The Patricia Theatre BC Canada
- Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
The Patricia Theatre
The Patricia, or the Pat as it’s known to locals, sits proudly in the town of Powell River, British Colombia, and is the oldest continuously operating cinema and vaudeville house in western Canada.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Powell River’s first movie theatre was housed in a tent, running with a hand-cranked projector and gramophone for the magic of sound.
When this first “theatre” literally blew down in a storm, the first Patricia Theatre cinema and vaudeville house was built in 1913. The name was chosen in a community naming contest, and reflects the great popularity of Princess Patricia at the time.
With the advent of the “talkies” in 1927, owner Bobby Scanlon and his partner Myron McLeod, commissioned the famous theatre architect, Henry Holdsby Simmonds, originally from Australia but then working in Vancouver, to design a no-expense-spared state of the art cinema and vaudeville facility.
Simmonds’ elegant design utilizes the Spanish Revival expression of the Arts and Crafts Movement, widely used in the ’20’s in the design of movie palaces across this continent. He produced a grand result for the small town, a picture palace to rival any city venue.
The Interior was equally special. Simmons had the interior decoration done by the Girvan Studios of Vancouver. They came up with beautiful atmospheric murals representing an idealized parklike waterfront setting, with a cloud-studded sky overhead.
The original seating was classic Heywood-Wakefield auditorium seats, with ornately cast aisle ends, installed on a dished and raked auditorium floor. There was a balcony, loge boxes and 419 seats below. The first movie was screened on November 5, 1928
The theatre was originally equipped with a Robert Morton theatre organ, played by an organist enticed to Powell River from Vancouver. Although relatively modest in size, the 23’ wide by 9’ deep vaudeville stage and the well-proportioned auditorium offered entertainers the best acoustics on the coast, with small, but functional dressing rooms off stage.
In common with many theatres in the 20’s, the Patricia was designed to house retail space, and professional offices upstairs, as well as the performing facilities. In the course of the current restoration work, those professional offices have been turned into living accommodation in character with the times, and the retail spaces have been revitalized.
In the projection booth things have radically changed. Thanks to an awe inspiring vote of confidence by our community, donations of $90,000.00 were raised in just 4 months in 2012 to finance the conversion from 35 mm to digital .
As well as that superb effort, an inspiration to any town wanting to set up a cinema, an additional $50,000.00 worth of acoustic/audio re-engineering being provided by a single anonymous family donor.
The Pat once again reigns as the best performance hall on the Coast, for live or recorded productions.
Ann Nelson, who runs the Patricia with her son, took a look at our film on The Lake Cinema at Boolaroo in which Bob Mason the proprietor there, explains that he needs on average 100 patrons per show to make a go of it. This left me a bit incredulous, used to seeing much smaller numbers in our Cinema at Avoca.
Ann Sent this response.
Interesting that Bob says his break even is 100 fannies in seats/show over his 3 day weekend program: my breakeven is 55 fannies in seats/show over a 7 day program. Very close to the same economics.
