The Three Greenhorns

The Three Greenhorns were three Englishmen, Samuel Brighouse, William Hailstone and John Morton, who were the first white settlers in the area known today as Vancouver's West End.

In 1862, they decided to sail for Canada to join in the Cariboo Gold Rush and met William Hailstone on the voyage.

[1] But the situation of the land at Burrard Inlet, overlooking a natural deep water harbour, so impressed Morton and his friends that they set about making enquiries about purchasing it.

[5] By Christmas 1862, they had cleared a small part of the land and created a log cabin, much to the derision of the local inhabitants who christened them "The Three Greenhorns".

It was even suggested that the colonial government had deliberately placed a shiny piece of coal in the shop window with the intention of enticing someone like Morton to buy the land.

Next day he reported the matter to the police in New Westminster and an investigation revealed that the dead woman had killed a baby and been hanged for murder.

[3] In 1865, Morton rowed across to the island and was fascinated to find hundreds of red cedar boxes perched in the upper branches of the trees.

The boxes contained the bones of Squamish people and when Morton made enquries with the chief of the tribe, he was told that the island had been the site of a massacre in which some 200 tribesmen had been killed.

With CPR building rail lines, a hotel was going up, roads were being laid through the area plus the establishment of Stanley Park, lots began to move quickly.

By 1888, the area was gaining respectability and had swiftly become an attractive investment to wealthy and elite buyers with fine views across Burrard Inlet and a reasonable distance from the smelly warehouses of Gastown.

The West End grew up on the Brickmaker's Claim as "high class" residential housing, although this declined with the development of Shaugnessy by the CPR in 1911.

The West End of Vancouver neighbours Stanley Park and the areas of Yaletown, Coal Harbour and the downtown financial and central business districts.

He married Ruth Mount, set up a brickmaking business in Clayburn, part of the town of Abbotsford, and ran the farm at Mission.

Edmund Ogle started a dry goods business in Vancouver, on Carrall and Powell streets I think, a week before the fire; all was destroyed; he lives in Toronto now.

We saw the English church [St. James] and at George Black’s [Hastings] had lunch, and then went back to New Westminster on the stage, and from there up to Mission to the farm.

That Sunday afternoon a cloud of black smoke hovered high in the air across the river; it was evident a big fire was burning somewhere.

Situated on Beach Avenue and Denman Street, English Bay, the bronze sundial stands on a granite pedestal 4'5" high and is decorated with geometric patterns.

An inscription in stone reads: "This sundial commemorates three English ‘Greenhorns’ - Samuel Brighouse, John Morton and William Hailstone who, in 1862, filed the first claim and planned the first home and industry in the then heavily wooded area now bounded by Burrard Inlet, Stanley Park, English Bay and Burrard Street to which they received title in 1867."