Standing on the stage of the Vancouver Playhouse, seemingly oblivious to the spotlight but completely attentive to the near-capacity audience, Chuck Davis labours for breath between sentences.

"You'd never know from my voice I used to be a staff announcer at CBC," he says, referring to the fluid in his lungs.

The crowd turns sombre, but Davis won't have it. He assures the audience they just heard a very funny joke, and as laughter ripples through the crowd, everyone seems to realize he's right.

Davis, 74, is that rare individual whose lifespan seems far too meager to accommodate his vitality. Speaking at the Public Salon, an event that brought together a collection of brilliant and notable people from the community, Davis speaks last. He reveals his untreatable cancer, something he found out only two days prior, and says he almost certainly won't have the time to finish what will likely be the most comprehensive history of Vancouver ever written, what Davis calls, "The capstone of my writing career."

The as yet unfinished book is called The History of Metropolitan Vancouver, which he says focuses mainly on the central city but also includes the suburbs.

The book, which Davis has laboured at for four years, is slated to have a chapter for every year of the city, beginning with Fort Langley in 1827. He's currently up to 1994. Davis has spent the better part of seven decades in Vancouver, written more than a dozen books about the city, worked for the Vancouver Sun, the Province and CHAN-TV, which eventually became Global.

Davis needs the book to be finished, whether cancer will permit him to be there for its publication or not.

It's not the first time health problems have kept him from his work.

Davis was diagnosed with skin cancer, prostate cancer and bladder cancer in a single week in 2007. "The skin cancer was minor: they chipped a few bits from my skull and back. The bladder and prostrate cancer were more serious. They had to be removed," he says, noting the operation helped him lose a little weight.

No matter how grim the diagnosis, Davis never seems to be far from a joke or a limerick, like the one he wrote while lying in the hospital, waiting for his bladder to be removed.

On the first day of 2008

Chuck Davis was mulling his fate:

"I'd feel so much gladder

If they left in my bladder

'Cause peeing the old way was great!"

He has been working steadily on his book since then, compiling more than 2,000 pages and 16 files of triumphs, tragedies and anecdotes about the city he loves. But on Tuesday, Sept. 21, Davis found out he probably won't be able to finish the tome.

"My wife Edna and our daughter Stephanie sat with me as an oncologist at the cancer agency told us that my cancer was incurable, and had reached a stage where it could not be treated with either radiation or chemotherapy."

Davis says the oncologist used the words "weeks" and "months" when answering his question about how much time he had left. "I don't recall hearing the word years," he says. "This lends a note of urgency to what I'm about to tell you," he says, addressing the crowd. "As Will Kane said in the movie High Noon, I could use a little help."

Davis needs a writer, and he needs the money to pay a writer. The History of Metropolitan Vancouver would be his sixteenth book, most of which are about Vancouver. He estimates finishing his magnum opus will take a year, and he's hoping to raise at least $30,000 to pay the writer.

"This [book] is long overdue, and I'm really pissed off that it's going to be delayed," he says later in the evening, smiling but sincere.

Davis is considering several writers to take over his history book. "It's got to be somebody who really knows the city," he says. "And affection for the city wouldn't be a bad thing."

Davis has trouble catching his breath and walks with a cane as he navigates a flight of stairs. Still, his enthusiasm and capacity for amazement seem in complete contradiction to a man who may only have a few weeks to live.

Standing on stage, Davis seems positively giddy as he relates a near-century old news article from the Vancouver Star detailing the effect of a 1912 volcanic eruption in Alaska on Vancouver. "All day yesterday the sky was overcast and the atmosphere was impregnated with sulphur fumes which caused considerable inconvenience in breathing to those who are inclined to be asthmatic," he reads, adding he now shares a special empathy with the asthmatic.

"Today's heavy rain will probably have the effect of clearing the air and putting an end to the city's emulation of Naples when Vesuvius is having a busy day," he concludes. Clad in a sweater and grey sweatpants, Davis is treated like the prettiest girl at the dance after his speech as people thank him for his courage and offer their own stories of the city. Davis listens with the wide-eyed curiosity of a boy first discovering how his bicycle works.

"If I'm still around in a year, I'll be really embarrassed," he confides to one friend. Without a pause, his friend responds: "Be embarrassed." Someone strikes up a conversation about Davis's website, vancouverhistory.ca and the historian is instantly engrossed. Davis leans forward in his chair, gesturing with one hand while resting the other on his cane and discussing getting his website translated into French.

Vancouver Heritage president Donald Luxton says Davis's work was an inspiration when he was a fine arts student at the University of B.C. in the early 1970s.

"I think his contribution has been immense," Luxton says.

Luxton praises Davis for the level of detail in his books and expressed astonishment at the breadth of his study. "You know he gets it from talking to everyone in the western world," Luxton said. "Some of us specialize a little more than that."

The heritage president also credits Davis with his ability to sift through piles of fine detail to tell a good story. "He's always been entertaining," Luxton says. "[His stories] always have a punchline."

Luxton says Davis and his work are especially important given how quickly the city can change and calls him "the collective memory of the city."

According to Davis, his previous health problems prepared him a little for the shock. "I'm facing this with equanimity," he says of the oncologist's pronouncement. "When the hammer dropped it wasn't quite as severe as it might've been," he says, adding that everyone in his family has had a good cry since he received the prognosis.

Davis thanks his wife of 45 years, Edna. "My wife's been an absolute rock," he says.

He met his wife at CBC Vancouver in the early 1960s. Edna was working in the TV newsroom, while Davis was pursuing a radio career that began with an army prank. Stationed in the Currie barracks in Calgary as an army private in 1955, Davis decided to "sell" radios to some his fellow soldiers, according to his official biography on bcradiohistory.com.

After quoting them a low price, he would turn the switch on the unplugged radio while a friend triggered a tape recorder.

Following a few minutes of music, Davis's booming baritone would blare from the tape recorder, reading the news bulletin: "Russian troops have landed in Churchill, Manitoba!"

The prank ended when a sergeant, clearly impressed by Davis's gravitas, reported the Russian invasion to headquarters.

In 1956, Davis took to the air on Canadian Army radio in West Germany, launching a radio career that would eventually include 2,800 interviews for the CBC.

His home office, affectionately nicknamed the world's largest gerbil's nest, is crammed with papers, books and clippings and may be slightly less organized than his garage, which he says is stuffed with thousands of magazines including the New Yorker, Esquire and Saturday Evening Post.

Davis shows great humour and graciousness throughout the evening, but seems notably downcast at the prospect of getting rid of all those great magazines and not being able to find someone who truly wants them. "I'll probably just throw them away," he says.

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Still, he insists his interests never became obsessions. "I don't count it as obsessive, I count it as really interested," he says.

Davis insists he's not a collector, not even keeping photos, but he makes one exception: "I collect coincidences," he says.

With barely a pause, Davis relates an incident from 1909, when he says Vancouver swelled with pride at having the first mechanized ambulance in the country. Almost immediately after getting the ambulance, it ran over an American tourist.

Davis loves stories that deal in irony and unexpected reversals. He says it's those little details, what he calls "raisins in the cake," that make his job so rewarding.

"It thickens your knowledge of the city," he says, describing the ability to walk down a street with the knowledge that just over there, a century ago, Vancouver Mayor Louis Taylor hobnobbed with U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, while down that street the Vancouver Public Library became the city's first glass curtain building, and just behind that door is where they saw the ghost.

Davis doesn't believe in ghosts, but he's not completely immune to the pleasure of ghost stories, as he mentions the lady in red who has allegedly been seen exiting from the elevator that doesn't exist in the Hotel Vancouver.

Davis adds the hotel created the appearance of one elevator strictly for aesthetic reasons. He's a thorough researcher even when it comes to dubious tales of the supernatural.

Davis seems to see life in stories, and rarely answers a question without delving into his seemingly endless supply of Vancouver tales.

When asked about the need for a greater knowledge of the city, Davis cites a visit he made to an elementary school when he was conducting local history lectures.

He told the young people about the history of the city, and showed them a few slides, including one of a bronze statue standing in front of Vancouver city hall, sporting a powdered wig and clutching a scroll in one hand.

He then asked the children to identify the man. "Without exception, 100 voices cried out, George Washington," he says.

A city that can't pick its namesake, George Vancouver, out of a lineup, is in desperate need of more local history, he laments. This misidentification happened in 48 schools.

Even at the Public Salon at the Playhouse, Davis identifies a historical mistake by one of the speakers who identified Francis Rattenbury, the architect best known for designing the B.C. parliament buildings, as a possible murderer.

"He had it totally wrong," Davis says. "Rattenbury was murdered by his wife's lover."

Davis didn't cross the bridge to history until he was in his 40s. He wrote a regular column for the Province newspaper, but one day while driving across the Burrard Bridge, he was struck by the beauty of the structure, and made the decision to write about the history of the bridge for his upcoming Sunday column.

He wrote 194 consecutive columns detailing the history of different parts in the city for the Province "before they went tabloid."

At least financially, Davis's detailed approach to history has sometimes been costly. In 1997, he self-published the The Greater Vancouver Book, which turned into a 900-page albatross. "That put me in the poorhouse to the tune of about $250,000," he says. "Ninety per cent of the writers still haven't been paid."

On stage at the playhouse, the red light starts flashing in front of Davis. In an evening featuring brilliant speakers espousing on topics such as global sustainability, doctors without borders, and the map of the human brain, Davis's announcement that he will not cut his speech short for the sake of the flashing red light ignites the audience, which gives him the loudest round of applause of the night.

"Let me close with a small personal anecdote," Davis says after the applause dies down. "My dad and I arrived in Vancouver from Winnipeg in December 1944. When we left Winnipeg the plows had piled the snow up higher than the level of the train itself. When we arrived in Vancouver," Davis says, his voice choked by the emotion of the moment, "there were flowers growing in front of the CPR station. I turned to my dad, I was nine years old, and said, I think we've come to the right place.

"Nothing has happened in the 66 years since to make me change my mind. This beautiful and exciting city, with its glowing future, needs a big book of its history for you and for your kids. I hope you can help."

Later that night, the Playhouse theatre has emptied and only a few people remain in the lobby, discussing the evening's speakers and making small talk in front of the empty hangers at the coat check.

An old friend spots Davis, and after a little conversation he starts to walk away.

"Don't go away," Davis says. "I have a story to tell you."

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