Alan Conway Clapp

Alan Conway Clapp (10 Feb 1930; 9 April 2013) was a Vancouver personality, television producer and visionary credited as the inspiration behind the 1976 UN Habitat Forum, the Granville Island Farmer's Market, the decorative lighting of Lions Gate Bridge, the development of "Hollywood North," Vancouver's film service industry, the conversion of False Creek to a people place and the creation of the Coal Harbour "People's Park" at the entrance to Stanley Park. Clapp achieved much of his notoriety as a high-profile social activist affected the manner of a counter-culture iconoclast while at the same time maintaining influential contacts with such mainstream movers and shakers as the Social Credit cabinet minister Grace McCarthy. Born and raised in Vancouver, Clapp was the founding producer of BCTV's News Hour, which dominated the city's evening newscast wars for many years and boasted one of the highest market shares of any regional news program in North America. Longtime BCTV executive Cameron Bell said Clapp "brought an almost revolutionary vision to television news--focusing on the role of film in the telling of a story." Clapp died at his home in Victoria from the effects of brain cancer.