Pete Pantages: Pantages and Family Tree

pete pantages: Built in 1907, Vancouver's Pantages theatre was vacant for nearly 20 years when it succumbed to the wrecking ball in 2011, according to Vancouver Courier. Alexander Pantages had a slew of nephews and cousins who helped him run this theatre and other Pantages theatres in his portfolio and a West Coast vaudeville circuit boasting over 70 venues. The man was Peter Pete Pantages, a Greek immigrant with showbiz in his family tree, a popular restaurant of his own, and the charm to have talked some buddies into plunging into the frigid Vancouver waters on January 1, 1920, essentially inaugurating the Polar Bear Swim.article continues below Trending Storiesrelated Polar Bear swimmers continue long, colourful tradition If the Pantages name sounds like it should be up in lights on the outside of a theatre, well, that's what it was and remains, in many North American cities . Pete's uncle Pericles Pantages who preferred to call himself Alexander, after Alexander the Great ran Vancouver's Pantages theatre, which was at 152 East Hastings Street. Pete Pantages, who was helping out with the family theatre business in Vancouver when he first moved to town, reportedly liked to swim up to three times a day in English Bay, according to writer and historian Eve Lazarus. Pantages ended up started the Polar Bear Swim Club. The Polar Bear Swimmers get ready to go in, January 1, 1939. - City of Vancouver Archives So confident you could swim in English Bay any and every day of the year, Pete convinced five or so friends to jump in with him on the first day of 1920. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.