They filmed several episodes of The X-Files in and around this location. I love The X-Files. The X-Files was pretty monumental in informing a lot of my tastes growing up. Aliens? Love it. Weird cryptids? I can’t get enough. Spooky ghosts? Pass the popcorn. It certainly had a big hand in me wanting to move to Vancouver (which I did, if you can’t tell from all the photos from Vancouver, although I haven’t lived there in very many years).
Vancouver was an interesting place. Now I wouldn’t recognize it, but back then (oh god) there were still lots of parts that weren’t yet gentrified. Those areas had a rough feel to them, without being too downright dangerous like some other areas. But it was (and continues to be) heinously expensive. That juxtaposition was always present, sometimes from one block to another.
That’s what made it a good location for filming The X-Files. That and a poor Canadian dollar, plus proximity to wilderness and a lot of tax credits. It wasn’t just good for The X-Files, a whole host of 1990s sci-fi shows were made there, and I grew up on all of them. I gobbled them up like they were a finite resource. I guess in a way they were.
When The X-Files moved to Los Angeles (and Sliders, another early love), the show changed. Vancouver gave these shows a feeling; I don’t know if it was the persistent rain, the night shoots, the obvious Pacific Northwest that was meant to be anything but. But when a show moves from Vancouver, certainly in that era, something was lost.
I regularly re-watch some of those shows, and I love them now as much as I did then. There is something about mid 90s sci-fi, especially the ones filmed in Vancouver, that just feel right.