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.

Chang's Mark

Chang Toy and the Sam Kee Company left their mark on this city. Four of the buildings Chang had built still exist today.

The first one is on Pender Street and was completed early in the 1900s. The exact details of when are not known but there is a photo of the building from 1906. In about 1907, the building was bought by Chee Kung Tong, an organization for Chinese workers, which was established in Vancouver in 1892. The organization renamed itself the Chinese Freemasons in 1920. I have written on the Chinese Freemasons' building but I thought it was a different building. Or at least that's the information I had at the time.

The second building still standing is one on West Pender and Richards. Sam Kee acquired two twenty-five foot lots in 1904 and the apartment building, Empress Rooms, was built. Today it is the home of Macleod Books.

Another apartment building Sam Kee built is now an office building at 145-149 Keefer Street.

I don't have photos of either of those buildings.

That brings us to perhaps the most famous of the Sam Kee buildings. This one is on West Pender and is listed in Ripley's Believe It or Not as being the narrowest building in the world. It is only 6 feet wide. I wrote on this unique structure in an earlier entry.

Chang Toy came to Canada from China and had basically nothing. He worked hard and was smart and became, probably, the wealthiest man in Chinatown.

I want to thank the Building Vancouver blog for the information on Chang Toy and the Vancouver Public Library archives for the old photos.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Chang Toy

Today I am going to tell you about one of the men responsible for the building of Vancouver- Chang Toy.

Born in Guangdong province in southern China in 1857, Chang Toy's father died when Toy was three. This didn't stop Chang Toy from going to school though. He was married as a child - so that his mother could have a servant.

In 1874, Chang came to Canada. Initially, he lived in Victoria before moving to New Westminster where he worked at a sawmill. In 1876, Toy moved to Granville and bought a share in a laundry. He then added a small grocery business and started labour contracting other Hakka speaking Chinese workers.

As the years passed, Chang Toy got involved in more businesses such as charcoal burning, an import and export business, steamship ticket sales and real estate. Originally, the goods were shipped from a more established Victoria merchant, the Wing Chong Company to Chang's business, the Sam Kee Company. Funny thing is that Sam Kee appears to be a totally made up name.

Chang Toy. Photo courtesy of the City of Vancouver archives.

After the Great Fire of 1886, Chang Toy moved to Steveston. But by 1888, he was back in the newly named Vancouver. Retail sales rose steadily and the company also acted as a wholesaler - bringing in goods from Hong Kong then shipping them to other parts of B.C. 

In the early 1900s, Sam Kee's store was on the south side of Pender backing onto a much larger False Creek. Sam Kee was also a clearing house for Chinese sending money back to China. By 1908, trade in things such as rice had grown hugely. Chinese sourced rice was shipped mainly to major Vancouver wholesalers like Kelly-Douglas and W H Malkin. On the export side, Hong Kong and later Shanghai had a market for salted fish.

As that trade expanded, Sam Kee made complex relationships with Japanese fishing concerns. When the sources of fish declined, the company made connections in Nanaimo. Sam Kee added a wharf, fish tanks and a saltery. Then Chang Toy's company turned around and leased the area to Japanese companies who supplied the fish Sam Kee exported. 

The different traders in Chinatown were rivals but they worked together when needed. In 1893, Alexander Cumyow and Chang Toy pooled their resources to buy property, which they then leased to Wing Sang and other merchants before selling two years later.

I want to thank the website Building Vancouver for the information on Chang Toy. I will tell you more about him on Wednesday.

I hope you find the beauty around you.