Chronology

January 1 Today, the municipalities of Point Grey and South Vancouver amalgamated with the city, and overnight Vancouver—with its expanded population of about 240,000—became Canada’s third largest city. (Its southern boundary had been 16th Avenue.) To the 22,047 school population of Vancouver were added 8,940 pupils from South Vancouver and 6,404 from Point Grey.

March 1 The “Fraser Valley Public Library Demonstration” began, with Dr. Helen Gordon Stewart as director. Background: the Carnegie Corporation of New York had donated funds for a bookmobile and library administration service in the Fraser Valley.

January 10 The Province headlined New Record for Number of Autos. “Motor tourist travel into British Columbia from United States,” the report read, “showed a big increase in 1930 over 1929, according to reports from the Greater Vancouver Publicity Bureau.”(The bureau was a forerunner of Tourism Vancouver.)

The Great Depression had settled like a sodden shroud on the city. Thousands of us were on relief (34,000 at the peak), and hundreds more were riding the rods into town on every freight train.

January 17 The Vancouver Sun turned its newsroom over to students from the University of British Columbia. Staff of the Ubyssey, the student newspaper, took over the layout, placement of stories, the editorial and sports pages, and more.