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.

Concessions

There was square-built steam scow known as Spratt's Ark in 1883, which carried a floating salmon cannery. She was built by Spratt in Victoria and anchored in Coal Harbour. She operated in conjunction with the oilery and her refuse was discharged overboard. People blamed the pollution on the decline of the fish population, and it probably had something to do with it, but the over fishing didn't help either.

1884 was the year of the final railway settlement. The Dominion government had withdrawn its reserve from Burrard Inlet lands below Port Moody. The new premier of British Columbia, conferred with William Van Horne of the CPR earlier in the year and they had arranged a settlement where the federal reserve was replaced with a provincial one.

Van Horne formally opened negotiations with Smithe for extension of the line to Granville. He demanded all reserved lands, with a right-of-way to Kitsilano via False Creek. The terminal docks were to be erected on the present Indian Reserve there. The CPR was asking for a good half of the present peninsula on which metropolitan Vancouver stands.

By September 9, Smithe reduced the railway's demands down to about 11,000 acres but they still included the entire foreshore from First to Second Narrows. Van Horne said, "The depth of water necessitates docks along the shore - permanent piers and docks are not practicable." By October 6, the final terms were in place. They included:

Six thousand acres of land, comprising all unalienated lots in Granville Townsite not reserved for government offices or schools; most of Shaughnessy Heights and the remainder scattered through the present city.  The right-of-way included the north bank of False Creek in part, and the line to Kitsilano. Title of these lands passed to the CPR, but the company was obliged to offer to the occupiers $200 a lot, any land on which individuals had already settled without purchasing.

Hastings Mill lease was extended to 1890, on condition the mill give up 4000 acres at once and 1000 more each year. Large private landholder had to give one-third of the lots in each block they held to the CPR. Almost the entire waterfront from Gore Avenue to Stanley Park was given to the railway.

None of the residents of Granville or the surrounding area seemed to think these concessions were excessive. Looking back and with more knowledge, we can now see that the CPR had decided on Granville as the terminus and would have carried through with its plans even if they had to buy the necessary land.

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

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Wrapping up '48

1948 is a year Jennie Wong will long remember. The Vancouver Sun, along with several radio stations, sponsored a contest. In this competition, the winner would be given a radio show of their own. Jennie, along with other hopefuls, sent in her audition tape to a panel consisting of Frank Sinatra, Freddie Robbins, a New York City disc jockey and orchestra leader Claude Thornhill.

As you have probably already guessed, Wong won the contest and was given a half-hour Saturday show on CKMO. She called the show Jennie's Juke Joint, making Jennie the first Chinese-Canadian disc jockey. Wong went on to work for CBC Edmonton as the 'weather girl' for their morning radio show. She also started her own business, doing theatrical and Television make-up in Edmonton. A job that lasted 25 years. The last report I saw, she became Jennie Diment and still lives in Edmonton.

Jack Varaleau, now of Vancouver, won the British Empire Weightlifting championship, breaking the Olympic record at the same time. Varaleau was a flight sergeant who served in the Canadian military from 1940 to 1969. He would later go on to win gold at the 1950 British Commonwealth Games.

The New Citizen, a bilingual paper (Chinese and English) was started by Vancouver's Roy Mah.

An interesting thing happened at the Theatre Under the Stars - TUTS - in Stanley Park during the summer of 1948. Singer Karl Norman tells what happened when the power went out during a production of the operetta Naughty Marietta:

“The orchestra kept playing,” Karl says, “and I kept singing, and people from the audience lined up their cars at the back of Malkin Bowl and lit the performance with their headlights.”

In 1925, Arthur Whalley opened a service station, general store and soft drink stand in Surrey. Pacific Stage Lines later opened a bus stop there and called it Whalley's Corner. In 1948, the name Whalley was officially adopted.

Bus service began in Burnaby. The city now had paved roads!

The Cloverdale Rodeo was enlarged but due to the Fraser Floods, the event had to be delayed until after Labor Day.

This was the year that sixty thousand daffodils were planted along the Stanley Park Causeway. The bulbs were a gift from the Netherlands to thank Canadian soldiers for their efforts in liberating the country from the Nazis.

After World War II, there was a housing shortage. There was a 120 acres of vacant land near Boundary Road and Grandview Highway that the city began to develop. Alderman Halford Wilson was chair of the civic street naming committee. Wilson announced the streets were to be named after wartime personalities, locations, battles and events which is why the streets have such names as:

Worthington and Falaise Avenues, Dieppe, Anzio, Mons, Normandy, Seaforth and Maida Drives, and Vimy and Matapan Crescents. Malta Place. Donald and Jack Worthington, sons of a former alderman, were soldiers.

Since 1905, the Fraser Street bridge was opened for passing ships by hand. In 1948, it became mechanized to make life a little easier. That upgrade lasted 26 years, until the bridge was replaced by the Knight Street Bridge in 1974.

Starting in 1943, military historian Peter Moogk has written, “the receding danger of attack brought a gradual reduction in the local defences to release trained personnel for the Canadian Army in Europe, which was now in continuous action. Soon after the war's end in September 1945 the gun batteries were dismantled and closed. Fort Point Grey was the last to go, in 1948, and there, appropriately, is a historic maker at the restored No.1 Gun position that recalls the battery's history.”

Here's one for all you Mad Men fans out there. Jimmy Lovick, also known as the 'true giant' of Vancouver ad men, started out on his own in 1948. Lovick opened James Lovick and Co. offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. By 1958, Lovick's company's were the largest ad agencies in Canada with additional offices in Edmonton, London, Ont., Halifax, New York and San Francisco. Lovick didn't desert Vancouver though, where he had started his career in 1934, His offices were in his own building at 1178 West Pender Street.

I hope you enjoyed this look at the year 1948 in Vancouver Canada. I would like to thank The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the above information.

I hope  you find the beauty around you.