History of Vancouver

With its location on the western coast of Canada near the mouth of the Fraser River and on the waterways of the Strait of Georgia, Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet, and their tributaries, Vancouver has – for thousands of years – been a place of meeting, trade, and settlement.

The presence of people in what is now called the Lower Mainland of British Columbia dates from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the glaciers of the last ice age began to disappear.

The area, known to the First Nations as S'ólh Téméxw, shows archeological evidence of a seasonal encampment ("the Glenrose Cannery site") near the mouth of the Fraser River that dates from that time.

The city grew rapidly following the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) transcontinental line from Eastern Canada, allowing for continuous rail service in the late 1880s.

The city falls within the traditional territory of three Coast Salish peoples known as, Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh), Tsleil-waututh and Xwméthkwyiem ("Musqueam"—from masqui "an edible grass that grows in the sea").

The largest villages were at Xwemelch'stn (sometimes rendered Homulchesan), near the mouth of the Capilano River and roughly beneath where the north foot of the present Lions Gate Bridge is today, and at Musqueam.

Along False Creek, at the south foot of Burrard Bridge, another village called Senakw, existed at one time as a large community, and during colonization was the residence of Squamish historian August Jack Khatsahlano.

In the following year, 1792, the British naval Captain George Vancouver (1757–1798) met the Spanish expedition of Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores off Point Grey, and together further explored the Strait of Georgia.

A former river pilot, John (Jack) Deighton, set up a small (24' x 12') saloon on the beach about a mile west of the sawmill in 1867 where mill property and its "dry" policies ended.

The transcontinental railway was commissioned by the government of Canada under the leadership of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and was a condition of British Columbia joining the confederation in 1871.

Things recovered quickly after the fire, although celebratory Dominion Day festivities to launch the opening of the CPR were postponed a year as a result.

[10] With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, Vancouver's seaport was able to compete with the major international ports for global trade because it was positioned as an alternative route to Europe.

During the 1920s, the provincial government successfully fought to have freight rates that discriminated against goods transported by rail through the mountains eliminated, giving the young lawyer of the case, Gerry McGeer, a reputation as "the man who flattened the Rockies.

[17] "Hobo jungles" sprouted up in the earliest days of the depression, where men built makeshift shanty towns out of whatever they could find (or steal).

[19] Some politicians and publicists promoted and disseminated controversial ideologies through popular books such as H. Glynn-Ward's 1921 The Writing on the Wall and Tom MacInnes’s 1929 The Oriental Occupation of British Columbia.

Newspapermen such as L. D. Taylor of the Vancouver World and General Victor Odlum of the Star generated a glut of editorials analyzing and warning about the "Oriental menace", as did Danger: The Anti-Asiatic Weekly.

[22] A growing population of Indians, primarily from the province of Punjab and of the Sikh religion, were also required to abide by immigration laws starting in 1908, despite the fact that they were subjects of the British Empire.

Vancouver's longest serving and most often elected mayor, L. D. Taylor, followed an "open town" policy prior to his final defeat in 1934 to Gerry McGeer.

The East End, the original residential district that grew up around Hasting's Mill, was left to successive waves of new immigrants, and became associated with poverty and vice, (as the Downtown Eastside remains today).

[30] This act also signalled the beginning of the process that would see the remaining inhabitants of various origins evicted as squatters in the 1920s for the creation of a seemingly pristine park.

[6] By the interwar years, other neighbourhoods had grown that was working class, but not especially impoverished or racially exclusive, such as Mount Pleasant, the suburb of South Vancouver, and Grandview–Woodland.

CPR developers once again established a new enclave for the city's white and wealthy elite that would pull them from the West End and be the destination for the "coming smart set."

Point Grey included the current neighbourhoods of West Point Grey, Dunbar–Southlands, Arbutus Ridge, Shaughnessy, South Cambie, Kerrisdale, western Oakridge, western Marpole; and South Vancouver included the current neighbourhoods of Riley Park–Little Mountain (excluding its northeast corner), central and southern Kensington–Cedar Cottage, southern Renfrew–Collingwood, Sunset, Victoria–Fraserview, Killarney, and eastern parts of Oakridge and Marpole.

William Harold Malkin was the first mayor of the new city, having defeated incumbent Louis Denison Taylor, the champion of amalgamation, in the 1928 civic election.

Mayor McGeer provoked considerable controversy by organizing expensive celebrations at a time when the city was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and civic employees were working at a significantly reduced pay rate.

While some large expenditures were roundly criticized – for example, the "ugly" fountain erected in Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon[32] – others drew significant financial and public support, such as the construction of a new (and the current) city hall on Cambie Street.

The next major civic celebration was the 1939 Royal visit of the King and Queen as part of their tour of Canada which marked the end of the depression and the likelihood of another world war.

Residents of Strathcona – most of them Chinese – formed a protest movement led by civic activist Mary Lee Chan and prevented the construction of a freeway which would have resulted in the bulldozing of the neighbourhood.

In 1968 the Canada Council awarded a $3,500 grant to Joachim Foikis of Vancouver "to revive the ancient and time-honoured tradition of town fool".

Many wealthy Chinese residents of Hong Kong chose to immigrate to Canada, as it was relatively easier for them to enter the country due to their Commonwealth of Nations connections.