Point Grey Village

Welcome to Spring @ Tenth & Proper! Marion Fudge loves fashion and the way beautiful designs make her feel. It’s one of the reasons why she pursued a career in fashion when she started out at a London fashion house many years ago, and what inspires her now at Tenth & Proper. I’ve been a size 14 or 16 since I hit puberty, Marion tells us, making me an outlier in the fashion world just being the size I am, which is actually a perfectly average size. This should never ...Continue reading

Vancouver 1980: The World in a City Preserved in near-perfect condition, this 25-minute film offers a stunning view into Vancouver’s past unlike any other. Showing many of the public spaces around the city that we still love today, this promotional film permits a casual view of the city as it was 41 years ago. Produced by Yaletown Productions for the City of Vancouver with sponsorship from the Greater Vancouver Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, this film features the tale...nts of many Vancouverites working in the city’s early film & television industry. If something about this film strikes you as familiar, chances are you’ve seen other works by these talented people! What would the people of Vancouver in 1980 think of the city today? #pointgreyvillage

Beautiful Things @ Quadro Photo & Framing Prepare yourself for a barrage of beautiful things when you walk in the door at Quadro. Walls and shelves are covered with gorgeous examples of their work, and samples of the materials they use when framing all the objets d’art that find their way to Quadro’s expert care. Whether it’s a Klimt or a favourite family photo, Quadro has seen it all and brings their best craftsmanship to each and every project. Tania Gudrian was just 26...Continue reading

Vancouver’s Oldest New Year’s Tradition! The ever-whimsical Polar Bear Swim on New Year’s Day at English Bay Beach might be Vancouver’s most enduring tradition, and claims suggest it is among the oldest of such events in the world! To preserve public health, the City of Vancouver has cancelled the event in its 101st year, reaching out to the public to participate in a Digital Dip to keep the spirit of the annual swim alive for the years to come! The Polar Bear Swim bec...Continue reading

Snapshots from a Vancouver Christmas! We Vancouverites have celebrated the holiday season with gusto from our earliest days. Browse our gallery for a look back at seasons passed! Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas from Point Grey Village! ... #pointgreyvillage

Tolmie & West 4th Avenue, 1945! Pictured here in September of 1945, a No. 14 streetcar makes its way eastward down West 4th Avenue! Looking north from Tolmie Street in this photo, notice that the house in the upper left corner of the photo has remained largely as it was 75 years ago. Called Narragansett Cars, Dr. Peter Moogk from UBC tells us that these streetcars were constructed with an entirely wooden body. Looking at the interior shot, taken in a different car abo...ut a year later, the wooden construction appears to dominate, even just as decorative panels. According to local legend, he tells us, mischievous boys once greased the tracks just up the street at the intersection of West 4th Avenue and Sasamat Street. As a car came down the slope from the Blanca Loop, attempting to turn south onto Sasamat Street, the greased tracks caused the streetcar to slide out of control and fall over on its side in the middle of the road! #pointgreyvillage

Custom Jewellery @ van Yperen on West 10th! Rob van Yperen sees the opportunity for art everywhere, and inspiration for elegant design in everything. His muses call to him wherever he looks whether admiring the beauty of nature or walking down a mundane city street, his mind is caught in a tireless search for form and beauty. The remarkable jewellery he forges for his customers reflects these inspired reflections, generating a wellspring of aesthetic sensibility that in...forms every creative choice. The name ‘van Yperen’ is one that has had a lasting place in our community! Born in Holland where he was a jewellery apprentice before moving to Canada in 1957, Willy van Yperen worked for a prominent Canadian jewellery store before striking out on his own in 1967. The design studio has been based out of its current location since 1974, making it one of the oldest continuously operating businesses on the street after 53 years! Having already made a name for himself, Rob van Yperen took over for his father Willy when he retired. People always want to hear that he was apprenticed by his father, he tells us, but the truth is that he largely taught himself! He was always more ‘mechanical’ in his thinking, finding his approach to jewellery to be more geometric than his father’s ‘free form’ approach. He studied a variety of different classes after High School to prepare himself for a future designing jewellery, piecing his expertise together wherever he could find it. Rob has been making jewellery since he was 11 years old! He likes to imagine that something he has made in his lifetime will last to be a thousand years old. It might not be his best work that survives, he thinks, but something surely will survive even if it’s just one earring. They won’t know it was him who made it, of course, but in a thousand years a design of his will survive somewhere. How many people can say the same of their work, he wonders? It’s one more reason why he has a kind of reverence for every design he makes every beautiful object he sends out into the world holds the possibility of this kind of resonance through the ages. Equipped with a rare full-service workshop where metals can be melted down and forged, van Yperen can manufacture custom designs right from their own design studio. Custom designed jewellery has always been van Yperen’s specialty, and accounts for most of their business. From the initial sketches to the finished piece, they guide customers through the process of creating their jewellery. If you have family jewellery made of precious metals and stones, consider a custom piece that turns all your neglected heirlooms into something you’d be excited to wear again! View some of Willy van Yperen’s work until January 3rd at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibition Modern in the Making: Post-war Craft and Design in British Columbia. #pointgreyvillage

When you buy local, your spending has 4.6 times the impact. That's an extra boost our economy really needs right now! Support your friends & neighbours who own local businesses. They keep 63% of revenue circulating in the community compared to only 14% by multinationals. Local businesses create 8X the jobs/ft2 & donate 25X more to charities. Buy local this holiday season! #BCBuyLocal #pointgreyvillage

West 10th Avenue, 1927! Then & Now! This 1927 view onto West 10th Avenue might look a little grainy, but it reveals a great deal about the history of our favourite street. Decades have passed since this photo appeared in a local brochure that circulated throughout the neighbourhood. Seizing upon its unique perspective on the history of our street, a copy was saved and mounted on the wall at van Yperen Jewellers where it remains for posterity! While we know little about... who took the photo or why, this 1927 view of our fair street looks eastward from the intersection of Sasamat Street. The ‘Home Gas’ service station on the right, where the HSBC now sits, was the site of a gas station until the 1970s. On the left side of the photo, a mysterious clover shaped sign for an unknown business hangs over the present-day site of Laura K Jewitt and Tenth & Proper. If you have any insights after looking at this photo, please share them with us in the comment section! #pointgreyvillage