BY LORETTA HOUBEN

I’m always on the hunt for old photos that reveal life as it was here in Collingwood in past decades. The Vancouver Archives website is a gold mine for such searches. However, it’s difficult to locate the images as the search engine is tricky to use, and sometimes the photos are incorrectly labelled.

While browsing the archives website recently, I discovered Tyne Apartments in 1978, located at 3437 Kingsway, near the current Tim Horton’s building.

I didn’t recognize it, so I turned to Google maps to see if it was still standing. I like to use Google maps to find out if a building has been torn down. Google maps is invaluable in my research, because sometimes the building is still standing, and then I can take a photo of it for my records. Otherwise, I save and keep a record of Google’s image in my files.

I looked up Tyne Apartments in the BC Directories, to see how far I could trace it. This part of my research takes many hours. I began with 1955, and worked my way back to 1935, when the building was owned by Isaac D. Chappell. In 1936 he was the manager of Zim Manufacturing and Soap Company.

I typed that name into Google search and found another photo of this building at 3437 Kingsway in 1935 in the Vancouver Archives! You can clearly see the Zim name on the side of the building. The building was vacant from 1930 to 1934. I’m not sure when it was built.

In 1938, the building shared another business; “Uphol (upholstery) and carpet cleaning,” owned by G. W. Henderson. By 1939, according to the directories, the Zim Company was gone.

I wonder if Zim was a good cleaning agent. Today, in 2024, I use a cleaner named “Vim,” but I don’t think there is any relation to Zim! In 1940 the building was first listed as Tyne Apartments and had eight units. It appears it lasted until the 1970s, as the second photo was taken in 1978. The building was gone by 2015, according to Google maps.

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