THE STANLEY PARK OPEN
A West End Mystery Solved

**CLICK ON THIS POSTER TO VISIT THE STANLEY PARK OPEN WEBSITE.**

by Joanne Hill - Tennis BC
(click images to enlarge)

The Stanley Park Open has been around for many years under various sponsors, but there was always a question hanging over it—no one was 100 per cent sure of the date of the first Stanley Park Open. If you are a regular at the Park you will have seen that we are promoting the 92nd iteration of the biggest public-courts tournament in North America—but is it?

The doubt began when the question was asked about how we knew it was as old as all that. Cue the awkward silence. As the history nerd in the room, I could feel the eyes turning to me—and I had no answer. My favourite periods of history had little to do with tennis and tend to revolve around wars and literature! Historical records are full of gaps; there are omissions, there are things that are lost—but this was at least in the age of newspapers—it should be easy to confirm—1932 is hardly the distant past in the grand scheme of things. I said I would look into it.

MYSTERY LINK? … What I wanted was a primary source to corroborate the story of an inaugural 1932 tournament at Stanley Park. I am limited somewhat by geographical location to searching online—which is good and bad. Online searches for tennis and Stanley Park and 1932 received thousands of hits—everything from ads selling racquets to accommodation for rent near the park—if this was my only job, it might have been possible to sift through it all—what I needed was a lead!

It wasn’t long before I found out about an out-of-print publication called First Serve: One Hundred Years of Tennis in British Columbia by Allan Stevenson. Maybe this would have an answer. Sadly, I could not find one to buy, but a serendipitous tidy of the Tennis BC storeroom revealed a copy in the depths of a box!

**TENNIS IN STANLEY PARK BACK IN THE DAY.**

When I found it, my poor colleagues thought that I had a) encountered a massive spider, or b) that I had found something of huge monetary value.

First Serve, published in 1987, before computer searches, was based on private club archives. It’s a well-written, informative read but, I was disappointed to discover, it contained no tangible information on Stanley Park. Later, a colleague said he had the answer in his hand in the form of a manuscript on the history of tennis in B.C. Like First Serve, it mentioned the tournament, but there was nothing pointing to a primary source—it was not proof.

I remained hopeful that something would turn up, or that I would miraculously find the time to spend a few days sifting through newspaper archives. It was both.

A BOX OF HISTORY … I received a phone call from a local player who had a box of stuff that had belonged to her late father, a huge proponent of tennis in B.C. His name was George Pedlar. George’s father, also George Pedlar, had kept scrapbooks about his children, who had been some of the first public-courts players at Stanley Park. Carol Pedlar was dealing with the difficult task of clearing out her father’s things and had come across the box with her grandfather’s scrapbooks. She did not want to throw it all out, nor did she have room to keep it—she was faced with a difficult choice. Fortunately, she thought that perhaps Tennis BC might be interested.

**A MOMENT FROM THE 89TH ANNUAL OPEN. THE COURTS HAVE BEEN UPGRADED, THE NEIGHBOURHOOD CHANGES, BUT THE ATHLETICISM AND FUN REMAIN THE SAME!**

We met to go through it together to see if it was of any use. It was lovely to chat with Carol, a tennis player herself, as we sifted through all of the artifacts—a slice of her family history—as she showed me photos and pointed out articles. The majority were cut from newspapers and were pasted into scrapbooks. It was hard to tell which papers they came from in many cases, and often there was no writer’s name nor any dates other than those penciled onto the pages of the book.

I was more than happy to take the collection and I left with a box of what I consider treasure (I love old things and old stories especially). Once I got home and started looking through it, the origin story of the Stanley Park Open began to unfold, but along with it, another story, a much more personal one, unfolded too.

WEAVING THE THREADS TOGETHER … Every story needs a thread, whether fiction or historical fact. As mentioned, “Stanley Park” and “tennis” received a lot of hits online, so it was Carol’s family’s scrapbooks that gave me the necessary threads to refine the search. The key to solving the historical mystery was one of the first articles in the collection, an article from the Sunday Sun, dated July 9, 1938, titled “Tennis brought to the Masses.” The article discussed tennis in the last decade (1928-38) becoming more than just a rich man’s game, saying, “public courts were an unheard-of luxury 20 years ago, but some bright person struck upon the idea that by building public courts everyone from the father of the house down to the youngest off spring could play.” The “bright person” was one Jonathan Rogers of the Vancouver Parks Board.

In 1938, there were 25,000 people playing on Vancouver’s public courts, the article states. The Great Depression also impacted the growth of tennis as out-of-work younger people had time to play a sport that needed minimal equipment—on free public courts. A tennis boom was born.

The Sun article of 1938 credits Bill Patience with suggesting a public-courts championship in 1932. The key to the search, it turned out, was “Bill Patience.” In the end, it was the matter of a quick search in the Online Access into British Columbia Historical Newspapers to find an article titled “Players to Compete for Parks Board and Southam Trophies—Entries to Close on June 27, First Round Matches Being Scheduled for Dominion Day,” from The Daily Province, Vancouver, British Columbia, Saturday June 11, 1932.

It says that “Vancouver’s First Public Court Tennis Tournament, sponsored by The Daily Province, will be held on ten hard courts in Stanley Park, Friday, July 1, and following days.

“That first tournament was run with 1,500 balls at a cost of $500 by Bill Patience and four assistants. The inaugural tournament had 850 entrants who were charged a fee of 10 cents. Bill had wanted it to be free, but the Lawn Tennis Association insisted on a fee, or it would not be a sanctioned event. By 1933, there were 1,190 entrants, and by 1936, there were 1740 players, some coming from as far away as L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle.

So, there it was. Proof.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the June 30 issue of Tennis BC Insider, the newsletter of Tennis BC. You can find the newsletter here, and their website here.