Here my Mother is walking south along Hastings towards Woodward’s with sons of a friend of hers. She probably would have been on her lunch break from Woodward’s where she worked as a seamstress. The boys names are Bernard and Ralph.

Mother has a fancy hat on so it must have been a special day – maybe someone visiting from the prairies and it would have been a treat for the boys to be in the big city.

I see they just passed Millar and Co. There was a doll hospital upstairs. At Christmas time when I was about 5 years old, Mother and I were downtown walking between Spencers and Woodwards. There was a Santa outside Millar and Co looking for donations from some charity. I thought he was really Santa Claus but when I went up to talk to him, he growled “Beat it, kid!” in a gruff voice. We were on a tight schedule to catch a ferry back to West Van so Mother couldn’t tell the man off. Probably just as well or she might have decked him, she was so angry!