary of Canadian Artists (8 volumes) (714 BC artists)
         McMann: Royal Canadian Academy of Arts – Exhibitions & Members 1880 - 1979 (334 BC artists)
         McMann: Biographical Index to Artists in Canada (1,144 BC artists)
         National Gallery of Canada: Artists in Canada 1982 (2,273 BC artists)
         BC Government: Visual Artists of BC 1977 (2,200 BC artists)
         Art Gallery of Greater Victoria: BC Women Artists (750 BC artists)
         Vancouver Public Library: BC artist clippings files (1,350 BC artists)

These references, and hundreds more, provide an encyclopaedic body of information for research into the history of visual artists of British Columbia. The project is of use to students, researchers, writers, historians, curators, gallery owners, collectors, auctioneers, appraisers, and to everyone interested in the history of BC.

A 1920 drawing by S.P. Judge in School Days magazine.

Statue of Capt. Vancouver at Vancouver City Hall by Carlos Sergison Marega

A fully functioning hotel last November ....

This thing is very good at crunching concrete.

Guess which building is going to be smashed down next? ALL OF THEM!!!

There goes the peace and quiet for hundreds of residents, from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., six days a week.

Meanwhile across the street, the insects eat ...

If this was art I could probably sell it for a million ...

"Say goodbye mountain view, folks." (how high will this thing go?)

Anyway, that's pretty much the neighbourhood report for the summer. At least there's a civic election coming up. If anyone can figure out what any of the nominees will actually do if they get elected, please let me know. I'd vote for the woman advocating the removal of all bike lanes, but I'm one of the lawless and reckless pedestrians who'd be run over by drivers zooming around at freeway speed. I see the self-indulgent folks in city hall are busy passing as many zoning changes as humanly (are they really human?) possible before they get their asses kicked out. Pricks.

I would definitely support removal of all bike lanes that remove lanes of traffic on major arteries. Also all traffic calming measures, road closures, roundabouts, curb extensions, and the endless amount of crap the city has installed on city streets to fuck up drivers. We can't house the homeless, but we can build thousands of curb extensions. And keep the Georgia Viaduct, you idiots. You're insisting on putting up massive towers all over the place, each with hundreds of car parking stalls, but closing and restricting roads as much as you can at the same time. Duh?

Here's an electoral question: why do the cities of Richmond and Burnaby each have more than $$$ one billion dollars $$$ deposited in the bank, with interest being used for city improvements, and Vancouver owes money. A lot of money. Net $268 million in 2012, and a lot more now. Where does all the money go, mayor? With little more than one third the population of Vancouver, Burnaby is sitting pretty, with virtually identical construction and economic conditions as Vancouver. Richmond, with less than one third the population of Vancouver, and a far more difficult terrain for construction, has also been an able steward of their money. Why does Vancouver owe so much money? What is the difference? Where does all the money go?

Meanwhile, the whole city of Vancouver is being turned into a construction zone (south Cambie Street, south Granville Street, west Alberni Street, to name a few). If you aren't bought out and displaced, you're probably looking out the back window at a half dozen "laneway houses" being built, turning your block into another noisy, dirty construction zone over which you have no control, and doubling the population, adding to the lane traffic, the service requirements, the stray light, the new neighbours enjoying their view of your back yard. Any roads that aren't screwed by construction are being buggered up with bike lanes, such as Quebec Street from 2nd to 1st, or other nutball projects such as blocking access across Victoria Drive between Venables and Commercial.

711 Broughton, 1444 Alberni, going going gone ....

711 Broughton, 1444 Alberni, look, you can still see a bit of mountain ... some real trees ...

p.s.: when the two massive towers go up on this block in the near future, adding hundreds of new residents and their cars to the block, there's also going to be a new park! Oh boy! Where's the park? Oh no, the dipsticks are planning to close Nicola Street and put the park there ... there's no room in the re-building of an entire long city block, 1/12th of a mile, for a few feet of park ... sob, sniff. Actually, that width would simply be the sum of the current setbacks for the existing buildings on Nicola and Broughton, but there ain't no effing setbacks 'round here no mo' cuz the boys at city hall just give it all away, and keep tryin' to take more.

Goodbye to one and two storey buildings, trees, lawns, flower beds, gardens, character, history, the view, the sky ...
... the developers are coming, this street is zoned for miles of alucocrap towers like the one down the block.

For the first while I tried to do an exhibition every month or two, then extended the shows to be three or four months long. Eventually I started leaving shows up for a year or so, and swapping out an artwork or two if needed. It was perhaps a wasted opportunity to show more work by myself or others, but it seemed like it was getting to be time to wrap it up. Also, over the course of time the cafe's owners had slowly filled in either side of the exhibition wall with storage on the right, and new coolers and freezers on the left. Finally there was only about twelve feet left out of over thirty feet of wall space that I started with.

Gary Sim inaugural exhibition June - July 2004

Gary Sim, pen & ink drawings, June - July 2004 (inaugural exhibition)
John Steil, watercolour crayon drawings, August - September 2004 (see photo above)
Famous Empty Sky, Party of the Century collage, September - October 2004
Arlene Byrne, Australian landscape diptychs, October - November 2004
Eight B.C. Printmakers (Andrea Taylor, Gary Sim, Michael Kluckner, Maisie Robertson, George Kuthan,
    Gordon Kit Thorne, W.P. Weston, Pat Davitt), December 2004 to January 2005
Branislav Vrbaski, Vancouver photographs, January - March 2005
Aaron Zacharias, paintings, April - May 2005
Agatha Teodorowicz, May - July 2005
Maud Sherman, Places to Sketch, historic watercolours, July - December 2005
Christmas Group Show (Famous Empty Sky, John Steil, Gary Sim), December 2005 - January 2006
Gary Sim, B.C. Sketches, January - June 2006
Eric Allen Montgomery, Memory Boxes, June - September 2006
Gary Sim, Transient Moorage, September - November 2006
Christmas Group Show (Gary Sim, John Steil, Andrea Taylor), November - December 2006
Donna Mair Photography, City Scapes, January - March 2007
Ships Ahoy Group Show (Aubrey N. St. John Mildmay, B.C. Binning, Alistair Bell, Vahid Dastpak, Gary Sim), March - June 2007
Mountains Group Show (Ann Vicente, Bessie Fry Symons, Barbara Leighton, Maud Rees Sherman, Gary Sim), July - September 2007
Christmas Group Show (Gary Sim, John Steil, and Donna Mair), December 2007 - January 2008
Gary Sim, Vancouver Drawings, August - November 2008
Donna Mair Photography, Spring, January - May 2009
Gary Sim, Experiments in self-generating visual rules, drawings, May - July 2009
Gary Sim, On the Inland Sea, hand tinted relief prints, July - September 2009
Thom Kline, Digitally altered photographs, 2010
Gary Sim, Recent Drawings, 2011
Gary Sim & Maud Sherman, BC Scenes, 2016
Gary Sim, Recent Linocut Prints, September 2017 - June 2018

Refer also to DAILY GRIND EXHIBITIONS for more information and photographs of exhibitions.

A block away on Alberni Street, the war is almost over for this building.

Sim table at the 2014 book fair.

Sim table at the 2016 book fair.

A view of the exhibition.
Photograph courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada

An early edition of Pauline Johnson's Legends of Vancouver
Photograph courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada

Alas, this nice bit of work didn't last very long.

 
Catalogue courtesy National Gallery of Canada Library & Archives

The head of NGC Library and Archives, Cyndie Campbell, asked me a few years ago about my interest in the idea, and of course I said yes, and my large donations of the past three years probably helped this show be approved. At least two or three people at the Gallery worked on the show, partly because the exhibition was scheduled to open quite soon after the decision was made to put it on. Now I have to decide: fly to Ottawa or not?

Refer to BC ARTISTS - THE GARY SIM DONATION for more information.