I just found this thing in a box; it originally came from my grandfather’s house. It’s the Ikon Quick-Frost Glass Chiller and Sterilizer. It has competing “Made in Canada” and “Australian Made” labels (the Australian one is the round sticker inside the plastic unit, with the red boomerang; while the can reads Made in Canada). I’m going to try out this device and will report. Are these illegal now? They must be dicey in more than one way, ecologically speaking. Below is an for it in the December 6, 1966 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald! It came in woodgrain! The 60s were so hilarious.

I’ve always loved this building. It’s part of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and was built in 1966 to house the icebreaker St. Roch. You can just see the top of the mast through the upper window. Unfortunately the ship now requires better climate control for its conservation, and the whole museum may be moved to a new museum in North Vancouver. City Hall, please don’t knock this building down to remove the ship. It’s unnecessary. And please don’t knock the 1958 portion of the museum down either; the city has lost quite enough architecture – and any sense of its own history – already. In the photo at bottom, the white and yellow submersible is a NASA vessel called the Ben Franklin.

UPDATE: Thank you to the Vancouver Archives for the information that this building, and the neighbouring 1958 portion of the museum, were both designed by well-known Vancouver architect CBK Van Norman, who also designed the Burrard Building. (Excellent history of that building is in the Vancouver Heritage Society’s pdf brochure and map of downtown modernism here and also see docomomobc.) I hope the fact that it’s a Van Norman helps to prevent the demolition of the museum, though his Canada Customs Building was demolished in 1993.

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Superb. A rival to both Montreal and Munich. Thanks to the Canadian Design Resource for pointing this out.

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More from Vancouver Art in the Sixties. This electronic sound work is called Floating Mushroom, by Dennis Vance, September 30, 1969. Photo by Michael de Courcy. Nice piece and nice pea coat. From the site:

“Floating Mushroom” was a floating steel form containing sound-generating equipment that responded to movement on the shore. This intervention took place at Lost Lagoon in Vancouver. L-R: Ian Ridgeway, Gerry Gilbert, Galen Ridgeway, Heidi Ridgeway, Kita Ridgeway, Dallas Selman, Dennis Vance, Glenn Toppings.

Rita Pavone.

Thanks, Keith.

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to show, to give, to make it be there: Expanded Literary Practices in Vancouver: 1954 – 1969.

If you are in Vancouver, this exhibition spanning Vancouver art and literature will be worth seeing. It runs January 9 – March 13 and its opening reception will be held at Geoffrey Farmer’s amazing project space Every Letter In The Alphabet (pdf – or see Facebook). Painting above is Michael Morris’ The Problem of Nothing, 1966.

The show is curated by writer Michael Turner at the SFU Gallery:

Taking its title from the opening editorial poem of bill bissett’s debut issue of blewointment magazine, this exhibition seeks to recognize an interdisciplinary literary activity that emerged in Vancouver in the 1950s, beginning with the collagist fiction of Malcolm Lowry, and proceeding through the 1960s in magazines, exhibitions, performances, and through the mails. The work in the exhibition, including bookworks, photography, music, paintings, sculptural assemblage, drawings and epistles, is contrasted with the “straight” literary modernism of the TISH newsletter and the “Georgia Straight Writing Supplement.” It is further contextualized by video screenings of Léonard Forest’s film In Search of Innocence (1963), which bissett addresses in his opening editorial, as well as Maurice Embra’s 1964 film portrait of bissett, Strange Grey Day This (1966). This exhibition is curated by SFU’s 2009-2010 Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence, Michael Turner.

The exhibition includes bill bissett, Tom Burrows, Judith Copithorne, Stan Douglas, Maxine Gadd, Gerry Gilbert, Ray Johnson, Roy Kiyooka, Gary Lee-Nova, Glenn Lewis, Malcolm Lowry, Michael Morris, Al Neil, Ian Wallace.

Above, front window of the Every Letter In The Alphabet space at 1875 Powell Street, Vancouver, where the show’s opening reception will be held.