Americans
by Georgina Bullen
There was a peaceful, if rather boisterous, American invasion of British Columbia in 1858. It happened in just a few hours on Sunday, April 25, when the American side-wheeler Commodore churned into Victoria and disgorged 450 California miners. They were the first of some 25,000 men who arrived, wanting to replenish supplies before crossing the Strait of Georgia to the newly discovered Fraser River gold fields and a chance to strike it rich.
Al1 those Americans made us nervous and in November James Douglas, already governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, was appointed governor of the Colony of British Columbia to ensure British interests were promoted and American expansionism discouraged.
Americans have influenced our history from the earliest days of European settlement. In 1869 there was gathering support for union with the United States. The proponents wrote President Andrew Johnson, asking for “the Acquisition of this colony by the United States.” They foresaw an unrestricted market, growth in population and investment, improvement in mail and communication, less expensive government and protection against foreign enemies. Johnson was (happily for the two-year-old Dominion of Canada) indifferent to the proposal. On July 20, 1871, British Columbia officially entered the Dominion putting an end to any threat, real or imagined, of American annexation of British Columbia.
Americans and American names, habits and customs, however, continued to play a role in the foundation of the new province and the cities that grew and prospered within her boundaries. Vancouver’s famed Stanley Park was originally a military reserve guarding against possible American aggression. More benignly, Burnaby’s much smaller Central Park was named for the one in New York City, birthplace of the wife of entrepreneur David Oppenheimer. Another New York landmark, Broadway, was the inspiration for changing the name of Vancouver’s 9th Avenue in May 1909--partly, it is suspected, to encourage and involve American interests in Vancouver’s burgeoning real estate market.
Maine-born Sewell Prescott Moody successfully rescued the bankrupt Burrard Inlet Mills in 1865 and made it a thriving concern. The waterfront area came to be known as Moodyville, renowned for its high-quality timber.
Benjamin Tingley (B.T.) Rogers was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Vancouver in 1889, where he became one of the city’s wealthiest men as owner of the B.C. Sugar Refining Company. Rogers and city council negotiated a $30,000 “bonus,” 15 tax-free years, a free ten-year water supply as well as a perpetual guarantee of water at ten cents per 4,545 litres--all in return for a promise to hire only white laborers.
Illinois-born Frank W. Hart owned Vancouver’s first theatre, first undertaking establishment, first hearse and first silk top hat, and he conducted the first burial in Mountain View cemetery.
Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, whose money sparked construction of dozens of libraries in North America, made Vancouver’s Carnegie Library possible with a $50,000 donation. The building still stands at Hastings and Main, used as library and social centre.
Louis D. Taylor, born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was elected mayor eight times between 1909 and 1931. He was by all accounts irascible, and the story is told that when Teddy Roosevelt and his wife visited Vancouver in 1915, the Board of Trade unwisely did not include Mayor Taylor in the official reception at the CPR station. Undaunted, Taylor boarded the train at an earlier stop, greeted the Roosevelts and whisked the former U.S. president off for a drive around Stanley Park, leaving the Board of Trade reception committee open-mouthed and empty handed. It was L.D. Taylor who made the Vancouver World an enormously successful newspaper--and who stretched its resources past the breaking point when he built the World Tower to house it.
In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, many Americans, disenchanted with various aspects of what had become the American way, made their way north. Vietnam War resisters as well as affluent citizens, respected academics and talented artists flocked to Vancouver to escape increased violence, pollution and what many perceived as unhealthy political trends. Many stayed and have enriched Vancouver society.
Among American-born people who have made their mark here: restaurateur Nat Bailey, art curator Alvin Balkind, lumber magnate Prentice Bloedel, archeologist Charles Borden, baseball promoter Bob Brown, MLA Buda Brown, C.H. Cates of tugboat fame, realtor Henry Ceperley, the Army & Navy’s Sam Cohen, druggist George Cunningham, fishpacker John Deas, photographer Claud Dettloff, sawmill owner Sewell Moody, the Canadian Pacifre Railway’s T.G, Shaughnessy and William Van Home, teacher and critic Warren Tallman, orchestra leader Calvin Winter, Children’s Festival founder Ernie Fladell ... and the first non-native to actually set foot on what would become Greater Vancouver soil, Simon Fraser.
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