Chronology

January 1 The first train of the North Shore Division of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway runs from North Vancouver to Dundarave in West Vancouver. By July 1 the PGE line would be extended to “Whytecliff” station. The interior section started at Squamish and went north; the two sections are not connected. The North Vancouver line was used mostly by residents or holiday-makers rather than for freight.

January 11 Mewa Singh died in New Westminster. After the 1914 Komagata Maru incident (see the 1914 Chronology) tensions arose among members of Vancouver’s Sikh community. Some had a particular enmity for William Hopkinson, a local customs official, formerly with the Calcutta Police Force. Mewa, a supporter of India’s independence movement and the passengers of the Komagata Maru, shot Hopkinson to death at the Vancouver provincial court house in 1914.

February 14 The first trans-Canada telephone call—it was between Vancouver and Montreal—was placed. The circuit ran 6,763 kilometres through Buffalo, Chicago, Omaha, Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon. Not until 1932 was a telephone line for an all-Canada connection completed.

March 20 Malcolm MacLennan, Vancouver’s chief constable, was shot and killed at 522 East Georgia Street while attempting to arrest Bob Tait, a heavily armed drug addict. PEI-born MacLennan, 43, had been chief for a short time, since 1914. Ironically, MacLennan had been an early proponent of medical assistance, rather than criminal prosecution, for drug addicts.

January 5 Dallas Murray ‘Dal’ Richards, named for Dr. Dallas Perry, the man who delivered him today at Vancouver General Hospital on January 5, 1918, has been playing music for us for 70 astonishing years.