The 1970s was a decade of remarkable change and growth, both for the world at large and Vancouver in particular, and photographers were there to capture big and small moments along the way.
Now a new exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver, featuring 400 images from the Vancouver Sun archives, is telling the story of how Vancouver grew into the global city we know today.
Titled “Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from the Decade that Changed the City,” the exhibit features images that capture everything from huge political protests to everyday life in the city, along with artifacts from the museum’s collection that further define the period.
As the exhibit’s guest curator Kate Bird tells it, the 1970s was one of the most vital decades in Vancouver’s history.
“It was the decade, in a way, that Vancouver grew up,” said Bird. “From 1970, as this kind of sleepy resource town, it became poised to be a global city. It changed a great deal.”
Bird had come across these photographs firsthand as a research librarian for the Vancouver Sun. Since retired, she compiled the book of the same name which the exhibit is based on. In both cases, the process of whittling down hundreds of thousands of images into just a couple hundred finalists was exhaustive, and exhausting.
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“It could have been all about hippies and what people think of as the ’70s, but that’s not all that was going on.”
A walk through the exhibit shows that variety. Snapshots of anonymous citizens showcasing the fashions of the day sit next to pictures of Jane Fonda and Margaret Trudeau taking part in protest marches. Visitors are reminded of the time when Muhammad Ali came to town to fight Canadian boxer George Chuvalo. And future Vancouver landmarks such as the Granville Mall (established in 1974), the Harbour Centre (opened in 1977) and the Granville Island Market (1979) all spring up throughout the decade.
WATCH: Global’s Linda Aylesworth gets a guided tour of the new exhibit “Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from the Decade that Changed the City” from guest curator Kate Bird.
Despite periods of social and political unrest – Greenpeace and the Society Protecting Environmental Conservation (SPEC) were both founded in the 1970s, while protests against fluoride-contaminated drinking water and nuclear testing on Amchitka disrupted daily life – the decade is mostly thought of in hindsight as a positive and exciting time to be alive, and one that paved the way for today’s world.
“I think people have a soft spot for the ’70s for many reasons, like the fashion, and some pivotal moments that still define us today,” said Viviane Gosselin, senior curator for the Museum of Vancouver. “For example, this idea that you can take to the street and share your discontent through protest is something that defines us as Vancouverites, and something that shaped the ’70s very much in general, so we wanted to feature that.”
For Bird, who describes her own experience in the ’70s as “happy” and “a really fun time for me,” it’s a chance to let these images get the recognition they deserve, and paint a picture of Vancouver that was threatening to be forgotten.
“A few years ago I was going through these images, and I thought, ‘Man, these are so fabulous, we should see them and get them out there more,'” said Bird. “They’re used in the paper occasionally, or in a photo gallery on the website, but it’s another thing to take it from there into a book form or an exhibition, to see this huge range of images that are part of our legacy here.”
“Vancouver in the Seventies” runs from Oct. 13 to Feb. 26 at the Museum of Vancouver.
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