Problems instering items into a listview

[AaronASterling]

Hello All,

I have a user define class,

<Serializable()> Public Class City

    Public Name As String = ""
    Public State As String = ""
    Public URL As String = ""

    Public Sub New(ByVal state As String, ByVal name As String, ByVal url As String)

       me.State = state
       me.Name = name
       me.URL = url

    End Sub
    
    Public Function isValid() As Boolean

        If me.Name <> "" And _
           me.State <> "" And _
           me.URL <> "" Then

            Return True

        Else

            Return False

        End If

    End Function

    Public Function ToSmallListViewItem() As ListViewItem

        Dim item As New ListViewItem

        item.SubItems.Add(me.State)
        item.SubItems.Add(me.Name)
        item.Tag = Me

        Return item

    End Function

End Class

From the last member function you can guess that I want to display lists of instances of this class in a listview control. Here is the code. It is a member of the main form of the application that owns the listview

Private Sub LoadMasterCityList()

        lvMasterCityList.Items.Clear()
       
       'master cities is an element of a wrapper class for List(Of City)
       'even when I bypass the wrapper and deal directly with the list as below
       'it doesn't work

        MasterCities = Cities.Load(Settings.strMasterCityListFile) 'this just loads from a file
        For Each CityItem As City In MasterCities.CityList

            'this is the listview control
            lvMasterCityList.Items.Add(CityItem.ToSmallListViewItem())

        Next

The problem is that the listview doesn't display the input. It has two columns as required by City.ToSmallListViewItem() method and is set to visible. It creates a scrollbar and I can highlight empty elements of it and scroll around. I just cant see the text. I am positive that the data is valid as it is sent to the LoadMasterCityList method, for example I have used MsgBox 's to print the contents of each CityItem both before and after the call to CityItem.ToSmallListViewItem() so I am sure that the data is write. Does anyone have any idea what can cause this behavior? I am stumped! All I have been able to find is that setting the checkbox property to true can cause a listbox too not render but I am not doing that and that is only applicable if its in large image or small image mode. It's in list mode anyway so thats not it.

Thanks in advance
Aaron