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By Dylan Hackett, Staff Writer

ast month, the Museum of
| Vancouver (MOV), located
in Kitsilano’s Vanier Park,
opened up an exhibit exploring the
history of neon signage in our city:
Neon Vancouver, Ugly Vancouver.
Neon, and the other noble
gases electrified for bright buzzing
lighting, were first brought to

You light
up my life

The Museum of Vancouver presents Vancouver’s neon history

 

Vancouver in 1928 by entrepreneur
George Sweeney. From then on,
neon signs were leased out through
his company, Neon Products Ltd.
(now owned by Vancouver-based
billionaire Jim Pattison). Vancouver
buildings were lit up with neon
signs at every street corner; first
downtown, then southbound into
suburban Vancouver, where the
bright eye pollution of the signs
met their slow, city council-backed
demise.

The signs on display at MOV
showed the variety of businesses
leasing the signs to draw in
customers. Rexall Drugs had
their mascot “Hootie the Owl”
glowing magnificent green and blue
exclaiming, “We Deliver,” with their

 

signage. Diners were often marked
with neon signing, as were auto
repair shops. The automobile neon
sign in the gallery depicted two
argon blue cars crashing head on
with an explosion overhead lighting
up after the vehicles. Photos of the
city in the 1950s showed a bright
advertisement-haven of beautiful
light pollution. The signs were quite
ethereal.

The thought behind buzzing,
glowing neon lights advertising a
business was that the brightness
would capture the consumer’s
quick-purchase impulse. Perhaps
the most absurd of the signs on
display was that of S. Bowell &
Sons Ltd. Funeral Directors. The
yellow and greens tackling my
vision hardly evoked the spirit of
casting a pall over a loved one’s
coffin. Nevertheless, I’m sure the
sign attracted good business.

In the late ‘50s, a group called
the Community Arts Council (still
active) set out to campaign against
neon signage, citing it to be “visual
pollution” and for it to only be
quarantined to the theatre district of
Downtown Granville. This equated

Arts

signing bylaws to civility, citing that
many European cities had stringent
signing laws to preserve the
integrity of their neighbourhoods.
They spread this message with
pamphlets headed with the tactful
phrase “You Can Have Civilization
or You Can Have Neon.” Over

the decade, this sentiment built
momentum, with a 1968 Vancouver
Sun headline reading, “Let’s Wake
Up from Our Neon Nightmare”.

“We're being led by the nose
into a hideous jungle of signs.
They’re outsized, outlandish, and
outrageous,” alliterated the Sun
article.

By 1974, Vancouver City
Council passed a bylaw stripping
neon from Vancouver with a few
licensed exceptions in the Granville
strip and Gastown district. The city
then published a manual explaining
the law to citizens and justifying
the law and the exceptionality of
certain areas from the regulations.
Downtown signs were said to
reflect “the variety and utility that
is downtown.”

The display summed up the
social history once ratified in the
city’s abundant neon skyscape.
“Perhaps neon represents an
authentic moment in Vancouver’s
history, when we did not need to
concoct a ‘fun city.’ Perhaps neon
links us to Vancouver’s gritty past;
when loggers rolled into town for
wild weekends and music sounded
in ‘Hogan’s Alley’” (Vancouver’s
former Afro-Canadian
neighbourhood, gutted for the sake
of the Georgia Viaduct).

Neon Vancouver, Ugly
Vancouver is open until August 12,
2012, and a curator’s talk and tour
is set for December 1.

What: Neon Vancouver, Ugly
Vancouver

Where: Museum of Vancouver
(1100 Chestnut Street)

When: Now until August 12, 2012
Cost: $10 with Student ID