Ninety-five years ago, The Vancouver Sun ran “the first airplane photograph ever published of Vancouver.”

The aerial shot was taken from 500 feet above Yew and Broadway, with Kitsilano and Fairview in the foreground and downtown in the distance. In between was False Creek, which was largely obscured by plumes of smoke from its many lumber mills and industries.

“Despite the fact that many people think that there are too many vacant lots here, the Terminal City looks like a pretty populous sort seen from the observer’s seat of an aerial bus,” said a story that ran with the photo.

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The aerial was taken by Stuart Thomson, one of early Vancouver’s most prominent photographers. It was shot from the rear seat of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane piloted by Captain Ernie Hoy, a First World War ace.

Hoy flew Thomson around the Lower Mainland, from North Vancouver to Richmond. Thomson took 15 aerial photos that are now in the Vancouver Archives.

One is a wonderful shot of downtown from high above Denman and Georgia, back when the West End was all houses, the Coal Harbour waterfront was industrial and the tallest buildings in town were the old Hotel Vancouver and the Sun Tower.

Another aerial shows Hastings Park, with the original Vancouver Exhibition buildings and the fair’s first roller coaster.

Thomson took several aerials of waterfront scenes, from North Van to East Van, the First Narrows to the Second Narrows. He photographed Minoru Park in Richmond, the Coal Harbour entrance to Stanley Park and Capilano Canyon.

All can be viewed on the Vancouver Archives website, which has digitized 5,444 Thomson photos.

Thomson was born in Hampstead, England, and grew up in Australia. He immigrated to Vancouver in 1910 and got a job working on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Thomson had dabbled in photography in Australia, and a co-worker in Vancouver talked Thomson into spending $60 on an 8-by-10 Empire State view camera.

He quickly established himself as an industrious photographer. His Sun obituary said his motto was “anything, anytime, anywhere.”

“In the 1920s he took pictures for all three Vancouver newspapers,” said his longtime business partner June Sherman.

“In the ‘30s he was the official PNE photographer. He covered the building of UBC from when it was just a hole in the ground. Waterfront fires, scenic or picnics, he shot them all.”

Thomson was a commercial photographer, not an artist. But his photos of old trucks and baseball teams really give a sense of his era. He died March 10, 1960, at the age of 78.

The Sun purchased Thomson’s archive in 1954 and frequently ran his old photos on page five of the paper. In 1963, the paper donated 6,000 Thomson prints and negatives to the Archives, which forms the basis of its collection. The Vancouver Public Library has another 2,126 Thomson photos in its collection, 617 of which have been digitized.

The pilot Thomson flew with May 27, 1919, would complete the first flight over the Rocky Mountains on Aug. 7, 1919. The Curtiss JN-4 plane Captain Ernie Hoy flew was popularly known as a “Jenny,” although the Canadian version was known as a “Canuck.”

In 1918, the United States put the Jenny biplane on a stamp. A printing error caused a sheet of 100 stamps to be printed with the biplane flying upside down, which came to be known as the “Inverted Jenny.” An Inverted Jenny sold for $977,000 US in 2007.

You can find the Thomson aerials by searching the Vancouver Archives website at: http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/search/advanced?f=&so0=and&sq0=Thomson+1919+aerial&sf0=

You can browse the entire Thomson collection here.

jmackie@vancouversun.com

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