SkyTrain Explorer Chapter 8: 29th Avenue Station
Yesterday during SkyTrain's weekend maintenance, I went on a walking tour of the area around 29th Avenue Station as described in SkyTrain Explorer by John Atkin. It was actually a two-part tour, but the weather was nice and I had lots of water (and didn't feel like coming back to the same area to do the second part later on) which takes the reader on both two sides of the station. I posted photos in the 29th Avenue Station section of my SkyTrain Explorer page. Some of the more interesting sights on the tour were the Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth and John Norquay Elementary School (which wasn't technically on the tour, but on the detour I took on the way back to the SkyTrain station). The photos of the houses at 3140 Kings St. and 4598 Moss St. have some longer quotes from the book about the houses in question. Wally's Burgers wasn't where Atkin said it was, or, more likely, I didn't look hard enough after being tired from 2 hours of walking in the sun with no hat. I'll seek it out later, since just the name Deluxe Chuck Wagon Burger sounds delicious.
From SkyTrain Explorer by John Atkin: "On Kings Street, the tiny house, at 3140 Kings, probably won't be long for the bulldozer, I'm sure. The little box of a house is so typical of what was built en masse in the early automobile related developments at the end of the 1930s across the United States. The style is Cape Cod and this is about as small as you can get."
From SkyTrain Explorer by John Atkin: "The large featureless house at 4598 Moss, at the lane, dates from 1912 and was home to Fred Switzer a millwright with the Hastings Shingle Manufacturing Company". That company, "the largest shingle mill in the world", operated in British Columbia and Washington State and was owned by lumberman Robert and James McNair. The McNair family had extensive interests in many aspects of the forest industry."
I went the wrong way on a train (instead of heading towards downtown, I reflexively headed east), but realized I hadn't actually been at Joyce-Collingwood Station (which is just "Joyce" in the SkyTrain announcement) before.
From SkyTrain Explorer: "These field houses were once a standard feature of most Vancouver parks."