I came across an ad recently in the Vancouver Daily World of Sept. 1, 1923, which enumerated theatres in BC where Paramount Pictures movies could be seen, including some relatively obscure ones like the Gem in Nelson and Star in Rossland, and most intriguing of all, the Silverton Theatre.
I’d never heard of it but figured it must have been a makeshift operation in the Memorial Hall using portable equipment. Yet all the other theatres on the list were honest-to-god dedicated moviehouses. I turned to the civic directories and was astonished to discover the Slocan Theatre (not the Silverton Theatre) listed every year from 1923 to 1932, inclusive, with A.S. MacAulay as proprietor.
Angus Seymour MacAulay was originally from Prince Edward Island. He came west to Winnipeg and then Nelson, where he married Ida Julien in 1910. He took a job with Mutual Life Assurance, resigned to become a clerk in the government agent’s office, then went back to his old job selling insurance.
In 1911, he bought the Victoria Hotel in Silverton from Amy Carey. He had only been running it a few weeks when disaster struck: the hotel and several other buildings burned down. Four people died.
The Victoria Hotel in Silverton, circa 1900. (Image B-02576 courtesy Royal BC Museum and Archives)
MacAulay wasn’t in Silverton at the time of the fire but his brother Bruce was, and he ran from room to room to alert guests. When MacAulay returned, he announced plans to rebuild despite “a great financial loss.” In the meantime, he took over and remodelled the old Thistle Hotel.
I’m not sure when the new Victoria opened but according to John Norris’s book Old Silverton, Ida McAulay gave piano lessons there, in a living room behind the hotel lobby. She was also regularly mentioned in newspaper social notes as performing at various functions. I wouldn’t be surprised if she later provided musical accompaniment for the silent films screened at the Slocan/Silverton Theatre.
Angus was reported to have sold the hotel to an A. Muncaster in May 1912 but I don’t think the deal went through, for Angus was still listed as the proprietor in the next civic directory published in 1918.
I don’t know why Angus decided to go into the theatre business or what happened to the hotel, but Prohibition may have been a factor. The photo below shows a bunch of guys in front of the hotel on Oct. 1, 1917, the day the law came into effect, toasting the new dry world. Among them is Angus’ brother Jim (back row, far left).
(Image F-02383 courtesy Royal BC Museum and Archives)
Angus didn’t advertise in local newspapers that I can tell. But a story in the Victoria Daily Times reveals his theatre was operating as of April 1920, when it joined 17 other interior moviehouses to protest a proposal to double an amusement tax to 20 per cent of gross receipts. The story also called it the Silverton Theatre, so I’m not sure which name was correct: Slocan or Silverton? Maybe it went by both.
Next question: where was it? My initial thought that it was in the Memorial Hall proved incorrect. In a memoir held by the Silvery Slocan Historical Society, Buzz Hunter recalled:
MacAulays sought out other means to supplement their income. They built a motion picture hall sometime, I believe, before World War I. It was a two-storey unpainted structure just south of Mr. Clever’s butcher shop.
It actually went up after the war. Old Silverton includes a map of the village circa 1920-30 and item 19 is “The picture-show hall, where Angus MacAulay shows silent movies.” It was on the east side of Lake Street (now Highway 6) between 1st and 2nd streets. It’s hard to tell from the map exactly which lot it stood, so I checked the 1928 fire insurance map, which reveals it was on Block 16, Lot 3. An attached one-storey building on Lot 4 is labelled “sleeping room,” presumably for drowsy projectionists.
Turns out at least a couple of photos show the building, but only from behind. One was used on a postcard I have, seen below.
The 1933 Film Daily Year Book reported the theatre had a capacity of 200, large enough to comfortably seat the entire present population of Silverton with room to spare.
It sounds like the theatre wasn’t MacAulay’s only gig. A brief history of Silverton by an unknown author that appeared at an unknown date in an unknown newspaper (perhaps the Arrow Lakes News) stated:
A favorite spot for the children was Con Cazar’s Confectionery and next door was Angus MacAulay’s theatre with films every Saturday. Mr. MacAulay had the movie circuit, with shows at Sandon on Wednesdays, Nakusp on Monday, and Friday evenings at New Denver.
Indeed, from other Paramount ads, we know that as of 1920, movies were also being shown at the Bosun Hall in New Denver and Miners’ Union Hall in Sandon. Nakusp had an opera house, so I’m guessing that was the venue there. But as a purpose-built movie theatre, Silverton’s set-up was unique among the four stops on the circuit.
The MacAulays moved to Rossland in the mid-1930s to manage the Allan Hotel. Angus died there in 1945, age 63, followed by Ida in 1966, age 74. They had five kids, all born in Silverton, the youngest of whom only died in 2022, age 96. She was named after her mother, whose footsteps she followed in as a musician and music teacher.
What happened to the Silverton theatre is unknown. I haven’t been able to determine if the building was ever used for anything else or when it was torn down, although it was gone by 1961 judging from a photo taken that year. The site remains vacant today, but Clever’s old butcher shop is still standing next door as Silverton Gallery and Guest Suite.
— With thanks to Henning von Krogh
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