Vancouver is Awesome often has items that are, well, awesome – like this:
ROAD TRIP FOOTAGE FROM THE 1960’S IN BRITISH COLUMBIA (WITH VIDEO)
POSTED JUNE 15, 2015 BY BOB KRONBAUER
The Ministry of Transportation has been digging into a trove of 16mm film from the 1960’s and digitizing it over the past few months, calling the project the Road Trip Time Machine.
Much to the delight of history buffs and present-day road trippers alike, this footage was taken with an old school GoPro: a camera mounted to the dash of a car which drove 9,000 kilometres through our highway system, filming the entire journey. These are really cool to watch partly to see how much changed but also of note is how many things have stayed the same.
Having driven most of the highways throughout BC, watching these clips (which were filmed before I was born) brings back some great feelings about what used to be here… and how much more there is left to explore.
VIS chooses three trips from 1966: Highway 1 and Port Mann Bridge; the stretch between Kelowna and Vernon in the Okanagan Valley; and, as an Island boy, my favourite, since I probably took this same ride that year :
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Actually, the trip today probably would not look all that much different. Even today, Duncan – the small town at the end of the trip – doesn’t seem all that much different in form: highway-oriented retail, as they term it.
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In other words, still an indistinguishable Motordom stroad a half century later. It suggests that auto-dominant urban form is going to take along time to evolve.
