The History of Metropolitan Vancouver

The 1912 mansion Kanakla, now on the UBC campus and known as Cecil Green Park. A nice visual tour of the mansion (available for functions) is at www.cecilgreenpark.ubc.ca

Chronology Continued

1912

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You'll note that this year includes events listed under "Also in . . ." These are events for which we don't have a specific date. If YOU know the
specific date of an event shown there, please notify us . . . and cite the source! Many thanks!
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January 5 The first professional hockey game ever played in Vancouver was enjoyed by the crowd at the Patrick brothers’ Denman Arena. The Vancouver Millionaires beat the New Westminster Royals 8 to 3.

January 28 Vancouver Alderman R.P. Pettipiece addressed a crowd at the Powell Street grounds on unemployment. The meeting was broken up by mounted police.

February 12 The Vancouver Morning Sun first appeared. Later, it will become an afternoon newspaper, the Vancouver Sun.

February 27 The Pacific Great Eastern Railway was incorporated to build and operate a railway from North Vancouver to Prince George. North Vancouver hoped thereby to become the major railway terminus on the west coast. (The PGE was named after and partly funded by Britain's Great Eastern Railway, hence the odd name.)

March 15 The municipality of West Vancouver was incorporated. The population was 700. Land for the city hall was donated by John Lawson, called by some the "father" of West Vancouver. (Population in the summers went up to 1,200.)

March 25 Constable Lewis Byers responded to a "drunk annoying" call on Powell Street. The drunk had a gun and Byers was shot and killed—the first Vancouver police officer killed in the line of duty. Police closed in around a waterfront shack where the drunken Oscar Larsen had holed up, and shot him dead.

March 30 The Vancouver local of the International Longshoremen's Association was formed, with 60 charter members.

March Emily Carr, back from a sojourn in France, exhibits paintings she created there in her gallery at 1465 West Broadway.

April 6 In the first municipal election in West Vancouver Charles Nelson is elected reeve (mayor).

April 8 The West Vancouver ferry service, which had fallen on hard times, was taken over by the municipality. It would lose money for another 12 years.

April 18 John Morton, one of the “Three Greenhorns,” died in Vancouver at age 78.

April 21 A public memorial service was held at the Vancouver Opera House in aid of widows and orphans of the seamen of the Titanic.

April 23 A group of concerned, forward-looking men gathered in the council chambers of Vancouver City Hall, formed the Vancouver Mining Club, and elected its first president, Robert R. Hedley. The group was later named the British Columbia and Yukon Chamber of Mines. On December 8, 2005, the name of the association would be changed to the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia (AME BC). The web site has a very detailed chronology on the development of the mining industry in BC.

April 24 Billy Stark was the pilot for the first passenger flight in B.C. Passenger James Hewitt, a Vancouver Province sports reporter, was flown for six miles and eight minutes, soaring up to 600 feet. The plane travelled at 40 mph, and Hewitt rode on a board strapped to the lower wing.

May 6 The memorial drinking fountain dedicated to King Edward VII was unveiled at the courthouse. In the beginning, little bronze cups were left for drinkers . . . but they kept getting stolen. The first drink was taken by Mayor James Findlay. Today, the fountain is on the east side of Hornby next to the Art Gallery.

May 7 West Vancouver appointed its first police constable. There is a history of the force here. At this website we learn that early police officers, when called to points west of town, had to take the bus.

May 8 Writer George Woodcock was born in Winnipeg, later settled in Vancouver. He became British Columbia’s most prolific author, producing about 150 books. See this site.

May 24 The first parachute jump in Canada was made at a two-day Aviation Meet (tickets 50 cents, children 25 cents) at Hastings Park by Prof. Charles Saunders. He had jumped from balloons before, but this was his first leap from a plane. The Province of May 25 explained that Prof. Morton (no first name given), who was supposed to have made the jump, had fallen ill and Saunders was called in at short notice. He leaped from 3,500 feet, and didn’t open the parachute until after falling 1,000 feet. Needless to say, the crowd was thrilled. Both days of the meet were marked by aerobatics and races.

May Enrolment commenced of the 6th Field Engineers of North Vancouver, under the command of Major J. P. Fell. The unit would become a training and recruitment depot in the two world wars, and saw action on D-Day.

June 24 Newspaper report: “The roads are getting crowded: the total number of automobiles . . . in Vancouver is 1,769.”

July 1 Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, is leased by the Canadian Pacific.

Also July 1 Peter Greyell, a White Rock builder, opens a 50-room, four-storey hotel there with a lunch for 300 guests.

July 9 Vancouver’s progressive police department now has a chief's car, a detective car, a paddy wagon and an ambulance. And, even more important, they hired their first women: Nancy Harris and Minnie Miller. (Today, Vancouver has well over 100 women police officers, in almost all ranks.) Their salary was $80 a month. Another source gives a spelling of Lurancy Harris and Minnie Millar.

A Justice Institute paper reports: “Even as late as 1912 there was no police training college or any kind of instruction course.” Police worked 8 hours a day, seven days a week. They were expected to attend court on their own time and, in addition, “any celebrations or parades where their attendance was expected.”

July 12 William Hailstone, another one of the “Three Greenhorns,” died at age 82 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.

July 16 “Splash Day” in Burnaby celebrated the completion of the municipal waterworks system.

July 24 The B.C. Electric Railway Company held its first annual picnic at Hastings Park.

August 10 A story in the Province reported that the clock on the Vancouver Block, the brand new tall white terra cotta office block on Granville Street, is the largest in Canada. “The four faces of this clock are each twenty-two feet in diameter. The glass contained in the dial weighs four tons and is seven-eighths of an inch in thickness. The minute hands are eleven feet long and the hour hands about eight feet . . . The clock was erected by the Standard Electric Time Company of San Francisco at a cost of more than $10,000.”

August 11 Chalmers’ Presbyterian Church, at the southwest corner of 12th Avenue and Hemlock Street in Vancouver, was dedicated today. “The new church,” the Province reported, “has been specially planned to take a helpful part in the social life of the community. It has been planned and equipped as a seven-day-a-week church for the people. A gymnasium, swimming and shower baths, reading rooms and social parlors are included ...”

August 13 VANCOUVER’S GREAT AUTO SHOW opened as part of the Vancouver Exhibition (what we now know as the PNE). “The man who is completely ignorant of the working of a car,” the Province wrote, “and who would be unable to steer it even if his hand were placed on the wheel, will have an opportunity of learning in a few minutes the exact method by which auto locomotion may be effected ...”

August 23 (25?) Street car service started on Nanaimo Street between Hastings and Broadway. (Broadway was so named this year; it had been plain old 9th Avenue.)

August 24 From the papers: “In order to more than double the present size of their store at the northwest corner of Abbott and Hastings street, the Woodward Department Stores Limited have bought eighty-six feet fronting on Hastings street and adjoining their present store on the west for the sum of $400,000, or $4500 per front foot, which is said to be a record price for inside property in that section of the business district of Vancouver . . .”

August 27 Thomas Wilby and his driver, Jack Haney, left Halifax to drive across Canada.

August 28 A Canadian businessman named E. G. Rykert, who was well enough known in 1912 to be quoted on the country's future, spoke in Montreal after his return from a business trip to Europe. “Mr. Rykert,” the Province reported, “declared that Canada was taking an increasingly important place before the eyes of the British public. ‘When I was in London,’ he said, ‘I noticed one day that the newspaper bulletins announced in huge type that Borden would arrive at such and such an hour; not “Premier Borden of Canada,” but just “Borden.” This shows that the Canadian premier is now a British public character . . .”

Also August 28 Hardial Singh Atwal was born in Vancouver, the first Canadian-born Sikh.

September 2 Burnaby's Oakalla Prison Farm was officially opened. Its first inmate was William Daley, sentenced to serve a year of hard labor for stealing some fountain pens.

September 14 Lynn Valley Park—today it’s called Lynn Canyon Park, one of the most popular parks in the lower mainland—was officially opened in the District of North Vancouver. Band concerts were given by the North Vancouver City Band. One piece of more than usual interest was entitled The Echoes of the Lynn, composed by Miss G. Strickland, age 15. The 6th Field Engineers of North Vancouver made their first appearance as an Honor Guard. There is a small suspension bridge there, 50 metres above Lynn Creek.

September 15 From Page 1 of the Province: “The provincial police has received from Ottawa the apparatus required for registering the marks of human finger tips, and hereafter this method of identification of criminals will be part of the regular procedure at the provincial capital. The apparatus is extremely simple, consisting merely of a glass plate, a roller and paper. The prisoner places the finger and thumb of each hand on the plate, on which a special ink has been smeared. The moistened tips are then placed upon the paper and the record is made. All records will be photographed and a copy sent to Ottawa so that the Dominion police will by and by have a complete collection of impressions of the finger tips of the criminal section of the travelling public.”

September 18 Canada’s Governor General, the Duke of Connaught (a famous soldier and a son of Queen Victoria), visited Vancouver with the Duchess to officiate at the ceremony naming the brand-new Connaught Bridge—a name that never caught on. Everyone called it the Cambie Street Bridge. (It was demolished in 1985, replaced by the present bridge.) The royals were accompanied by their daughter, Princess Patricia, the woman for whom the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) is named; she was the regiment’s colonel-in-chief.

The Connaughts officially opened the provincial courthouse, too. James Findlay was the first Vancouver mayor to wear the new gold civic chain of office. That was for the royal visit.

Also September 18 The original Lumbermen’s Arch (note the plural, not “Lumberman’s”) loomed over the intersection of Hamilton and Pender Streets to honor the visit to Vancouver by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. The Arch was built and donated by the B.C. Lumber and Shingle Association for the royal visit. A huge Douglas fir, bark left on, was sawn into eight logs—each four feet in diameter and 20 feet long—which were stood on end and topped with a flag-bedecked pediment. It straddled Hamilton Street at Pender. “It was asserted that there was not a nail in the whole of it.” After the royals left it was disassembled, taken to Stanley Park, and put back together again. By late 1947 it had deteriorated, and so was demolished. The present much simpler version—a single leaning log—was put in its place in 1952. (Incidentally, the Arch’s designer was Captain G.P. Bowie, who was killed at Ypres on July 7, 1915.)

September 20 Famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt performed in Vancouver—in French.

October 14 Thomas Wilby and his driver Jack Haney arrived in Vancouver. They were the first people to drive across Canada in an automobile. They had left Halifax August 27 in a brand-new Reo. They carried on to the Pacific Ocean after leaving Vancouver. With the roads the way they were then it really was an epic: the trip took 49 days. Wilby was a journalist who mostly wrote magazine travel features. He wrote a book about this trip called A Motor Tour Through Canada.

Fall The architectural firm of Sharp and Thompson won the competition for the contract to design the new Point Grey site for the University of British Columbia. The firm built the first four original campus buildings and became the official architectural firm to the university. Over the years the firm would evolve into Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and Partners.

November 25 The existing Point Atkinson Lighthouse "flashed into being" today, replacing an older version installed by the Dominion government in 1875. The lighthouse horn, sounding every 53 seconds in foggy weather, would come to be called Old Wahoo by the locals. Lighthouse Park was originally set aside as a timber preserve to provide fuel for the lighthouse and its steam fog alarm, so the Park has never been logged and retains many of its original native trees and plants.

December 12 Richmond's Town Hall burned to the ground. A new Town Hall will be built in Brighouse in 1919.

December 20 The Rex Theatre, described in the papers as “the most modern movie house in the world,” opened on Hastings Street.

Construction starts on the Birks Building at the southeast corner of Georgia and Granville. The handsome structure was designed by architect Woodruff Marbury Somervell. Its demolition in 1974 caused an uproar.

The 270-foot (82.3-metre) tall World Building went up at 100 West Pender. We know it today as the Old Sun Tower. John Coughland and Sons of Vancouver fabricated 1,250 tons of steel for what was then the tallest building in the British Empire. It held that title for two years. (The caryatids on the building, the “Nine Maidens,” were created by sculptor Charles Marega.)

The Only Restaurant, famed for its humble surroundings and generous helpings of seafood, opened on Hastings Street.

B.C. Breweries Ltd. built a new brewery at West 12th Avenue and Yew “on the wooded outskirts of the city beside a creek flowing through a duck-filled marsh (now Connaught Park.)”

Sharp & Thompson, architects, won a competition to design the University of B.C.

The Lee Building at Broadway and Main went up. That’s the one with the huge billboard atop it.

The CPR Station opened at 601 West Cordova. Contractor was Westinghouse, Church, Kerr & Co. Today the beautiful old building is the western terminus for the SkyTrain and the West Coast Express, and the southern port for the SeaBus.

A group of Vancouver-based businessmen conceived a plan to build a 15-metre high dam across the Second Narrows. Port Moody, which would have been flooded, protested. It never happened.

Richmond, anticipating the opening of the Panama Canal, proposed to create a gigantic seaport, with 35 kilometres of ocean frontage of the west end of Lulu Island. That never happened, either.

Teddy Lyons began his spieling for the B.C. Electric Railway. Thousands of people over the decades listened with fascination to Teddy’s tales of the city’s history, and groaned and laughed at his jokes as he pointed out the sights of the city from specially constructed open streetcars. “There’s the richest bird in Vancouver,” he would tell his sightseeing passengers, pointing to a seagull flying overhead. “He just made a deposit on a brand-new Cadillac.” He kept it up for a jaw-dropping 39 years, knew every historical corner of our town. Teddy retired in1951, died February 27, 1955.

Lumber magnate Robert Dollar established the Canadian Robert Dollar Company, and set up a sawmill and dock on a 75-acre site on the North Arm. His ships were famous for their $ symbol on the stacks. Dollarton was named for him.

Seven Indo-Canadian mill workers are killed in Port Moody when a freight train is routed onto a siding in error, where the workers are loading freight cars.

Surrey got a spacious new municipal hall, designed by C.H. Clow and built in Cloverdale. Today, it’s a cultural and seniors’ centre.

Burnaby, which had had a population of 800 four years earlier, as a result of a real estate boom now had 15,000. A new Municipal Hall was built this year. It would be shared by the RCMP from 1935 to 1956, then by the library. It was torn down in 1972.

Delta opened a new municipal hall, a Tudor-style structure designed by A. Campbell Hope. It is now the Delta Museum and Archives, 4858 Delta Street.

The Great Northern Railway—now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe—built a station in White Rock. Today, the building is the city’s museum and archives, at 14970 Marine Drive. (When passenger service was withdrawn from White Rock in 1975, the BNR gave the station to the city.)

The Burnaby branch of the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) was formed to provide community nursing care at a time when there were few doctors and a rapidly expanding population.

The Board of Harbour Commissioners was formed to monitor traffic on the north arm of the Fraser.

US-based Imperial Oil, established in Ontario in 1880, built a storage and shipping plant on the north side of Capitol Hill.

Contracted by North Vancouver, Francis (Frank) Guinan cleared and graded the Ambleside area. That neighborhood was named this year by pioneer settler Morris Williams, who had earlier lived in Ambleside in the Lake District in England.

The Clachan (Gaelic for meeting place) tea room was built at Dundarave in West Vancouver, and run by Jessie and Helen Stevenson. In 1914 a second floor allowed for overnight guests. Later the Clachan became a restaurant called Peppi's, and today is the Beach House.

The Registered Nurses Association of British Columbia was founded. Everyone wishing to practice as a registered nurse in British Columbia must be a member of the Association.

Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel performed in Vancouver with a music hall troupe from England, “Karno's Comedians.”

Lawyer E.P. Davis built a mansion, designed by architect Samuel MacLure, on extensive grounds near the tip of Point Grey. Davis named it “Kanakla,” a West Coast native word meaning ‘house on the cliff’. It was renamed in honour of Dr. and Mrs. Cecil Green, who bought the house in 1967 and generously donated it to UBC. The complex is now known as Cecil Green Park.

A portion of the University of British Columbia lands was subdivided and laid out on town-planning principles. It’s now known as the Dunbar-Southlands area.

The Vancouver Fire Department, always in the forefront, took delivery of its first motorized pump, a 1,250 gallon-per-minute engine that remained in service for almost 40 years.

The Shannon Dairy was founded in Marpole, and continued operating until the early 1950s.

Construction began on pedestrian tunnels under Vancouver General Hospital. The first tunnel was built to connect laundry services to the hospital. Total length of the various tunnels now: about a mile. (1.6 km)

The Wallace Shipyards in North Vancouver opened, replacing an earlier version that had burned down in July, 1911.

The B.C. Electric Railway Company increased its trackage in Vancouver from 21 kilometres in 1900 to 170 kilometres this year, opening up vast areas of undeveloped land for single family housing.

The Number 17 streetcar line was established to run down Oak Street to connect Marpole with the built-up city. It was, apparently, a bumpy ride. And a streetcar line was established to connect Kerrisdale to the downtown, and service to Point Grey was extended.

J.M. McCallan built a home at the northeast corner of West 67th Avenue and Hudson Street. In 1927 it would be converted to become Vancouver's first Children's Hospital.

The lovely old Parker carousel, now at Burnaby's Village Museum, was built this year in Kansas.

No. 19 Company, Army Service Corps and No.19 Company, Canadian Signal Corps were formed locally.

The first Welsh society in the lower mainland began with formation of the Cambrian Society, named for Wales’ Cambrian Hills.

The oldest Catholic parish in Burnaby is St. Helen's, and the parish's first church was built this year.

The Elks of Canada were established. In the Lower Mainland there are approximately 20 lodges with about 1000 members.

The Standard Bank of Canada opened a branch in Vancouver. The bank would be acquired by the Bank of Commerce in 1928.

Quebec-based Eastern Townships Bank, which had opened a Vancouver branch in 1905, amalgamated with the Bank of Commerce.

Con Jones, an ex-bookie from Australia, built an east end enclosure bounded by Renfrew, Oxford, Kaslo and Cambridge Streets as a home for his Vancouver field lacrosse team. Later it will be known as Callister Park. Soccer would be played there for more than 50 years.

A 250-pound Vancouver policeman, Duncan Gillis, became the first Olympic medal winner from B.C., winning silver at Stockholm in the hammer throw. (48.39 metres.)

MacLean Park was named for Vancouver’s first mayor, Malcolm MacLean. Bounded by Heatley and Hawks Avenues, and by East Georgia and Keefer Streets, this was the first supervised playground for children in Vancouver.

A large piece of land—98.7 hectares—surrounding Essondale mental hospital was landscaped with the help of provincial botanist John Davidson. It was the first botanical garden and arboretum to be built in British Columbia.

An area by Brockton Oval in Stanley Park was set aside for an “Indian village.” Two totem poles and the Thunderbird house-posts were donated at the time.

The Vancouver Opera House on the west side of Granville just south of Georgia—where Sears is now—was sold to the Orpheum Theatre circuit and renamed the Orpheum (not the present theatre).

The Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, called the "Wobblies") were in their heyday. Even some other unions considered this group too radical.

Nine metres below VanDusen Botanical Gardens is an enormous abandoned reservoir that was built in 1912. Its rust-stained concrete vaults once held three million gallons of city drinking water. The reservoir was abandoned and sealed in the early 1970s.

Price Waterhouse & Co. opened a Vancouver office. Today, the company is known as PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Father Edmond Maillard returned to France, and the French-speaking community here he was so instrumental in establishing named it Maillardville in his honor.

A.J.T Taylor founded Taylor Engineering, involved in many large-scale projects throughout B.C. He would go on to promote development of British Properties and construction of the Lions Gate Bridge in the 1930s. West Vancouver’s Taylor Way is named for him.

Construction began on the Trapp Block on Columbia Street in New Westminster, owned by businessman Thomas John Trapp.

This 1912 Reo, the same model used by Thomas Wilby in his 1912 trip across Canada (cited in the October 14 entry above), has been carefully reconditioned by local car enthusiast Lorne Findlay. In 1997 Lorne, his wife and son, and writer John Nichol recreated Wilby's trip, travelling right across the country in this gallant little car. See CBC-TV coverage of that journey here.