It was June 13, 1886, a Sunday. A small crew of Canadian Pacific Railway men was keeping an eye on clearing fires set the day before. "The fire started between Hamilton and Granville streets," volunteer fireman Hugh Campbell told the city archivist in 1931. "The CPR were clearing the land, and the fire got away from them." The reason it got away was a freakish squall, a sudden blast of wind from the west. The wind was strong enough to take the coal hulk Robert Kerr, anchored off Deadman's Island, and push her, dragging her anchor, down to the Hastings Sawmill at the foot of Dunlevy Street. (There, providentially enough, the Kerr served as a refuge for people jumping into the inlet to escape the fury of the fire.) The wind blew big trees over ... and blew flames and burning debris right into the sprawling tinder-dry collection of homely wooden buildings that was the two-month-old City of Vancouver.

Someone who saw the ominous and rising clouds of smoke began furiously ringing the bell of St. James' Church at Powell and Westminster Road (now Main Street). For many that was the first warning of the fire. Then came the alarmed shouts of men, running ahead of the flames to escape and warn the town. But the fire overtook them, leaping from treetop to treetop in the heavily forested area south of Hastings, and descended with a roar on the defenceless little town. (A fire-fighting steam pump purchased by the city would not arrive until August. Fire-fighters had only axes, shovels and buckets.)

Men dropped before their companions' eyes and were consumed in the fire; a mother and her child were found dead at the bottom of a well into which they had leaped for safety, smothered when the flames consumed the oxygen above. The heat was ferocious—the bell of St. James that had warned so many was turned to a molten lump of slag when the church in its turn burst into flame. (The melted bell can be seen today at the Vancouver Museum.) And the fire was erratic: roofs of buildings distant from the flames, like the Presbyterian Church, caught fire when other buildings much closer to the inferno were still untouched.

People tried desperately to save what they could, but the speed of the fire made that virtually impossible: one woman waded into the waters of the inlet with her sewing machine, which was all she saved; Sunday School teacher L.Z. Hall was left with only his Bible. Lauchlan Hamilton, the CPR land commissioner and city alderman, dashed to his office, collected "the most valuable papers," shoved them in a sheaf under his arm and ran into a cauldron of fire, "breathing air as hot as cinders." When he reached safety, he saw that the papers, still under his arm, were charred black.

In the midst of the tragedy there was, as always, a comic touch. Dr. H.E. Langis lamented the loss of his anatomical specimen, a human skeleton. It was found under the ruins of his office. "Do you know what they said when they picked it up? They said, 'This poor fellow must have been very sick before he died—look, his bones are all wired together.' "

The death toll is uncertain. A figure as high as 28 has been cited, but an informal inquest held the next day noted only eight confirmed deaths. Many dead could have been burned up without a trace—and the nature of the town was such that there were many transients, whose names would not have been known.

Mayor Malcolm Maclean wired Prime Minister Macdonald for assistance ("Our city in ashes . .."), and received a prompt hand-written response promising $5,000. Help from surrounding towns was swift and generous. In Vancouver, Milltown to Metropolis Alan Morley writes: "Doctors and women collected medical supplies and bandages, food, clothing and household goods were donated, and by 6 o'clock in the evening an unending relief caravan was crawling over the Westminster Road and in sight of Vancouver. It passed crowds of refugees making their way to the hospitality of the neighboring communities, where every door was open to them. By 3 o'clock in the morning, lumber wagons were jolting in from the Fraser communities; nails and tools were unloaded by the light of lanterns and the flickering of still-burning stumps. By daylight, tents and building frames stood in the dawn, with the smoke curling around them and the ashes puffing wherever a man trod.

"In 20 minutes, Vancouver had been wiped off the earth. In 12 hours, it was rising again."