Richmond

by Dean Pelkey

An island city set in the mouth of the Fraser River, Richmond has grown up from its days as a sleepy-eyed farming community. With a population of 145,000 people, Richmond is a booming urban centre with a multicultural feel that reflects its Asian nickname as a land of prosperity. But the Richmond of today with gleaming highrise towers reaching skyward toward the international jets landing at nearby Vancouver International Airport retains traces of its past.

Founded on the twin pillars of farming and fishing, Richmond still contains some of the best farmland in the Lower Mainland with more than 4,800 hectares preserved in the agricultural land reserve. Cranberries have emerged as the dominant crop for farming in the 1990s. In Steveston, Richmond hosts the largest fishing fleet on Canada’s West Coast.

Richmond, which attained city status in 1990, is made up of a group of islands at the mouth of the Fraser River with a total area of 133 sq. kilometres. The largest of these, Lulu Island, is home to the bulk of the city’s population, while the second largest, Sea Island, hosts the Vancouver International Airport and the tiny community of Burkeville.

As on much of the West Coast, the first people to roam Richmond were natives, in this case the Musqueam people, who fished and hunted throughout the Fraser delta. Although the band lived on the mainland on the Fraser River’s North Arm, they crossed the islands hunting and trapping beaver, muskrat, mink and other game. The islands also provided them with a source of wild blueberries and other fruit.

This fertile delta soil and a lack of large trees made the islands ideal for farming and attracted the first white settlers.

Initially Lulu Island was known on Fraser River maps simply as Island No. 1. But in 1863 Colonel Richard Moody, commander of the Corps of Royal Engineers, decided to name the island after Lulu Sweet, a popular entertainer from San Francisco, passing through with her troupe en route to a show in Victoria.

Hugh McRoberts arrived on Sea Island in 1861, building a dyke around his farm to keep the sea at bay. He was soon followed by other pioneer families: the McNeelys, who began a farm on the south side of Lulu Island, and the Ferrises.

Thomas Kidd arrived in 1874, staking out a 65-hectare farm, also on Lulu Island. He was followed in 1879 by the Blair brothers John and Arch who between them built a 136-hectare farm.

But it was with the arrival of Manoah Steves and his family in 1878 that Lulu Island truly began its path to prosperity. In 1879 Steves and 24 of his neighbors successfully petitioned to incorporate the islands as the Township of Richmond.

Many of Richmond’s pioneer families are remembered today in the names of the city’s schools: Thomas Kidd, Samuel Brighouse, James Gilmore, R.M. Grauer, James McKinney and Manoah Steves. Many of the same names pop up as local politicians. Hugh Boyd became Richmond’s first reeve (mayor). He was succeeded by Kidd in an 1881 election. Kidd later became the community’s first member of the provincial legislative assembly.

While Steveston enjoyed growth brought by the fishing industry, the rest of Richmond was making a name for itself in agriculture. The Frasea Dairy Farm on Sea Island was Richmond’s largest dairy farm. Established in 1922 by Jake Grauer, the farm at one time had 500 cows. In 1954 the farm closed down because of the expansion of the Vancouver International Airport. A last remnant of that farm, an aging barn, was torn down in 1993, when the airport began to build its third runway.

Surrounded as they are by the Fraser River, farmers in Richmond’s early days fought constantly to keep the river at bay a battle they didn’t always win.

The first dykes were built by Hugh McRoberts to protect his Sea Island farm and other farmers soon followed. But the dykes failed to prevent the first major flood in 1894, when water rushed over the north Richmond dyke, destroying crops and washing out roads. Dykes were rebuilt, but floods struck again in 1905 and 1948. The last major flood was in 1952, when a flood box in Finn Slough washed out.

In 1968 the city reached an agreement with the provincial government to share the cost of building and maintaining the dykes, removing the care of the dykes away from individual landowners. Today the dykes that surround Lulu Island not only protect against flooding but are an important part of the city’s recreational trail system.

While farming and fishing provided the early livelihood for the people of Richmond, horse racing provided the entertainment. Although the name Minoru Park lives on today as Richmond’s largest public park, the moniker was originally applied to a horse track on the present park site at the turn of the century. Named after King Edward’s Epsom Derby-winning steed, Minoru Park attracted 7,000 people on its opening day on August 21, 1909.

Minoru Park closed when World War I broke out, but reopened after the war as Brighouse Park. The track proved so profitable that a second, Lansdowne Park, was built north of Westminster Highway on what is now Lansdowne Park shopping centre. Horse racing faltered in 1941 with the closure of Brighouse Park, as crowds fell during World War II and because of the opening of a new track at Hastings Park, on the PNE grounds in Vancouver. Lansdowne closed in the mid- 1960s.

Aircraft played an early and vital role in Richmond’s development. The city was host to a series of aviation firsts: the province’s first passenger flight in 1912, the first female passenger in Canada flew from Richmond, and the first flight over the Rocky Mountains left from Richmond.

The original airport was a 16-hectare piece of land south of what is now Alexandra Road that was leased to the City of Vancouver. In 1928 planning began for a new airport, with Sea Island selected as the site, a decision made by Vancouver Mayor W.H. Malkin and the Vancouver Board of Trade. Vancouver paid $300,000 for 192 hectares and another $300,000 for runways and hangars.

In 1931 Sea Island Airport opened, with the old Richmond airport returning to farmland. The arrival in 1946 of the first scheduled overseas airline, Australian National Airways (which later became Qantas), signalled a new age for the airport, and its name was changed to Vancouver International Airport in 1948, ensuring Richmond’s status as the “Gateway to the West.”

Following on the heels of the airport’s creation came Burkeville, an anomaly of a settlement built virtually at the eastern tip of Vancouver International Airport’s main runway. Burkeville was a child of World War II, built to house workers at Boeing’s Sea Island plant and named after Boeing president Stanley Burke. About 328 homes were originally built, and most still remain, housing about 700 people.

Throughout the post-war years, Richmond enjoyed steady growth, transforming from an agricultural community to a bedroom community of Vancouver as farms gave way to housing subdivisions and commercial development.

In 1956 Richmond’s population was 26,000. That increased to 43,323 in 1961 and reached 62,121 in 1971. Then the boom began, as Richmond grew to 96,154 people in 1986, jumped to 126,624 in 1991 and was nearing the 150,000 mark in 1996.

Because Richmond is an island, its growth is highly dependent on transportation links to the mainland. In 1957 the Oak Street Bridge was built. By 1962, Highway 99 and the George Massey Tunnel (originally named the Deas Island Tunnel) were also completed, providing a continuous link between the U.S. border and Vancouver through Richmond.

In 1974 the Knight Street Bridge was built over the Fraser’s North Arm, replacing the Fraser Street Bridge. The Arthur Laing Bridge was built the following year, connecting Sea Island to Granville Street. The completion of the No. 2 Road Bridge in 1993 added the most recent link to Lulu Island.

With the building boom of the 1970s and 1980s, so too came a change to the ethnic mix of Richmond’s population. Until 1961, 60 per cent of the city’s population were of British descent. By 1986 the number of people claiming a British heritage had fallen to 27 per cent, while those of Chinese descent made up 8 per cent of the population and 5.6 per cent had an Indo-Pakistani heritage.

Between 1980 and 1988 immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China accounted for 23 per cent of all foreign immigrants coming to Richmond.

Likewise, in 1971 83 per cent of the city’s population listed English as their first language; by 1991 that had fallen to 69 per cent. By this time Richmond declared itself Canada’s first multicultural city, and began offering city services in a variety of languages.

These years also saw Richmond emerge as a centre of high-technology in the Lower Mainland. Led by world-renowned MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, more than 300 high-tech companies set up shop in Richmond during the 1980s. Many specialized in computers, software development, satellite technology, space and aeronautics.

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