Delta
by Marlyn Graziano
Stretching from the Fraser River to the Strait of Georgia and the shores of Boundary Bay up to Scott Road, where it meets its urban neighbor Surrey, the Municipality of Delta possesses some of the richest farmland and most environmentally significant areas in the Lower Mainland.
The municipality’s three distinct residential communities Ladner, Tsawwassen and North Delta are divided physically by large tracts of agricultural land and the 2,226-hectare Burns Bog, touted as the largest domed pear bog on the west coast of the Americas. (For more on the bog, see Shane McCune’s article.)
The early settlers who arrived on the Fraser River delta confronted marshland and forest, and toiled to dyke, drain and clear the land that held so much promise for farming.
Delta’s early days are most often linked with the Ladner name. The municipality’s best-known pioneers brothers William and Thomas Ladner settled in the Fraser River lowland in 1868. Their farms grew into the pioneer settlement, of Ladner’s Landing, where the community of Ladner now sits on the shores of the Fraser River.
But according to the Delta Museum and Archives, James Kennedy was the first to preempt land in the municipality, doing so in 1859. Over the next few years, he worked at clearing a trail southward from his farm near Brownsville (in Surrey across from New Westminster), helping to open up North Delta. Kennedy’s mark is left on many parts of modern North Delta, where the area near Scott Road and 88th Avenue bears his name. Nonetheless, most of the early stories of Delta begin with the Ladner brothers, enterprising Cornishmen who dyked their land to take advantage of its agricultural richness.
Drainage was a continual problem, not just for farming but for transportation as well. The earliest settlers used the inland waterways as transportation routes, as road conditions remained poor, especially during the rainy seasons. The soft peat of Burns Bog, which separates Ladner from North Delta, was some of the most difficult to overcome.
Construction of a government wharf in 1873 allowed Ladner’s Landing to become a centre of commerce, where farmers could access passing steamers to ship their goods to other parts of the province.
The area that later became Tsawwassen named for the native peoples who first inhabited the area began as a resort community, where beachfront cottages were built along the shores of Boundary Bay. The wetlands of the bay form an important link in the Pacific Flyway an international migration route used each year by millions of birds.
Delta was incorporated in 1879 and its first elected council met on January 12, 1880, with William Ladner as reeve. The commercial importance of Ladner’s Landing continued, and the site became the seat of the municipal government, with the first municipal hall built on Elliott Street in 1883.
In 1878 the Tsawwassen Indian Reserve was established, allotting 243 hectares to the descendants of Delta’s first people. Not much is known of the natives’ early history, but they were a coastal people who depended mainly on fishing for their survival.
While agriculture remained an important industry in the new municipality, the richness of salmon stocks in the Fraser River soon resulted in a new enterprise, and canneries began to spring up throughout the area. By the end of the 1880s there were over a dozen canneries in operation.
Thomas Ladner was not one to miss an opportunity and was one of four partners to build the Delta Cannery in 1878, near Ladner’s Landing. In North Delta the construction of a cannery on Gunderson Slough in 1870 gave rise to a small Norwegian community that came to be known as Annieville. The slough is named after Norwegian pioneer Jacob Gunderson, who arrived in 1897 to work at the Anglo-British Columbia Cannery.
Some say Annieville was named after a Mrs. Laidlaw, whose husband owned the cannery, others say it was named after the wife of pioneer James Symes. The latter version, as told by long-time Annieville resident Edward Erickson, is the more colorful one: on a trip across the Fraser River to New Westminster, the slough was clogged with bullrushes and the crew of a skiff debated how to get through the reeds. According to Erickson, when someone asked who was going to pull the boat through the reeds, the answer came (in a strong Norse accent), “Oh, Annie vill.”
The canneries attracted many ethnic workers, including Chinese and natives, and for a while, Ladner had its own Chinatown, the scene of a spectacular fire in July 1929. The settlement stretched along the riverfront and consisted of about 15 buildings. Half of Chinatown was destroyed in the blaze, which was reported in the Ladner Optimist, the local newspaper: “Fanned by a tremendous wind, the fire burned like lightning through the dry wood and the damage was all done before firefighting equipment from Vancouver could reach the scene. Calls for help came soon after the blaze was discovered. Its origin is unknown.”
As drainage improved, so did Delta’s roads, and once the automobile made its appearance, the municipality grew in leaps and bounds. The post-war residential boom in the Lower Mainland filtered into Delta. Growth was further fuelled by the opening of the Pattullo Bridge in 1937, which made North Delta accessible to the thousands of post-war workers who found Vancouver too expensive to call home.
It wasn’t until 1958, however, that a fixed link was built between Ladner and Richmond. Until then, river crossings were made via the Ladner-Woodward’s Landing ferry. In April 1958 Ladner was connected to Lulu Island via the Deas Island Tunnel (Later renamed the George Massey Tunnel). Six sections comprising 663 metres of concrete and steel were sunk to construct the tunnel, which was opened to traffic later that spring. Queen Elizabeth II did the official honors in July.
The Queen was welcomed by about 3,000 people at the tunnel. Others had gathered along the route which the Queen drove with Prince Philip; crowds cheered from Kennedy Heights and Delta Private Hospital, where patients sat outside in chairs. Premier and Mrs. W.A.C. Bennett were the first to greet the royal couple when they arrived at the south entrance to open the $21- million tunnel. From the reviewing stand, Queen Elizabeth cut a blue ribbon that stretched across the roadway. Later the silver scissors she had used were officially presented to her by the premier, to whom she gave a 10-cent piece in observance of an old superstition regarding gifts of knives and scissors.
Delta entered the modern industrial age in May 1953, when the Duke of Westminster, one of Britain’s wealthiest peers, unveiled his plans for a multi-million dollar industrial project on Annacis Island. The following decades saw industry flock to Delta, not only to Annacis but to the Tilbury area along River Road, where improved highway systems gave businesses access to Vancouver and the U.S.
Growth industrial and residential has not been an easy issue for Delta, sandwiched as it is between Vancouver and Surrey, where expansion south of the Fraser River has brought with it ever-increasing commuter traffic. For that reason, construction of the Alex Fraser Bridge which opened September 22, 1986, and linked North Delta with Richmond and New Westminster is the subject of much debate by local residents, who openly wonder if it is a blessing or a curse.
Tsawwassen drew national attention in the spring and summer of 1989, when the now-infamous Tsawwassen Developments controversy raged. Residents banded together to fight the housing proposal along the shores of Boundary Bay, but the battle divided the community, pitting newcomers against oldtimers. The controversy stretched into the longest public hearing in the country’s history until the project was finally sunk by council. The proposal had been debated at a 25-session public hearing that lasted from May 1 to July 17. Over 400 speakers were heard and 3,700 written submissions received.
Then federal environment minister Lucien Bouchard got into the act, calling for a moratorium on development around Boundary Bay. The debate about preservation of the wetlands along the bay continues through the 1990s, as does the push to prevent development in Burns Bog.
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