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Chronology Continued
[1757
- 1884] [1885 - 1891] [1892
- 1899]
[1900 - 1905] [1906 - 1908] [1909]
[1910]
[1911] [1912]
[1913] [1914]
[1915] [1916]
[1917] [1918]
[1919] [1920]
[1921] [1922]
[1923] [1924]
[1925] [1926]
[1927] [1928]
[1929] [1930]
[1931] [1932]
[1933] [1934]
[1935] [1936]
[1937] [1938]
[1939] [1940]
[1941] [1942]
[1943] [1944]
[1945] [1946]
[1947] [1948]
[1949] [1950]
[1951] [1952]
[1953] [1954]
[1955] [1956]
[1957] [1958]
[1959] [1960]
[1961] [1962]
[1963] [1964]
[1965]
[1966] [1967]
[1968]
[1969] [1970]
[1971] [1972]
[1973] [1974]
[1975] [1976]
[1977] [1978]
[1979] [1980]
[1981] [1982]
[1983] [1984]
[1985] [1986]
[1987] [1988]
[1989] [1990]
[1991] [1992]
[1993] [1994]
1906
You can sponsor this
year in the book! Click here for details.
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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!
*****************************************
April 16 The Police Mutual Benefit Association
of Vancouver was organized.
April 18 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
May 1 The telephone came to North Vancouver,
and that made a difference to the ferry system: until the ferry
terminal hooked up to the telephone line the wharfinger used a system
of calls with a bugle to let consignees know when their goods arrive.
Two toots for McMillan's, three for Larson's Hotel, a long and two
shorts for the Express (newspaper) and two long toots for the butcher.
June 1 The Vancouver Athletic Club opened.
June 2 Province Page 3 had an advertisement
for the Opera House, which is showing “moving pictures”
of the San Francisco earthquake and fire.
June 6 The Vancouver Board of Trade complained
re “execrable” telephone service.
July 3 Chief Capilano of the Squamish Nation
went to London to meet King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The
chief, accompanied by Cowichan and Cariboo chiefs, presented a petition
to the King concerning aboriginal land rights. Chief Capilano later
reported the delegation was warned such matters might take as much
as five years to settle.
July 21 The Chehalis was sunk by the Princess
Victoria near Brockton Point. Eight lives were lost.
August 13 The owners of all houses on Dupont
Street were given thirty days to put a stop to their activities.
(Brothels.) But by the end of October the brothels were back in
operation.
August 15 Electricity became commonly available
to North Vancouver after a cable was laid across the Second Narrows.
August 22 Vancouver's Canadian Club was formed.
An inaugural luncheon was held September 25 at the Hotel Vancouver
with Governor General Earl Grey as guest of honor.
September 3 Street cars began operation in
North Vancouver, will serve the area for 40 years. From the ferry
wharf one line went along Queensbury Avenue to 19th Street, one
up Lonsdale to 21st Street, and another west to Keith Road and Bewicke
Avenue.
December 24 Howard Hughes born.
Also in 1906
A young man named Ernest Poole built a farmhouse
in his hometown of Stoughton, Saskatchewan, his first construction
job. He built his company into one of Canada's largest, PCL Construction.
The company has been active for decades in BC. Check out this web
site.
Al Jolson, 20, performed at the Grand Theatre.
Construction began on the provincial court house
at 800 West Georgia (home today to the Vancouver Art Gallery).
David Spencer opened his first store.
Alfred Wallace opened a shipyard in North Vancouver.
Under various names (Burrard Dry Dock, Versatile Pacific, etc.)
it will become the north shore's largest industry, building scores
of ships during both World Wars.
Richmond's school districts merged and a Richmond
School Board was formed.
There was another huge salmon run this year. About
this time the Smith butchering machine was introduced. It took the
place of a 30-man gang of Chinese cannery workers, and will come
to be nicknamed the “Iron Chink.”
The Vancouver Stock Exchange was incorporated. 1907
also cited.
1906 Buick Model G “Turtle Deck”
1907
This year is sponsored.
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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!"
*****************************************
February 2 Surrey's John Oliver became leader
of the opposition in B.C.'s legislature after the first provincial
election to be run on party lines.
February Henry Birks & Sons of Montreal,
the famed jewellers, bought out George Trorey's jewelry store at
the northeast corner of Granville and Hastings and kept Trorey on
as manager. The Trorey Clock on the sidewalk outside will become
a Vancouver landmark as the Birk's clock. It's still ticking away
at Granville and Hastings a century later . . . on the southeast
corner!
April 12 The Vancouver Stock Exchange was
incorporated by an act of the Provincial legislature. BC Archives
has 1906.
May 7 A Seattle movie-maker, William Harbeck,
mounted a camera on the front of a B.C. Electric Railway tram and
filmed the journey along Granville and Hastings, along Westminster
Avenue (now Main Street) and Carrall, Powell, Cordova and Cambie,
Robson and Davie . . . a look at a Vancouver of a century ago.
This is the earliest surviving film on Vancouver.
Its discovery was something of a miracle: it was found in the basement
of an abandoned building in Australia! It had apparently been dumped
there by movie house managers along with other movies no longer
wanted.
It is fun and exciting to see streets full of horse-drawn
wagons, men (every one of them wearing a hat) strolling into long-gone
shops, women hurrying along in their dark, ground-length skirts,
and the occasional recognizable sign: Knowlton Drugs; P. Burns (meat
packer); the Edison Grand Theatre; Woodward’s, and “Cascade:
A Beer Without Peer."”Gone is the second CPR station at
the foot of Granville, and Trorey’s Jewelry and the original
Province newspaper building.
We can thank the research efforts of Andrew Martin,
of the Special Collections division at the Vancouver Public Library,
for pinpointing when the film was made. He’d found a Province
story, dated May 8, 1907, that described the filming. It jauntily
reported that Vancouverites had been “Stricken with Kinetoscopitis.”
We learned that Seattle’s W.H. Harbeck shot the film, that
it was taken May 7, 1907, and that it was shot with the cooperation
of Mr. W.E. Flumerfelt of the Tourist Association. The journey ended
at a spot on Davie just about where the Fresgo Inn sits today.
Copies of this film are available for loan at the
Vancouver Public Library. A fine experience.
May 11 The University Women’s Club of
Vancouver was founded by eight graduates.
May 13 The small, central core of North Vancouver's
business and industry broke away and formed its own municipality,
the City of North Vancouver. The residents felt their area would
be more prosperous on its own. The District was deprived of its
water system, municipal hall, ferry terminal and ferry, fire-fighting
and road-making equipment, even the cemetery. In return the City
paid some outstanding liabilities of the District.
May 31 A dozen Vancouver businessmen formed
the Vancouver Exhibition Association, with a goal of developing
a fair to showcase Vancouver to the world.
Spring John Lawson, known as the “Father
of West Vancouver” settled his family in Navvy Jack Thomas'
house, which became known as Hollyburn. Lawson would later be instrumental
in getting West Vancouver to secede from North Vancouver (1912).
June 10 The newly constituted District of
North Vancouver held its first meeting in Lynn Valley Schoolhouse.
A new municipal hall, on Lynn Valley Road, would be completed in
1911.
June 13 The Presbyterian theological college,
Westminster Hall, was founded.
June 24 Formation of Jericho Country Club.
August 1 The Vancouver Stock Exchange opened
at 849 West Pender with 12 charter members. Three months to the
day later its president, C.D. Rand, said: “Many applications
to list stocks of doubtful merit have already been made to the Exchange,
but have been promptly turned down by your executive, and this policy
will be adhered to while we remain in office.”
August 8 Train robber Bill Miner escaped from
the penitentiary in New Westminster.
August 14 The first newspaper reference to
the Vancouver Police Department's first automobile. The car got
its first use exactly one week later: on August 21 one Richard Goddlander,
“a well-known police character,” was charged with public
intoxication and given his first automobile ride. Destination: the
city jail.
September 7 The News-Advertiser reported
that an Asiatic Exclusion League had been formed in Vancouver to
keep Oriental immigrants out of B.C. The Province reported
on “Saturday night excitement” in town, namely an anti-Oriental
riot September 7th led by the Anti-Asiatic League, a racist group
formed to try to force Chinese and Japanese workers out of the province.
“The Chinese of Vancouver armed themselves this morning as
soon as the gun stores opened. Hundreds of revolvers and thousands
of rounds of ammunition were passed over the counter to the Celestials
before the police stepped in and requested that no further sale
be made to Orientals . . . Few Japanese were seen buying arms, but
a bird’s-eye view today of the roofs of Japanese boarding-houses
and stores in the Japanese district disclosed the fact that the
Orientals are prepared for a siege. Hundreds of bottles are stored
on the roofs, and these with stones, clubs, and bricks will be hurled
at the whites in the streets below should any further trouble occur.”
September 12 Just five days after it was formed
the Asiatic Exclusion League was disbanded.
September 30 Vancouver city council was discussing
street names and decided to commemorate battles. So what had been
Victoria Road became Point Grey Road, Campbell Street became Alma
Road (Crimean War), Richards Street became Balaclava (also a Crimean
War battlesite), Cornwall, the second street with that name, became
Blenheim to recall the Battle of Blenheim, Lansdowne became Waterloo,
and the old Boundary St. that divided District Lot 192 and the CPR
grant became Trafalgar.
October 5 Rudyard Kipling’s third and
final visit to Vancouver.
October 14 The famous American band leader
and composer John Philip Sousa performed here with his band—all
55 of them—and that would have set you back $1.75 for the best
seats.
December 1 W.J. Timmins, proprietor of the
new Pantages vaudeville theatre on Hastings Street, was up from
Tacoma to “look over the work.” The 1,200-seat theatre
was expected to open on December. 1.
December 6 The first recorded flight in Canada
of a heavier-than-air machine took place at Baddeck, N.S. when Thomas
Selfridge was lifted into the air in a tetrahedral kite, the Cygnet,
designed by Alexander Graham Bell.
Also in 1907
Alexander Bethune, a shoe merchant, was mayor. He
had been an alderman for five years. During Bethune’s term,
council asked the federal government for use of the Kitsilano Indian
Reserve for city purposes.
Mackenzie King, the federal Deputy Minister of Labour,
visited Vancouver to review damage caused by the anti-Oriental riots.
He was dismayed to learn the manufacture of opium here was legal.
Firehall No. 6 was built at 1001 Nicola.
Firehall No. 2 was built at 270 East Cordova.
Douglas Lodge was built at 2799 Granville. Local
historian John Atkin, who knows this subject well, says he has the
building permit reference for the building which lists it as a $200,000
project. The permit is dated September 1912. John thinks
the 1907 reference seen frequently is incorrect. And in trolling
the Internet he found the following---which he cautions he has not
verified: “Built in 1912, Douglas Lodge has been home to many
famous people. The hilarious John Candy lived here for a
long time, as did Ted Danson from Cheers. So did the
parents of renowned Vancouver-born architect Arthur Erickson
. . . When former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau passed away, his
son Justin Trudeau was residing at Douglas Lodge. And Emily
Carr gave painting lessons there to a friend who rented an apartment
inside.” That excerpt was written by Kent Hurl - check out
Kent's blog here.
[Note: Our guess is that Danson’s tenancy was connected with
the 1989 filming of Cousins. Another famous tenant, no longer
there: Sarah McLachlan.]
(1907 date estimated) The first gas station in Canada
opened at Cambie and Smithe Streets. Sometime around 1907 it occurred
to the Vancouver office of the Imperial Oil Co. that the usual method
of fueling automobiles at the time—carrying a sloshing bucket
full of gasoline up to the vehicle and pouring it through a funnel
into the tank—was somewhat dangerous. So, adjacent to the storage
yard, the manager of Imperial’s Vancouver office, Charles Rolston,
built a small open-sided shed of corrugated iron. Atop a tapering
concrete pillar he placed a 13-gallon kitchen water tank “fitted
with a glass steam-gauge marked off by white dots in one-gallon
increments.” The tank was gravity fed, being connected to Imperial’s
main storage tank. The filling hose was a ten-foot length of garden
hose, drained with thumb and finger by the attendant after filling
a car. The first attendant was Imperial’s former night watchman,
J.C. Rollston (no relation to Charles Rolston), who had been in
poor health. His coworkers believed he would improve in the sun
and open air. They bought a barroom chair for him and set him down.
Canada’s first gas station was now in business. The late city
archivist, J.S. Matthews (who worked for Imperial Oil at the time)
said that, in the beginning, a busy morning would see three or four
cars show up.
Japanese residents of Vancouver built an arch to
honor the visit of His Imperial Highness Prince Fushimi.
The first community hall in Surrey, Tynehead Hall,
was built.
Dominic Burns built a slaughterhouse this year in
Vancouver. (It was torn down in 1969 and the man in charge of the
demolition said it was the toughest building to destroy he had ever
seen. One item: the brick walls were 36 centimetres (14 inches)
thick.)
B. T. Rogers (the sugar refiner) donated a pair of
marble statues to the Terminal City Club. They’re still there.
Richard Cormon Purdy opened his first chocolate shop
on Vancouver’s famed Robson Street. Today, Purdy's—run
by Karen Flavelle—has more than 50 locations in B.C., Alberta
and Ontario.
The chief of the Vancouver Fire Department, John
Howe Carlisle, arranged to have three motorized firefighting units
purchased, in the face of some amused, some not-so-amused, opposition.
His was a daring move, in fact. The company making these units--Seagrave
of Columbus, Ohio--had just begun their manufacture, and very few
fire departments in North America were making the switch. Vancouver’s
was the first in Canada.
The Vancouver Daily Province had a circulation of
just over 15,000, highest in town, and cost five cents.
William H. Ladner, the well-known Delta pioneer (and
reeve from 1880 to 1906) died at 81. Ladner was named for him.
1908
You can sponsor this
year in the book! Click here for details.
*****************************************
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!"
*****************************************
March 19 The first Vancouver Horse Show was
held at the Drill Hall.
May 16 This advertisement appeared on Page
12 of the Vancouver News-Advertiser: “Manager George
Calvert, of the Pantages Theatre, takes great pleasure in announcing
that there will be an extra act on the bill this afternoon and this
evening, namely ‘Jeff,’ the Boxing Kangaroo. This animal
is claimed to be an adept in the boxing line, in fact almost as
good if not better than an ordinary boxer and he has proved a great
attraction wherever he has appeared. This is an act that will greatly
please the ladies and children and there should be a large turnout
of them at all the performances to-day.”
June The first hospital to serve the north
shore was opened, a tiny six-bed facility at St. Andrews and 15th
Street.
September 9 The British Columbia Refining
Company Ltd. in Port Moody was incorporated. It refined oil shipped
from California.
September 20 The Rev. W.A. Davis conducted
Sunday service in John Lawson's home for a group of Presbyterians,
Methodists, Baptists and Congregationalists.
November 1 The federal ministry of defence
renewed the lease of Stanley Park to Vancouver for 99 years, renewable.
Also in 1908
Point Grey Municipality was formed.
The first tourist bus service in Stanley Park.
Shaughnessy Heights was subdivided by the CPR.
The sale of opium was prohibited.
Grand Boulevard in North Vancouver was cleared and
planted with shrubs by the North Vancouver Land and Improvement
Company. It was conveyed to the City of North Vancouver for parkland,
around which a high class residential area was planned.
Members of the B.C. Mountaineering Club made the
first known ascent of Mt. Seymour on the north shore.
Richmond built its first high school at Bridgeport.
With four rooms, it was considered huge. The first graduating class
will be in 1911.
The Surrey police force was formed, responsible for
welfare issues, collecting poll and business taxes and investigating
local crime.
The New Westminster Salmonbellies won their first
national prize, the Minto Cup.
The largest agriculture fair ever held in the province
was opened in New Westminster. By this time, Fraser Valley fruit
was being canned and shipped all over the world.
1908 Thomas Flyer
Continued...
[1757
- 1884] [1885 - 1891] [1892
- 1899]
[1900 - 1905] [1906 - 1908] [1909]
[1910]
[1911] [1912]
[1913] [1914]
[1915] [1916]
[1917] [1918]
[1919] [1920]
[1921] [1922]
[1923] [1924]
[1925] [1926]
[1927] [1928]
[1929] [1930]
[1931] [1932]
[1933] [1934]
[1935] [1936]
[1937] [1938]
[1939] [1940]
[1941] [1942]
[1943] [1944]
[1945] [1946]
[1947] [1948]
[1949] [1950]
[1951] [1952]
[1953] [1954]
[1955] [1956]
[1957] [1958]
[1959] [1960]
[1961] [1962]
[1963] [1964]
[1965]
[1966] [1967]
[1968]
[1969] [1970]
[1971] [1972]
[1973] [1974]
[1975] [1976]
[1977] [1978]
[1979] [1980]
[1981] [1982]
[1983] [1984]
[1985] [1986]
[1987] [1988]
[1989] [1990]
[1991] [1992]
[1993] [1994]
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