Michael R. Barrick

Cathedral Place (left) has only just replaced the old Art-Deco glory of the Medical Arts Building as a monument of fibreglass, post-Modern crap (can you tell I don't like that building?) There is no Olympic countdown clock in front of the VAG. Eaton's is still Canadian and spelled with capital letters. There are no towers in Yaletown and the Expo '86 site is still a vacant wasteland while Concord Pacific and the provincial government argue over who should pay for the site remediation. And if you look at False Creek at the far right of the picture you can just make out a white smudge that is the ill-fated McBarge, which now floats derelict in the Burrard Inlet. Oddly enough I happen to own a complete set of blueprints to the McBarge.

Looking the other way we see, a surprising amount of nothing. The Qube is still an office tower housing Westcoast Energy. There is no BC Gas/Terasen Building yet (CORRECTION: the BC Gas Building was there as of 1992, it's just blocked in this view by the MacBlo building.) Only one apartment tower has been built west of the venerable Banff apartments (painted white at this point). The "waffle building" still belongs to MacMillan Bloedel which, like Eaton's, hasn't been bought by Americans yet. The Royal Bank tower, to the left, is still the tallest building in Vancouver.