Author: Vancouver History

There weren’t many automobiles in Vancouver in 1907 (a five-minute film taken along several downtown streets this year shows precisely one), but there were enough for someone in the Vancouver office of the Imperial Oil Co. to decide that the usual method of fueling them 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.

Vancouver was incorporated in 1886.

What else was happening that year outside the city? Well, the first CPR passenger train from the east pulled into Port Moody on July 4. (The first passenger train into Vancouver will arrive in May of 1887.)

It’s October 1, 1940 and Province photographer Claude Dettloff is standing on Columbia Street at 8th Street in New Westminster, his press camera up to his eye, preparing to take a shot. He’s focusing on a line of hundreds of men of the B.C. Regiment marching down 8th to a waiting train. Soldiers of the Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles are marching past. Suddenly, in the view-finder, Dettloff sees a little white-haired boy…

If you were here on March 6, 1945, you will remember the waterfront explosion of the 10,000-ton freighter Greenhill Park, easily the most spectacular and disastrous event in the port’s history…..

A new era in rail travel in Canada began April 24, 1955. The Canadian Pacific Railway introduced The Canadian, an “ultra-modern, lightweight, highly attractive stainless-steel streamlined train.” The train would offer the world’s longest dome ride: 2,881.2 miles. (4,637 k/m).