Popping Up

I started telling you about how Vancouver started to grow in 1886, especially after the city was incorporated in April.

Naturally, the retail trade boomed as the town exploded! Flour was $6 a barrel, rice $2 a sack, corn meal four cents a pound, bacon 15 cents. Rib roasts 12 1/2 cents, leg of mutton 15 cents, cod was five cents, salmon 65 cents, smelts 50 cents a bucket.

Nails sold for $4.50 a keg, cross-cut saws, $1 a foot, sad-irons 10 cents each and grindstones four cents a pound.

Seth Tilly carried newspapers from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Toronto. He even stocked the London News and Graphic! Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper, Harper's Magazine, Weekly and Bazaar and Gody's Lady Book could also be found at Seth's.

Captain J. K. Ritchie of the Tivoli Saloon introduced the 5-cent schooner of beer and a second lumber mill was being built.

On Water Street, there were 36 considerable buildings - residences, halls, saloons, hotels and stores between Carrall and Cambie. The new Regina Hotel was west of Cambie and that street could boast at having the town's largest structure. The three-storey Carter Hotel. Also on Cambie, the Edinboro Hotel, the Scots Greys and Stag and Pheasant saloons as well as a few stores. Only a few buildings were on Abbott Street at the time. Carrall Street was just behind Water with 29 businesses including the new post office and the Ferguson Block where the CPR and BC Express offices were. Cordova was a residential district.

Hotels and boarding houses were on Hastings Street and Powell was the party street with the Tivoli and Cisne saloons, Fooks Columbia Hall, McLennan and McFeely's tinware and plumbing shop as well as Oppenheimer's store.

At Water and Alexander Streets were Hugh Keefer's store and Andy Linton's boat-building business. Oppenheimer Street (East Cordova) was residential; Westminster Road (Main Street) was nicknamed "Blue Blood Alley" since that is where the upper society lived.

Buildings were popping up on Dupont Street (under the present Georgia Viaduct) and on Pender. These were the main concentrations. Completed and half-completed buildings were scattered all over town. Streets-to-be were rutted trails winding through the stumps. The Eagle and Bridge Hotels rose on the south shore of False Creek.

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.

The Bowling-Pin Method

Later in May of 1886, Dr. A Harrison Thomas was appointed medical officer, George F. Baldwin city treasurer, J.J. Blake city solicitor and T.F. McGuigan city clerk.

A police commission was formed and consisted of the mayor, the magistrate and the city clerk. Boultbee proposed his brother-in-law, Gardner Johnson, for the position of chief of police and Mayor MacLean nominated his old Winnipeg acquaintance, James M. Stewart. Unfortunately for Johnson, the city clerk was dating Stewart's pretty daughter so Stewart got the appointment. Chief Stewart had a force of four - himself, an assistant chief and two constables.

On May 28, at a public meeting, Sam Pedgrift was elected chief of a volunteer fire brigade. Along with this shoemaker were 13 other members. Members paid dues of 25 cents a month and a fund of $200 was collected. These donations were to go to a fire engine.

As I have said before, Granville was a passive target of Port Moody, Victoria and New Westminster papers for years. But Vancouver had its own press. In January, William Brown started the Vancouver Herald, a four-page weekly. At the end of May, N. Harkness and J.H. Ross started the publication of the Vancouver News, and R.W. Gordon the Vancouver Advertiser. The Herald was a liberal leaning paper whereas the Advertiser was conservative. Granville may have been a settlement by the inlet but Vancouver was a city!

The surveying was still going on and during the spring of 1886, 2000 were employed. A large construction camp existed in the small bay where Hamilton Street met False Creek. Wives and families of the superior employees lived in the old Hastings Townsite where the CPR construction offices were.

On March 6, the company held its first land sale, setting June 10 as the deadline for persons in occupation of land previous to the 1884 agreement to buy their lots at the reserved price of $200.

Walter Graveley was the first buyer of unreserved land, paying $700 for lots 1,2 and 3 on the southeast corner of Carrall and Oppenheimer (now East Cordova) Streets. The CPR was flooded with claims of people claiming to have been occupants of the land- "almost in excess of the entire population of Gastown in 1884". Is it any wonder Van Horne warned Hamilton to keeps his eyes open when doing business with the people of Vancouver.

The railway was also clearing the land along Water, Cordova, Hastings and Pender Streets, as far west as Burrard. Much of this was done using the "bowling-pin" method. Ranks after ranks of the close packed trees were sawed halfway through then a few were felled and those would knock down the others. Scores of the forest giants fell and created a mash up of smashed trunks and branches. Undergrowth and jagged stumps were left to dry out through the summer and burned the following wet season.

I would like to thank the book Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morley for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Damned Vancouver Fellows

L.A. Hamilton was continuing with his survey of the Granville townsite and it wasn't easy. The original layout, he complained, made it impossible to avoid some irregular corners downtown. The sale of some "City of Liverpool" lots to Joseph Spratt added more difficulties. This hiccup forced a jog in Hastings at Burrard.

Hamilton had his achievements too. One of them was a "mile-long peephole" hewed in the forest where Granville Street now runs.

 The names of the streets downtown are those of CPR officials - Hamilton was, after all, a CPR surveyor - and the streets in the West End came mainly from Admiralty charts and provincial dignitaries.

When the survey was complete, the CPR decided whether a landholder or the railway got first choice concerning a lot of land through a draw of hat. That was the 1884 settlement.

In later years, Hamilton confessed he had "cooked the draw" in favour of Brighouse so that he might retain the lots on which the "three greenhorns" had built their cabin in 1862. (For more information on the "three greenhorns" see this entry.)

Granville was a hard-boiled, hard-drinking, hard-living town. Cards and alcohol were everywhere. The night before the land draw, CPR president, Van Horne, was unmercifully skinned in a poker game. The next morning, he told Hamilton,

"Keep your eyes open. Theses damned Vancouver fellows will steal the pants off you."

David and Isaac Oppenheimer formed a syndicate, where they bought part of the Hastings Mill site and logged the land between Carrall Street and Gore Avenue in addition to getting ready to open a wholesale and retail grocery at the corner of Powell and Columbia streets. During an all-night poker game, one of the players woke to find four queens in his hand. He looked around suspiciously.

"Who dealt?" he asked.
"Ikey." someone answered.
"Who cut?"
"David."
"I pass." said the drowsy gentleman and threw his hand in.

David Oppenheimer went on to become our second mayor.

The person who recorded the above incident saw the owner of a general store at Water and Alexander Streets, Hugh Keefer, bet $100 on which of two flies crawling up a bar mirror would reach the top first.  Some people will bet on anything!

Then again, a man had to be a gambler to live in Granville. People who settled in the townsite by the inlet bet his time, his future and his earthly possessions on the hamlet in the wilderness becoming something.

Granville was growing rapidly. Hamilton recorded there were barley 100 habitable buildings in the town as the end of February 1886. By the middle of May, there were at least 600 inhabited by speculators, merchants, families and worker required to build 500 buildings in 75 days.

In January 432 residents of Granville signed a petition to the provincial Legislature asking the City of Vancouver be incorporated. There was opposition from representatives of New Westminster but the act received third reading April 2, at 7:30 pm and Lieutenant-Governor C.F. Cornwall gave it royal assent April 6.

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.