Traces of Evidence is “An interesting pictorial showing White Rock, BC’s history, from the early beginnings as the Semiahmoo Homeland through early logging, to a thriving modern-day beach town.”
Did you know there was a boathouse on the famous White Rock Pier at one time? Speaking of the pier it looks like it has been a regular place to congregate for many decades. As you will read below, the video created a lot of questions for me which I will have to try and get answered somehow. If you know some of the answers, please feel free to comment.
The entire video is laid on a bed of nicely selected music and tasteful sound effects. If you’d like, look in YouTube notes for the music credits.
At 0:00 – 01:23 Traces of Evidence starts out paying pictorial homage to the Indigenous people who lived and still live in the area. Photos of Indigenous people are sprinkled throughout the video.
At 01:24 minutes the video starts to show the forestry that took place and shots of this are interspersed throughout the rest of the video too. There is one photo of a giant old-growth cedar which if you go for a walk in some of the local parks you will see remnants of today because the stumps still remain.
At 01:56 we begin to see photos of some of the people who moved here in the early 1900s. We see one of the first lumber mills and some of the first homes too.
03:10 – The railway eventually came to White Rock connecting the city to the U.S. and the rest of Metro Vancouver. It travels along White Rock beach where it still is today. There’s even a photo of a 1920’s food truck. I guess those have been around for a long time!
Then there are pictures of some of the first roads and a May Day celebration from 1937.
Around 6:00 minutes you will also see what appears to be the opening of The Peace Arch that is located at the Canada / U.S. border (I wonder how the lineups were back then?)
At 09:24 there are photos of school children and possibly one of the first school buildings. At 09:53 a school building is shown that Semiahmoo High Secondary would eventually be attached too for many years until it moved to 148th Street in Surrey.
At 10:59 there are photos of people in the military which makes me wonder, was there a military base in the area at one time?” and “did some of these soldiers go and fight in any of the World Wars?” Possibly World War II?
At 12:26 there are photos of Marine Drive, first called Washington Avenue, and a bus with the word “Vancouver” on it which must have taken people to and from Vancouver. What was the trip like back then?
15;15 – Apparently, there was quite a large fire at one point along Marine Drive.
Near the end of the video, we begin to White Rock resemble the way it looks today, minus the high rises. There are some photos of the Tour de White Rock, the well-known bike race that tests cyclists as they race up and down the city’s steep hill’s.
Photo: Traces of Evidence – A Pictorial History of White Rock, BC
