Vancouver Heritage Foundation marks 100th and 101st plaques

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation is celebrating 15 years of its Places That Matter program with two plaque presentations on Tuesday — a major milestone for the initiative built on the belief that local stories deserve to be remembered and celebrated.

Plaque #100 will honour the Mount Pleasant Family Centre Society in Robson Park. The organization was nominated by the public and celebrates 50 years this year. The site itself has a layered history: it started as a public park, then became a lawn bowling club, before the building was repurposed with neighbourhood advocacy to house a family centre — a use it has maintained for five decades.

Plaque #101 will go up in front of the former site of the Cellar Jazz Club on Watson Street near Broadway and Watson — just one block east of Main in a lane-like street that once housed factories and businesses. The Cellar opened in 1956 in a basement and operated for about a decade through the 1950s and 1960s as a music venue. This year marks its 70th anniversary.

"I really never envisioned that it would take this long to do 100," said Jessica Quan, community engagement manager at the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. "But it's really satisfying to see that this project is still as relevant as ever, 15 years later, and that we're continuing to celebrate 100 plaques, and we hopefully will continue to do more."

Places That Matter was started in 2011 to mark the City of Vancouver's 125th birthday. All sites nominated for plaques come from public nominations, ensuring the program reflects stories the community believes matter.