Graham Strang, 23 has been a fan of local history for as long as he can remember.
“I have a tendency to look up the history of almost anything that I’m interested in,” he said.
That included a lot of Maple Ridge material, as he has been living in the city since before his first birthday.
Like many young adults, he was feeling a bit cooped-up under quarantine, so decided to make a video log (vlog) to pass the time in a creative way.
Strang has made a few vlogs documenting his love of history, his travels and his budding music career. One of his most popular was a post on the We call it HANEY!! Facebook page, where he showcased some older buildings in town.
“It got bunch of views, and I’ve always meant to do a second one,” he said, “So I thought, I guess I can do it from my car.”
In the video, the young history buff travels from site-to-site and gives some of the back story on buildings in Maple Ridge that have been around since the 1930s and before. To make the video a little more interesting for the viewer, Strang also edited in some older photos of the buildings to show how they used to look in years past.
Throughout it all, he made sure to keep his distance from others.
“I expected it to be difficult. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to make a video out of it but I was able to get some pretty good angles just from my car,” Strang said.
“I did leave my car once to try and take a shot of that cool old firetruck in the fire hall, but there was literally no-one I could see out at the time, so I thought it was cool.”
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Having completed the video, Strang thinks he will continue to produce a few more vlogs.
”I had a great day that day. I just wanted to get out of the house and I wanted to make a day project out of it, which was cool,” he said.
“Now I’m thinking of doing it again next week, maybe going out to a bunch of cool historic buildings on Harris road in Pitt Meadows.”
ronan.p.odoherty@blackpress.ca
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