By Eve Lazarus
The follow-up to Eve Lazarus’s successful At Home with History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes, Sensational Victoria gives us a glimpse into aspects of Victoria rarely talked about in the tourist brochures or flowery garden guidebooks. Sensational Victoria covers legendary women, including Emily Carr, Nellie McClung, Gwen Cash, Sylvia Holland, and Myfanwy Pavelic; prominent madams and their brothels; murders in the capital—five ranging from 1898 to 1992; and, the homes of limners (painters of ornamental decoration), writers, and entertainers, including Herbert Siebner, Elza Mayhew, Pat Martin Bates, Robin Skelton, Carole Sabiston, Bruce Hutchison, Alice Munro, David Foster, Spoony Sundher, and Nell Shipman.
Lavishly illustrated throughout with archival and contemporary photographs, Sensational Victoria is a must-read for both history buffs and regular visitors to The Garden City.
Eve Lazarus is a business reporter and freelance writer with a passion for history and old houses. She is the author of At Home with History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes (Anvil), The Life & Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman and LeRoy Jensen, co-written with Claudia Cornwall, and Wendy Newbold Patterson (Mother Tongue) and Frommer’s Vancouver with Kids and blogs obsessively about houses and their genealogies at www.blog.evelazarus.com
