The Vancouver Voyager is BAAACK!!!

Hello everyone. The Vancouver Voyager has returned! When I left off back in February, I was telling you about the period of time between World War I and World War II - the 1920s. I had just finished relating facts about newspapers. Today, I am going to look at some of the people responsible for our civic leadership.

From 1918 to 1921, Vancouver's mayor was a railroad and real estate promoter and speculator, R.H. "Harry" Gale. Harry was fast talking, colourful and popular but he wasn't capable of dealing with the problems during this transitional period after the war.

Gale was replaced in for 1922 and 1923 by Charles E. Tisdall. Tisdall improved the efficiency of the office and maintained a sound, conservative financial position. 

The next mayor, W.R. Owen had an uneventful term in 1924.

That brings us to Louis D. Taylor. Taylor was a dominating figure in local politics, serving as mayor from 1925 to 1935.  L.D. was fortunate because when he took over, a great boom that was to last until the end of 1929 was in full swing and many of the financial problems his predecessors faced had solved themselves. The city was in need of this perennial optimist though.

Taylor had been mayor when the city was booming in 1909 and 1910 then again in 1915. He began his civic career as a licence commissioner in 1902 though was voted out of office in 1903. He was never an alderman - tried but wasn't elected. He had run unsuccessfully for mayor five times in addition to the three times he won. (That's persistence!)

Organized labour liked Taylor. His policies were liberal and progressive and he favoured organized labour.

Louis D. Taylor was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He came to Vancouver in 1894 and, at the end of 1924, he was 67 years old. He was a pleasant, gentle man who preferred to gain through negotiation instead of open conflict. However, he had a vast knowledge of the city and its people and there were many sources of "pressure" available to him that he didn't hesitate to use to get his way.

This earned him a reputation for deep and sometimes unscrupulous intrigue that sometimes worked to his disadvantage when his enemies charged him with dishonesty. But when he was in his final, poverty stricken, years, his foes - even the most determined ones - acquitted him of profiting personally from his eleven years as chief magistrate of the city.

Taylor was connected with the pioneer Vancouver, back before he even got here. His second wife was Mrs. Alice Berry, the widow of pioneer teamster and a hero of the Great Fire, Harry Berry. Alice was also the daughter of Jonathan Miller, an early pioneer.

Thanks to the book Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morley for the above information.

Wednesday, I will tell you about a few of the legends surrounding our colourful mayor, L. D. Taylor. Until then, I hope you find the beauty around you.

With a Little Help

These shoes were discovered outside a house known as #flatland

Once the fire was out, it was time to take stock of the dead and the damage. More than 20 people were known to have died but there more than likely many more who perished in the flames. A mother and child were found the next day in a well where they had sought shelter only to be suffocated when the fire at the oxygen. 

One account states, "a man named Fawcett with a magnificent team of bays and a face like stone" drove directly into the heat of the fire where no one could have lived. Calcined horse and human bones mixed with the iron tires and ashes of a wagon were found on Hastings Street. I wonder why would the man do that? What was so important he sentenced himself, and his beautiful animals, to death?

In many places iron melted because the heat was so intense. The bell of St. James Church became a pool of bronze where the church had once stood. The deck timbers at the shore end of the the city wharf caught on fire. The survivors who were crowding the structure, tore them out of the ground and threw them into the water. 

Many of the survivors were taken aboard ships in the inlet while others stood in the water, waiting and praying the fire wouldn't reach there. Father Clinton held a nine-year-old boy in his arms as he stood in the water, watching the flames come closer. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the wind died down and the blaze burned out.

Men from the clearing gangs who were cut off at the Regina Hotel survived the inferno. They were penned in on all sides by fire, they went from room to room, soaked every blanket they find in water and swathed the hotel in them. A bucket brigade sluiced down the roof and other beat out every spark and blaze they found. Fortunately, there was a wide, unoccupied clearing around the hotel that helped. Once the summer hurricane was over, the Regina Hotel was the only standing building in all but the fringes of Vancouver.

The men gathered in the bar and drank beer in silence and gratitude. One them, an Irishman, crossed himself and prayed as he opened the first bottle.

Burned and injured people were attended to at the mill and Spratt's refinery. Burns were dressed with oil and flour and wrapped in leaves. An improvised morgue was set up at the north end of the False Creek Bridge and a refugee camp at the south. The people of Vancouver slept in the city's ashes.

The smoke from the burning city was seen in Port Moody and New Westminster. By 3 o'clock, unable to reach anyone in Vancouver on the single telephone line, the Royal City knew what had happened. The smoke overhead dropped bits of burned paper. As I have written before, there were squabbles between these towns and Vancouver but now was the time to put politics aside.

The New Westminster council voted $9,000 out of public funds to help Vancouver. Doctors and women collected medical supplies and bandages, food, clothing and household goods were donated. By 6 o'clock in the evening, a long relief caravan was inching its way along the Westminster Road to the stricken city. They passed crowds of refugees going to neighbouring communities where every door was opened to them.

By 3 am, lumber wagons were coming in from Fraser communities, nails and tools were unloaded

by the light of lanterns and the flickering of still burning tree stumps. By daylight, tents and building frames were standing. 

It took less than twenty minutes for Vancouver to burn to the ground. In twelve hours, the city was rising again. Thanks to a little help from our neighbours.

Thanks to the book Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morley for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Fleeing the FIre

When I left off Monday, 1886 Vancouver had just gone up in flames. The townfolk saved what they carried. Nothing else. J.Z. Hall and Sam Greer's daughter were on their way to teach Sunday school. Hall went back inside to get his bible, which he had forgotten. While waiting , Miss Greer saw the smoke and called out to Hall. After the fire, the only things Hall owned were the clothes on his back and his bible.

Miss Greet helped Mrs. Ben Wilson, a neighbour,carry her sewing-machine into the inlet's water.  There she, Hall and Wilson waited until the fire passed. The postmaster, Mr. Miller, ran for the mill with the post office cash-box. His glasses were carefully balanced on top of it. Ike Johns managed to save his customs register and that's it.

A young man along Cordova Street lashed a horse harnessed to an old buckboard with a canvas tied over its load. A wind blew the canvas away and in the buckboard was the body of his mother. The 300-pound woman died the night before. A man ran  by, swinging a dead goose by the neck and laughing crazily.

Another man struggled to carry a mattress and half a brass bed. He dropped them in the street and ran back to get his wife and children, who he forgot. Two men ran past a house and stopped. They forced a woman and a little girl to vacate. The woman was in tears because the men wouldn't let her wait to put shoes on the little girl's feet. These refugees all headed for Hastings Mill.

Another danger was the fact there were explosives stored in town. These were the responsibility of drivers employed by the merchants involved. Hugh Campbell was on Water Street near Cambie and he refused to flee until he loaded seven cases of dynamite. Farther down the same street, teamster Harry Berry and two men put 20 barrels of blasting powder on his dray, wrapped them in wet blankets and forced his team through the flames down Carrall Street to False Creek, where he drove them into the water.

Among those who retreated to False Creek were Magistrate Boultbee, C. Gardner Johnson, Bailey, the bartender of Balfour's Hotel and a stranger carrying a valise. They had been surrounded by flames while trying to save the hotel.  On their way to False Creek, they passed a man throwing water from the side of the road onto a woodpile. He refuse to come with them and was burned to death.

At Pender and Carrall Streets, the group could go no farther and lay down in a small patch of gravel.

"To the westward side," said Gardner Johnson, "a large frame house was burning and it was so near that the burning timber came falling around us, causing us agonies I cannot describe. Bailey said he could not stand this and said he was going to to get through at any cost, but he could not penetrate a foot in the flames, and after running around for a few seconds, he dropped and burned up before our eyes."

Johnson was on the windward side of the three. He borrowed the stranger's valise to shield his head. Inside the valise was a loaded revolver and the heat exploded the cartridges.

The fire roared past and burned out so they headed for the creek  and scrambled along the shore, half in and half out the water. The deep bay in the creek shielded that part of the town built on the Westminster Road where Gardner Johnson lived. When he arrived at his cottage, his wife was standing outside, looking for him. In later years, he said,

"I could not go and speak to her, but I remember sitting down on the steps and beginning to cry."

The information above is from the book, Vancouver, from Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morley.

I hope you find the beauty around you.