History Essay
by Denny Boyd
As we hurtle uncertainly toward the vast gates of a new millennium, it is time to admit that Vancouver has, like any grand lady, been shamelessly lying about its age. In the year of this book’s birth, we admit to being 110 years old, having been officially spanked into squalling life by a bill of incorporation signed into law April 6, 1886.
After Lieutenant-Governor J.W. Cornett signed that pretentious scrap of legislative paper, the wisest thing he did was to get out of the way, to let the evolution of our city, which was 1,000 millennia old back then, continue.
What we have now, what we boast about, was shaped and defined a million years ago by the greatest architectural force in history, the Ice Age. Beginning a million years ago, and lasting until 10,000 years ago, this area was covered by an incomprehensibly big ice pack, ice a mile thick, ice that reached as high as the peaks of The Lions. Billions of tons of ice pressed down relentlessly on the malleable land, compressing it, grinding it, carving it into what would become its random beauty. It shaped our central peninsula. It ground the sharp peaks of the Coast Mountains, giving them their soft, gracious contours and, as an afterthought, left the slopes that would be the North Shore. The ice spat out hundreds of tiny bits that would become the Gulf Islands and left ruts that would become rivers.
When the ice moved on, it left the grid that would, in the majestic slowness of nature’s time, become one of the great cities of the world.
In contrast to what nature did in its leisurely pace, the subsequent efforts of man were puny and filled with error. In fact, it took the corrective work of what is usually viewed as a terrible tragedy, the Great Fire of June 13, 1886, to wipe out the first mistake and provide a fresh start. The ugly shacktown that was Vancouver of 1886 had been built with too much urgency and too little vision. It deserved burning down and it was only from the three feet of smoking ashes that a better town emerged. And if you are looking for unsung heroes, sing of 14 good, practical men who declined to take a justified day off work.
The morning after the fire the mayor, 10 aldermen, the clerk, the chief constable and one concerned citizen gussied up in their finest suits, held a city council meeting in a one-pole tent thrown up in the smoky dawn by alderman L.A. Hamilton at the corner of Carrall and Water streets. A hand-printed sign on the tent said City Hall but the real message was, Still in Business. The first order of business, the approval of funds for a fire-wagon. The second, a stiffer set of building codes.
Twelve hours after the 20-minute fire that wiped out the old town, the sound of hammer and saw announced that the building of the new one was under way. And this time they would get it right.
By nightfall, wagons from New Westminster and Moodyville were rumbling into the desolate scene, bearing good neighbors, food, medical supplies and lumber for the new beginning. In three days, a new clothing store and public hall had been built. Within three months, 400 new houses went up. By the end of 1886, the new town had 8,000 residents, 23 hotels, 51 shops, nine saloons and one church. Life had sprung from fire and ice.
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