Collingwood and Renfrew
by Bruce Macdonald
The first modern effort by humans to alter the forested landscape that blanketed the districts of Collingwood and Renfrew was made in 1861. That year Colonel Richard Moody oversaw the building of a military trail along an old native trail leading to English Bay from New Westminster. Colonel Moody then selected for himself some of the choicest land along this trail- -the 114 hectares that today make up the heart of downtown Collingwood. At the time there was not a single colonial settler in what is now Vancouver. The appeal to Colonel Moody was probably the shallow lake that ran for about a kilometre in the low valley along the north side of his False Creek Trail, now Kingsway. In 1863, just before returning to England permanently, Moody laid out a large government townsite for a future saltwater port on Burrard Inlet. The southern border of the Hastings Townsite touched the northern limit of his own property in Collingwood. Today this is 29th Avenue, the dividing point between the Renfrew and Collingwood areas.
The earliest known settler in today’s Collingwood was George Wales in 1878. Wales paid $1 per acre for 221 acres (89.4 hectares) bounded today by Wales Street, Kingsway and 45th Avenue. In the 188os stagecoaches travelled what would become Kingsway as they moved through the vast forest between Gastown and New Westminster. The first business set up in the districts of Collingwood and Renfrew was the Collingwood Inn, a roadhouse catering to stagecoaches, one block east of the present intersection of Kingsway and Joyce.
Until the 1890s the inhabitants of the Collingwood and Renfrew districts were predominantly ducks, geese, loons, beaver, black bears, cougars, wolves and deer. The most interesting features of the landscape were Moody’s large lake just south of the present Skytrain route in the centre of the future Collingwood and three small lakes caused by beaver dams along the present Grandview Highway in the Renfrew area. Although no sign of these lakes exists today, for pioneers the waterfowl that flocked to them were enjoyed for their meat and the “snow white breasts” of the loons were coveted for hat trimmings.
The neighborhood became known as Collingwood in 1891 following construction of an interurban tramway between the cities of Vancouver and New Westminster--the first interurban system in North America. The tramway ran along the present Skytrain route with the Collingwood East station about halfway between the two cities. From here the neighborhood’s first road was built, Joyce Road. By most accounts the name “Collingwood” originated with some of the owners of the tramway company who came from Collingwood, Ontario. The sparsely populated region around Collingwood was organized into the Municipalities of South Vancouver and Burnaby in 1892.
When the two-room East Vancouver School was built in 1896, it was able to accommodate all the students in Collingwood--there were just 30. The building survives today on a corner of the Collingwood School grounds and has the distinction of being the oldest school building in Vancouver. A number of Collingwood’s main streets were named after the families of the school’s first students, such as the Battison brothers (Battison Road) and Florence Earle (Earles Road). The secretary of the first school board was A. Joyce (Joyce Road) and the first child born in the area in 1892 was Jennie Vivian (Vivian Road).
By 1913 Collingwood was a fast-growing town centred along Joyce Street and spreading in both directions from the interurban station, but still far away from the other small towns sprouting along the rail line. The surrounding area was semi-agricultural with many small orchards, ranches and farms. As automobiles came into use, the commercial buildings along Kingsway near Joyce began to form a new town centre. Most of the settlement of the Renfrew district took place in the 1920s and the 1940s.
Because Collingwood was relatively isolated in its early days, the residents of Collingwood developed a strong sense of community and a devout loyalty to their local school. While many other institutions and establishments have come and gone in Collingwood, Carleton School has proven to be a cornerstone of stability and pride for the neighborhood.
Renfrew for decades was the unpopulated southern half of the old Hastings Townsite and it became part of the City of Vancouver in 1911. Collingwood became part of Vancouver when the Municipality of South Vancouver joined the City of Vancouver in 1929. Houses have since filled in the open land that surrounded Collingwood making the boundaries of the original community indiscernible. The interurban was closed in 1954 after 63 years. However, the 1986 construction of the Skytrain along the old interurban route resulted in a new wave of settlement into lowrise and highrise apartment buildings near the station stops, echoing the original settlement of the area.
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