On the corner of West 4th and Manitoba, sits a little cafe that may appear out of place, dwarfed by the glassy high-rises that have sprung up around it.
Despite the faded signs that could confuse an uninformed passerby, on weekdays, Laura’s Coffee Shop is very much open and ready to serve hungry locals in the Mount Pleasant community.
It may be unassuming, but this little cafe has borne witness to the rich, yet little-known history of the neighbourhood and the many changes that Northwest Mount Pleasant has seen over the last century.
“Mount Pleasant is not really [well] known for its history… [in recent decades] it’s been more of an industrial area,” writer and Mount Pleasant historian, Christine Hagemoen, told Vancity Lookout.
“The whole evolution of the neighbourhood… and places like Laura’s and other businesses that are still around… are really interesting [because] you can still find pockets of that history still there, even if it's changed dramatically.”
The contrast between the muted grey-white, early 20th-century home that Laura’s operates out of and the towering new AbCellera building across the street, in many ways, bookends the evolution of the neighbourhood, as more tech-related businesses emerge in the area each year.
But when the building that now houses Laura’s Coffee Shop was first built in 1905, it was strictly residential. Most of the area was, in fact, composed overwhelmingly of homes at that time. “Mount Pleasant was really Vancouver’s first suburb,” Hagemoen said.
When Vancouver, as a settlement for white colonizers, was still in its infancy, a massive fire originally set to burn mill waste, “exploded” across the city in 1886, wiping out nearly all of the then wooden buildings in Gastown and the Downtown Eastside.
The great fire pushed even more of the population into the areas across False Creek, such as Mount Pleasant.
Throughout the 1920s, Mount Pleasant “would have been quite the neighbourhood,” said Hagemoen. In that time, she said “there were even enough families that it warranted building a school,” referring to the Simon Fraser Annex constructed at Quebec and East 6th in 1929.
In 1926, the owner of the house that would become Laura’s Coffee Shop, Thomas D. Knowles, added a retail component to the building. “It was common for people to either build a business or a storefront in front of their house in those days,” said Hagemoen. “It’s a remnant from a time when you could do almost anything with your property.”
Then, in 1927, Italian immigrants Laura and Domenico DeFilippo moved in and began living and working out of the home. Domenico was an iron and steel worker at the time, leaving Laura to do most of the heavy lifting at the grocery store they ran on their property, said Hagemoen.
The pair, at least on paper, ran the business together until Domenico died suddenly in 1936. After that, Laura took over running the business on her own until she passed away in the 1950s, leaving the store to her two children, Samuel and Violet.
Wars and the changing face of Mount Pleasant
Around World War I, the neighbourhood had begun changing, first through a huge shipbuilding push in the area that is now Olympic Village, said Hagemoen, adding that many other businesses at the time pivoted to support the war effort.
The wartime years of the 1930s and 1940s also brought considerable upheaval for the neighbourhood in other ways. Mount Pleasant used to be home to the largest Japanese population outside the Powell Street Area, with nearly 2,000 residents, said Hagemoen.
During the period of Japanese internment from 1942 to 1949, many homes throughout Mount Pleasant were left empty, and businesses shuttered. “As Japanese-Canadians lost their property and most of their belongings, it really left a scar on the neighbourhood.”
“The rest of the people that were left behind would have felt the loss of the neighbourhood as businesses were sold off, torn down, and changed hands… that could have certainly contributed to changes in [the coming decades],” she said.
Then, in the early 1960s, according to Hagemoen, “everything changed.” By the 1960s, Mount Pleasant was becoming significantly less residential and increasingly industrial.
With fewer family homes and more workers in need of a lunch break, Samuel and Violet, who had taken over the family business, transformed Laura’s into a coffee shop and diner, and became widely known in the area for their decadent sandwiches.
“They really had a loyal following from the start,” said Hagemoen, noting that until quite recently, a long-standing laundry business in the area had employees who were regular customers at Laura’s for the better part of a century.
Many of the workers from nearby sawmills and pulp mills, shipyards, noodle factories, steel foundries, and industrial laundry shops flocked to Laura’s throughout the workweek.
“It was a place to sit down close to your work where you could get things like meatloaf, burgers, grilled cheese… There was also a lot of smoking going on in restaurants in those days.”
Gradually, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, heavy industry began moving out of the area, in part due to a push to limit pollution in False Creek and in response to rising costs in the neighbourhood.
Many businesses could no longer sustainably operate in Mount Pleasant. By the 1980s and 1990s, most of the heavier industrial and manufacturing companies had begun moving to areas like Surrey.
In 1977, Samuel and Violet DeFilippo sold the building to Walter and Wai Ching Lee, who would go on to run Laura’s for over 20 years.
Laura’s used to have an old U-shaped countertop in the middle of the restaurant, complete with traditional red button seats, said Hagemoen. The counter was torn out, however, after the Lees sold the business in 1999. Now, only the booths, the faded Pepsi sign out front, and the wood panelling are from the original interior.
Since 2019, the building has been owned by Emma and Fei (last names unknown). Vancity Lookout attempted to contact the current owners of the building several times but was unable to reach them.
The menu in recent years has, however, evolved to include Chinese staples like wonton soup, curry, chow mein and sweet and sour pork.
Changes in the appetite of the neighbourhood
With the increased focus on the burgeoning tech industry and a younger, wealthier demographic moving into the surrounding areas, Hagemoen said she worries about how these changes may impact Laura’s.
Several recent struggles have come for the old industrial cafe. For one, there is now significantly more competition among restaurants in the area.
Hagemoen added that the hearty, Western and Chinese-inspired comfort food may not hold the same appeal to a younger working demographic more focused on health-conscious choices. “Tastes change,” she added, but “it really says a lot that they’re still able to operate there as a business.”
In addition to the changing tastes of the neighbourhood, the city recently implemented paid parking throughout Mount Pleasant, which Hagemoen said caused Laura’s current owners to take a hit.
But Laura’s has also come up with inventive ways to weather the changing times. On the weekends, Coyote’s Cafe holds a pop-up in the space serving Aussie pies and Australian-style coffee.
Just a few industrial coffee shops remain in the city, namely the Argo Cafe on nearby East 3rd and Ontario. Another, the Northern Cafe and Grill in South Vancouver, Hagemoen said, has found a second life in part due to social media and its very “Instagrammable” setup above an old lumber mill.
But Laura’s is still one of the few remaining relics of a bygone era. In a time of rising cost of living, gentrification, and walls of glass and steel, Hagemoen said that long-standing neighbourhood staples like Laura’s are important. “These places are important to the people who frequent them, who run them, and to those who are just interested in the history of the city… if you want to know where you’re going you have to know where you come from.”
For those curious to learn more about the pocket of Mount Pleasant where Laura’s and many other historic sites are situated, Hagemoen hosts walking tours in the neighbourhood and encourages readers to check out her most recent book.
“Not everything has to survive, I understand that,” said Hagemoen. “But [Laura’s] has survived for so long, can’t we just keep it a little bit longer?”Dominic has been walking the alleys of East Van since his oldest child was born in the early 2020s.
“I got to hold my kids in a carrier and just walk around for hours until she fell asleep … I literally did every like alley in my neighbourhood,” of Hastings-Sunrise, Dominic, a local elementary school teacher who asked to be identified by first name only, told Vancity Lookout.
What started as a way for Dominic to get his newborn kids to fall asleep morphed into a fascination with documenting lesser-known lanes and back roads all over East Van, and inviting other locals to explore with him.
This summer, Dominic’s evolving passion project has gained a substantial following on social media, where he posts about his adventures and conversations with Vancouver artists, entrepreneurs, influencers, and newfound friends.
“I’m noticing with these conversations how quickly strangers stop feeling like strangers. You show up, explore, chat, take a few photos, and 45 minutes later you’re talking about parenting and community with someone you just met,” he wrote in one post.
Dominic credits a walk he took with COPE city councillor Sean Orr and another with CBC reporter Justin McElroy as big drivers of his growing popularity and reach. But a more intangible and central element to that success is Dominic’s voice, which comes across as authentic and curious, quotidian and personal.
“It's been really satisfying for me,” he described. “It's filled my cup. I come away oftentimes feeling inspired or learning something new, or just feeling good about having a conversation with a random person.”
While Dominic gets to meet a lot of cool people doing cool things, as he describes it, his goal is to capture the moment and the feeling of these walks. One of Dominic’s favourite conversations was with his neighbour, an artist who goes through recycling on garbage day to collect bottle caps and other pieces of plastic for his artworks.
Dominic’s neighbour “brought me to a really cool alley,” called a country lane, a more porous alleyway design that incorporates strips of grass and gardens with two paved tracks for cars. “I didn't know these existed in Vancouver,” Dominic said, adding he thinks it’s a great idea that the city should do more often.
The city piloted three of these alleys in 2002, and there’s been a recent resurgence of political interest in the project. Property owners can petition the city to bring similar designs to their back lanes, but would need to pay the bill, according to the Vancouver Sun.
“Everyone has different interesting stories, and every conversation is unique … it's just random,” based on whatever comes up, Dominic said.
Our walk — down an alley that runs from Victoria Drive to just before Clark Drive — included talk about the neighbourhood fascination and artwork surrounding Nigel the cat (which Dominic hadn’t heard of before), comparing notes on our writing processes, a discussion about fruit harvesting from the many trees and bushes that grow in or hang over into alleys, and discovering a particularly verdant backyard garden.
Because Dominic had (until now) operated his East Van Alleys account anonymously, there were some initial challenges getting people to participate in his project. “Trying to convince someone to meet me in an alley, when [they] don’t know who the person is, was a bit of a roadblock,” in the beginning, he said with a chuckle.
“I tried to be as straightforward as I could, especially if I reached out. I tell them I'm a teacher, I'm a dad, just so there's a comfort there,” Dominic explained. But now any apprehension seems to have evaporated, and it’s mostly people reaching out to him (as was the case with our interview), or receiving suggestions of folks to connect with. “Everyone’s so nice and friendly,” about the project, Dominic said.
The most prominent local Dominic would still really like to talk to? Nardwaur the Human Serviette. “He’s a bit of a white whale for me,” Dominic said, which led us into a whole tangent about Nardwaur’s supreme interview and research skills (the gold standard for every journalist), and how you could possibly go about interviewing the interview GOAT.
As our conversation wound down, it was easy to tap into the energy Dominic had described from previous walks. It was a feeling of connection, both to this person who had been a stranger an hour prior, and to the often-overlooked spaces around us, which unfold the daily routines, hobbies, and lives of our neighbours when you slow down to look.
