Villa Maris

The Villa Maris (aka the Pink Palace) and its sibling the Shoreland Apartments have been West Vancouver mainstays since the 1960s. Like neon, the BowMac sign and certain examples of municipally-funded public art, affection for the Villa ebbs and flows.

The architects who were so influential in bringing modernism to Vancouver (Arthur Erickson, Abraham Rogatnick, Ronald Thom, et al.) would have loathed the New Sensualism that gave us the Villa Maris; but there are many my age (late-born Boomers) who saw not aberration but kitschy fun. I for one love the way the Villa lights up as the summer sun approaches the setting position. Always from a distance though. 

Yesterday, while on a break from my duties as a pallbearer, I found myself driving along West Van's Bellevue Avenue, when suddenly I was at the foot of the Villa. Quite a sight, all that pink, but for something so radiant, I was shocked by how rickety it felt. A metonym for West Vancouver? A place that looks great from a distance?

At bottom is a historic aerial view of West Vancouver, specifically the Great Northern Cannery, now a Federal Fisheries research station.

Great Northern served as a location for James Clavell's 1962 film The Sweet and the Bitter, while Bill Millerd, the great-great grandson of Great Northern's founder, Francis Millerd, is responsible for turning the Arts Club Theatre on Seymour Street into a multi-venue juggernaut, a transition that mirrored the shift of the provincial economic base from primary resource extraction (forestry, fishing and mining) to tertiary or service-based industries (real estate speculation, drug dealing and cruise ship minstrel shows).

In November, Intellect Press will release another in its series of cities-as-film-locations, this one focused on Vancouver (Rachel Walls, editor). For my part, I have contributed a 1000-word essay on Clavell's film, which was also shot at The Electra (formerly the B.C. Hydro Building) and Lighthouse Park. Other contributors include Amy Kazymerchyk, Diane Burgess, Elvy Del Bianco and Colin Browne, who will provide an "Introduction".