Seems far nicer than today actually.

No jaywalker was harmed in the making of this video.

Iam in my 35th year as a transit operator and watching this makes me smile, times were different then and people payed the fare!

Those cream coloured electric buses were built well. They were still in use in the early 1980s when I was a uni student. Never realised how old they were.

All the people out going about their business on east Hastings, uncivil behaviour wasn’t tolerated, what a contrast to today.

Was born there in 1949. Everything seems so much more civilized back then when compared to the city today.

Born in Vancouver in 1947. Can remember the excitement when the trolleys were replaced by "rubber". A big mistake!

What is truly amazing is how many of the buildings in this are still standing, still occupied and by the same business.

Love the way folks just saunter across the street. And what traffic there is, just cruising by nice and slow. Folks come out on the road to get picked up, and the driver just stops for them. Would be madness to try this today.

The era before zombies and excuses. Probably a lot of men with PTSD from the war but they sucked it up as best they could. I guess they really were “The Greatest Generation.”

Wow!! Excellent video. Vancouver had a great tram system in its day. Thanks for sharing.

Wow, this looks like a city I would actually want to live in, unlike Vancouver today, especially Hastings. That place is the Walking Dead in real life.

That's amazing footage!!

Probably considered quite mundane at the time of its making. This film now is priceless and fascinating.

West on Hastings, before it totally became the Downtown Eastside. I remember shopping there as a kid.

Just spotted 3 1950 Plymouths just like mine. Light Green 4 doors !

I was born in the 70's and I remember the old buse not the trolleys but the grey Wrigley colored buses and my dad would wait at the bus stops with me and when the bus came to our stop he'd helpe on to the bus and he givee my dime and I'd put it in the coin shute and the bus driver would give me a transfer and we'd go and sit down in our seats and the seats were dark green I'll never forget that that memory will stick with me for the rest of my life!!! I guess after awhile the city. Started paving over the old rails in the streets to cover over the old stuff to make way for new stuff to be built or made in order to make Vancouver what it is trying to be today !!!!! THANKYOU for bringing them to see from what they looked like then till what they look like now it's so incredibly amazing THANKYOU!!!!!🍁🇨🇦🍁💔👍🌹

no encampments or drug addict losers, what a time to be alive !

Did you notice everyone was working.

How did people back then survive without a safe supply of meth and crack?

Biggest mistake was ripping out those rail lines & buying into the rails to rubber idea. It was advertised as a transition from streetcar to bus, but it's become a complete ICE & EV nightmare. Just go to any school zone between 0830-0930 or 1430-1530.

Looks like a fine place to live and work. On a side note, none of the numerous pedestrians seem to be afflicted with obesity. Everybody looks trim and healthy.

Some of the captions aren't accurate. A lot of the "Going South on Granville" section is actually Broadway.

So many beautiful cars back than

1950 Vancouver. Just a little before my time but not by much. Thinking that I could go back to 1950 and be able to blend right in but the same couldn't be said for someone from 1950 to suddenly find themselves in 2024. Talk about a culture shock.

What amazing footage!! I couldn't take my eyes off it. I live in Vancouver and have driven in all those areas for years. Wow - thanks for the upload 👍

Feels like time travelling

The city has the same bones, but much more new, one of the most beautiful city's in the world.

The city has changed so much since the time.I visited Vancouver so many times l love this city !

wow main and broadway;. that building is still there. so cool!

my dad told me the trams rolled from vancouver to chilliwack when he was a kid

Awesome footage I grew up in East Van in the 50s Ware Street on Campbell Avenue still had cobblestones and trolly tracks fantastic place to grow up as a child an absolute melting pot of people

1947 Brill trolleybuses and they tried to replace them with flyer trolleys which only lasted about 15 years

growing up in Vancouver, this is amazing footage to see the major transformation along Granville Street South. Incredible. wow.

Wow people get on and off the trolleys in the middle of granville. I'm surprised no one got hit by a car

Nice find!

I'm a little mystified. I kept looking as the trolley headed west along Hastings for the homeless encampments and drugged-out walkers. Perhaps the videographer deliberated didn't show them. That's understandable. If anyone has any other clue, let me know.

The cars were all so big back in those days. The trolley/tram things were before my time but the rounded Brill buses I loved to ride

Mamma mia, there were no junkies on East Hastings! What a nice city😊

Now you would swear you walked onto the set of a zombie movie

Just to think my late grandparents and great grandparents were working and building their houses around the time while this individual was making this film. My parents were born a few years later. I recognize a lot of those buildings from the last time I was there. As I watch this i can't help wondering if they were driving by or walking by.🤔 Amazing how big a city it was still even in 1950..😮👍

Very interesting how vibrant and busy was Hastings, Main, Cambie. Seems like good times in Vancouver. Unfortunately everything has changed in that area. Just poverty, drugs, homeless people. It’s very sad what happened to downtown Vancouver 😢

Very nice to see. Notice very little paper on the roads, clear air, shiny cars, not damaged or listen just how quiet it is, no horn honking, tires screeching, and well-dressed people. Boy, if they knew how bad Canada including Vancouver can get, people then would be furious, and sad.

Shows you how little this city has evolved since the 1950s. The difference you notice is the trams and homelessness situation.

Wow, so cool!

Whoever shot this is a professional. The operator would get out of the trolly to get cutaway shots of it driving by and then hop back on the next one. It must've taken all afternoon.

Way more developed than I thought it would be.

Make Vancouver Great Again!

We had street cars in Saskatoon. They disappeared around the same time as Vancouver's. Sad.

Before all the troubles in this area.

Hmm, I remember the Brill buses, but I was born after the streetcars.

They have hand signals in those days. No indicator lights.

It makes me yearn for the days of yesteryear … I know there was problems back then as well, but everything was cleaner . The air, the water , society …. Everything !

Vancouver is a diverse over populated expensive hole now where the English language is as tough to spot as a Sasquatch sighting.

No stop lights I miss that

Interesting, lack of overhead traffic lights. Old Granville street Bridge is similar to the old Cambie street Bridge

❤

That was great! We should have kept those streetcar lines.

Colour Film.. . . . Sweet!

WOW !! RETRO VANCOUVER Love IT !! IN Colour & comes with Sound Too BIG Thnx for The Time Machine Footage !! Let's See More Do you have any of Beach Ave during that Time ?

0:48 that guy working on the overhead live wires...

It's interesting how many cars were made in England, Austins and Morrises etc. My toys and clothes were all made in England, US and Canada too. May the sun never set on the Empire! We used to sing god save the Queen and Oh Canada before class, sometimes the lords prayer too. Lots of things have changed for better and for worse, thats why we're called a progressive society right? Notice all the cigarette ads? Not many tall buildings.

Wow, jaywalkers galore. Making me nervous 😅

last few minutes is going east on broadway right up to main

Vancouver before junkies

with both trolleys and many buses there was much more mass transit with only about 1/4 today's population

everyone driving classics 😀

Traffic was great back then lol!

I would love to have a time mashine and really walk in those times.

0:23 cars turning left onto the old Georgia Viaduct.

Electric vehicles didn't catch fire back then and had unlimited range.

I wasn't born until the late 50 but I do remember some of this from the early 60s. Do you see any homeless on the streets cause I sure don't.

Sad Hastings and all of west side closed from tent city.

Where’s the tents and dope addicts?

A believe this video has a big mistake! When streetcar reach Granville & Broadway Southbound from the Granville Bridge it turns Eastbound to Broadway. You see it heading towards the Lee Building at Main Street where it loops North back to Hastings to Downtown. It doesn't head south on Granville because it doesn't stop in front of the Aristocratic!

This could use some video stabilization.

No oe little Micro-plastics pollution back then, but it was just starting to take hold.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, Vancouver's downtown eastside (DTES) was Vancouver's political, cultural and retail centre. Over several decades, the city centre gradually shifted westwards, and the DTES became a poor neighbourhood. In the 1980s, the area began a rapid decline due to several factors, including an influx of hard drugs, policies that pushed sex work and drug-related activity out of nearby areas, and the cessation of federal funding for social housing. By 1997, an epidemic of HIV infection and drug overdoses in the DTES led to the declaration of a public health emergency. As of 2018, critical issues include opioid overdoses, especially those involving the drug fentanyl; decrepit and squalid housing; a shortage of low-cost rental housing; and mental illness, which often co-occurs with addiction. This is DTES today. One of the worst neighborhoods for drug addiction, mental illness and crime in North America...not just Canada.

Some of the footage make pedestrians look like they have a death wish getting close to inter urban buses.

Like Seattle in that time frame, folks had purpose, God, Family and Country was very much a common bond regardless of age, gender, ethnicity. Now its none of that thus why the declines in many of these "once" beautiful and exciting cities

Look, no tents or druggies. What a socialist paradise we've built over the last fifty years.

Pain and Wastings wasn’t so painful back then eh!

Before the fentanyl zombies took over

So sad. We’ve deteriorated so much thanks to bad government policies.

aaah the world before drugs

Wow normal people

So sad to see what’s become of the downtown core around Hastings. It’s disturbing our government allows this.

When cars looked cool

.....sure don't miss the leaded gas back then.

Not much different than in early 70s when I first got back after leaving in 1960 .. Then permanently moved here in 1981..was just starting to change..

Way better city back then than now today it is all greed being the most expensive city to live now.

hmm

This is when Vancouver was still considered to be one of the top manufacturing and industrial capacity sites of the British Empire or Canada you could say.

Can anyone here go back to 1950 and warn whoever filmed it that the image is shaking a lot? 😊

Now most of these places are all zombie lands.

1:06 - Thats the corner of Main and Hastings. Owl drugs the pharmacy is still around, I believe. Walk on that corner today and its all junkies, methheads, drunk natives and dealers selling dope. Crazy how times change for better or worse. Most of those buildings are still there btw

Its crazy too see Vancouver without all the tin foil dope smoking goofs!

Ha, imagine pedestrians standing and waiting in the middle of traffic unprotected nowadays; the nickname for it would be the "killing zone".

Back when there was common sense and people worked hard and followed the rule of law. Not no more.

no needles no junkies ...prob was nice