Granville Island
by Catherine Gourley
Granville Island, the jewel of False Creek, has sparked more passion, greed and love in its short history than perhaps any other chunk of real estate around. Today it is the crowning glory of the government of Canada, perhaps the most successful real estate deal undertaken by Ottawa.
Visit Granville Island’s Web Site at http://www.granvilleisland.bc.ca
In its original, natural state, however Granville Island was neither an island nor particularly valuable. What would one day be the most popular public park in Canada was originally two seaweed-laden sandbars lying half-submerged at the entrance to False Creek. Rich with fish and wildlife, they were the winter fishing grounds of the Squamish Indians.
With the arrival of the fortune-seeking Europeans, the quiet sandbars took on a glamor and attraction few could resist. And when a bridge linking the north and south shores of False Creek was erected in 1889, the sandbars lying on either side of the bridge’s southern end figured even larger in men’s minds.
First to make a grab for them were three local contractors who set about encircling the sandbars with stakes, planning to seek approval for a sawmill and booming grounds there later. The Canadian Pacific Railway scared them off with a court injunction but their actions were to trigger a decades-long squabble over foreshore and water rights between the CPR, the provincial government, city officials, local business people and the federal marine ministry.
Each of them came up with grandiose plans for the twin mudflats, from a massive rail terminal to a $10 million seaport. But the sandbars lay tantalizingly undisturbed for years as industry built up around them. Then, in 1911, Vancouver had a new voice in Ottawa--Conservative MP Harry Stevens whose far-ranging vision for the city included a fully developed harbor. The sandbars fit into that plan.
In 1915 the newly created Harbour Commission gave Ottawa one dollar for the sandbars and received clearance to reclaim the land. The commission then raised $300,000 to cover the cost of railway tracks and a wooden roadway to False Creek’s southern shore.
More than 760,000 cubic meters of sea mud were sucked from False Creek’s bed and poured within the island’s wooden walls. The mud flats finally transformed into an island and Stevens was able to say, “I had everything to do with the creation of Granville Island.”
Officially called “Industrial Island,” it opened for business in 1916. It was 14.5 hectares in size, three meters above the high-water mark, had 80 lots and rents were $1,200 to $3,700 per hectare, per year.
The island was a success from day one. Keen to locate close to the creek’s sawmills and next to shipping channels, businesses signed up quickly. The first tenant was B.C. Equipment at the island’s northwest corner. Then came Vulcan Ironworks, Wallace Shipyards, National Machinery, Diethers Coal and Shipping, Pacific Roofing, Wright’s Canadian Ropes, Tyee Machinery and Arrow Transport.
They built long, skinny, corrugated tin plants with their fronts facing the rail tracks and their backs abutting wharves leading to the creek. Barges ringed the island, boxcars cluttered the rail tracks and noise and filth were everywhere.
By 1930 about 1,200 people worked in the island’s factories, churning out steel rivets, band saws, anvils, bolts, cement, paint, barrels, rope, boilers and chains. They worked six days a week, trying to satisfy their two big customers--the forestry and mining industries.
This frenzied activity stopped suddenly with the Depression. Business on the island got even quieter when a few big customers along the creek were eliminated by financial troubles or fire.
But in September, 1939, when Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King declared that Canada was at war, Granville Island’s role was clear. As the industrial heart of the city, it began to go full-blast, working around the clock and producing defense equipment such as anti-torpedo nets, minesweeping ropes and rigging ropes for the merchant fleet.
For the first time women were hired at the factories, filling in for those at the Front. Granville Island was declared crucial to the war effort and, by 1942, was closed to the public to “guard island industries against saboteurs.”
The real danger to island life was fire. The oily, junk-littered factories were classic firetraps but Granville Island’s sole water supply was a 20-centimeter main often clogged with sand or slush. Fire had already wiped out a number of factories on the island, including a sawmill. Many owed their existence to the False Creek fireboat, the J.H. Carlisle.
“There is not an area between Frisco and Prince Rupert which has so much valuable property and is so poorly served,” Major Chutter, longtime president of British Wire Ropes and unofficial mayor of Granville Island, complained to authorities.
Ultimately, though, it was change throughout the entire False Creek basin that spelled the end to the island as an industrial centre. After the war many of the island’s biggest customers had moved out of False Creek, seeking more and cheaper land, and preferring truck transport to water.
With their departure the fortunes of the Granville Island businesses fell. Many decided it would be easier to move to better sites than fix up their grimy, decades-old plants.
Then two longtime islanders, Wright’s Ropes and Pacific Bolts, were wiped out by separate, spectacular fires. The loss of two big mainstays was a body blow to the island. Tenants started moving out, following their customers to better quarters. Once the object of such ambition and greed, Granville Island was now a squalid little island suffering from neglect.
It had even lost its status as an island. When a fishermen’s terminal was built to the west, the dredging fill was dumped between the island and False Creek’s south shore, turning it into a peninsula. This was the first part of a five-stage plan to fill in the entirety of False Creek, a plan later abandoned as too costly.
Nothing much was going to happen to Granville Island until its landlord, the National Harbours Board, took an active interest in it. But the change in public thinking about the future of False Creek inevitably brought similar change to Granville Island. After much debate, those who favored remaking False Creek into a more people-friendly urban area won the day.
Urban geographer Walter Hardwick completed a land economics study of the creek and discovered that the CPR charged such low rents that plants had no incentive to move. He saw the area as ideal for an urban mix of housing and public use.
The civic battle was on. In 1972 the proponents for change, led by Art Phillips, swept to power at city hall and began transforming False Creek. Change for Granville Island was inevitable.
Ron Basford, a senior cabinet minister whose riding included Granville Island, knew this and began agitating for a new role for the island. Agreeing with an architectural report that viewed the island as a “people place,” Basford saw his chance in 1973. He shifted responsibility for Granville Island from the National Harbours Board to his ministry, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., a body already heavily involved in the redevelopment of False Creek.
Ottawa granted $25 million for the island’s renewal and consultants were hired to come up with a new design. They already had imaginative examples in Bill Harvey and Mitch Taylor who, sensing the island’s potential, bought the old Monsanto building and its lease, re-applied tin cladding so it would look like its neighbors and leased it out again. This new “old” building set the tone for the island’s future revamping.
Granville Island would be a “key urban amenity,” the consultants said, a description that met with howls of derision and led to cynical references to “Basford’s Bay” or the “Purple Lagoon” as a new sinkhole for taxpayers’ money.
Through the Granville Island Trust, authorities made a commitment to open up the island for a variety of public uses while preserving the industrial character of the old buildings. Russell Brink had the job of buying up the remaining leases and overseeing the island’s heart surgery. Rail ties were ripped up, tin cladding taken off and re-applied, foundations reinforced. Old buildings became new.
In July, 1979, the Granville island public market opened for business to instant success. It encouraged others to come. Today Granville Island is an urban stew whose appeal remains undiminished. It is totally self-supporting and all profits go back into the operation of the island.
Its remarkable consistency of architecture has won design awards for Hotson Bakker Architects, the coordinating architects, and others who worked on projects.
The island owes much of its success to its unique relationship with the people of Vancouver. Its lifeblood comes from those who have made Granville Island part of their routine. They have made the Granville Island market the most successful public market in North America.
Hundreds of others come down regularly for the theaters, the art school, Arts Umbrella, the community centre and work. And with 2,500 people working there, Granville Island retains its roots as a place of productivity.
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