In a city that once rivalled Las Vegas for neon lights, one museum is making sure Vancouver’s vibrant history isn’t forgotten.
That’s the idea behind “Lighting Up the Past: Vancouver’s Neon Signs” — the latest in a series of ‘talk and tea’ events at the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum in Point Grey.
Photographer Gord McCaw will take audiences on a guided tour of dozens of the city’s iconic neon signs from the 1950s and ’60s.
McCaw points to reports at the time that claimed there were 18,000 neon signs in Vancouver.
“We actually had more signs at one point than Las Vegas did, and rivalled Shanghai, China, for just sheer numbers of signs… In a rainy climate like ours, there’s nothing quite like that shimmering, multicoloured light on the wet street,” McCaw told 1130 NewsRadio.
He says his talk will cover the roughly 60 vintage neon signs he’s been photographing since 1984.
“Most of those I shot in the 80s, some as late as into the early 2000s. I would say probably close to 90 per cent of those have now disappeared off the landscape.”
“Lighting Up the Past: Vancouver’s Neon Signs” starts this Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum.
Admission is $25, and hopeful attendees can register online.
“They’re going to see some signs that many people probably haven’t seen in maybe years or even decades,” McCaw promises, “And learn something about the history of neon.”