December 18th, 1980 — At Christmas newspapers were always looking for a hard luck story and getting evicted was the best hard luck story of all. If memory serves, Hank Weibe, the man above, along with others, was to be evicted from a rooming house on Beach Avenue. Each room had a cooking stove, which also provided heat for the room, and because it was wood burning it was considered a fire hazard. One tenant, Mike Sawchuk, was cutting up old 2×4’s for fuel when I arrived with reporter Steve Berry and a representative of Imperial Parking, Peter Clough, who owned the property (the man in the picture below wearing a suit). All of the tenants were men and most were retired construction workers. They wanted something cheap. They weren’t fussy. They were used to camp life. This was probably one of the last rooming houses in Vancouver catering to them. The city, however, was closing it down. They didn’t want another Commercial Hotel fire on their hands. Besides, the property had become valuable and there were more taxes to be had from high rise condos. What makes this story interesting for me is that Hank Weibe was a bridgeman and the reporter assumed he drove one of the patrol cars that years ago monitored traffic on the Lions Gate Bridge. I shock my head in despair at his ignorance and said, “No Steve, he builds them”. At which point Weibe said, “What the hell do you know about bridge building?” This required my explaining that my uncle spent his life building bridges and my dad a few years. “So who the hell are you?” I gave him my name. “You’re Dougie’s kid?”. I was. The interview hadn’t been going well until then but this bit of knowledge seemed to open a door and I finally got some pictures and the reporter a reasonable Christmas story. 
Mike Sawchuk, above, cutting firewood for his stove.