Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company in Vancouver

CVA – Port P1375 – The Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company on the steps of Vancouver’s Badminton Hotel, ca 1905. R. H. Trueman photo.

The troupe appearing above was one of the touring groups of the Australian theatre troupe known as Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company. The company was made up of actors under 14 years of age, and most of them were female. They specialized in offering

Vancouver Daily World. 27 June 1903.

comic/light operas (what are often called, today, operettas). I could find no documented indication of what production they offered in Vancouver in 1905. But a theatre listing in Nebraska at roughly the same time showed the group staging Romeo and Juliet. The man in about the third row, right appears to be Tom Pollard, the well-respected leader of the group.  An advertisement of an earlier Pollard performance in Vancouver appears below.

The troupe was posed in front of the Badminton Hotel (southwest corner Howe and Dunsmuir). The image below shows what the interior of the Vancouver Opera House (adjacent to Hotel Vancouver #2 on Granville Street) might have looked like around the time that Pollard’s Lilliputians were in town.

CVA – Bu P7 – [Interior of the Vancouver Opera House – 733 Granville St.] ca 1891 (Note: The original image at CVA has been modified here by cropping out tears and missing parts of original image as well as making the yellowed original into a b/w image).