MAPPING VANCOUVER’S HISTORY

Built brick by brick and completed by Harry Bridge in 1918, the building first became Smith’s Grocery in 1922, then Thomson’s Grocery in 1925. The following 40-odd years hosted a dozen more grocers, all of British and European ancestry until B.K. Mah, an enterprising Chinese immigrant, opened B.K. Grocery in 1968. Mah and his family owned the store and lived in the building—a life where work and family life intertwined. The store remained under the name B.K. Grocery until 2014. Though a humble corner store, the building tells a significant Vancouver story, a narrative familiar to many new Canadians of yesteryear and today.