[someone123]

Very interesting.

Definitely there are a few examples of buildings that should have been preserved, like the Birks Building. In many other cases it wouldn't have made much sense because of how quickly the city was growing. Practically everything built to suit Vancouver in the 1910s was hugely out of step with land values, etc. in the 1970s. In a city like Winnipeg or in most older cities this effect wasn't as strong.

Another thing to be aware of is that these photos can be a bit misleading. Those arches were almost certainly temporary, for example. They look wooden.

Vancouver still has some nice old buildings worth preserving but in general I like the fact that it's a modern city with a bright future ahead of it, rather than a city that is scrambling to figure out what to do with relics of a more prosperous era. The Rustbelt US cities have tons of great old buildings but they can be eerie places.