Gastown

Gastown started slowly. Sewell Moody’s mill on the north shore had been going since 1862 and was doing well. In 1868 some 33 export cargoes left the inlet, with Moody’s Mill—which produced three times as much wood as Stamp’s Mill—claiming most. The steamer Sea Foam was transferred from Fraser River service to run as a ferry between Moody’s Mill, Stamp’s Mill and New Brighton (a resort at the north end of Douglas Road from New Westminster). And in 1869 Colonial Governor Frederick Seymour, visiting Burrard Inlet, included Gastown on his itinerary. But it was not a beehive of activity in the early years. “When customers were gone,” wrote Raymond Hull and Olga Ruskin in Gastown’s Gassy Jack, “Luck-Lucky was quiet. There were the Three Greenhorns a mile to the west, the mill half-a-mile east, a few lights across the inlet at Moodyville and, on three sides, the thick forest.”

The BC and VI Mill manager, Edward Stamp, frequently argued with his partners and on January 2, 1869 ceased to be manager The mill’s business faltered. So, of course, did business at Gassy’s saloon. Stamp’s successor, Captain John Raymur, arrived to look over the mil, then strode over to Gastown. He stopped in horror, cast an alarmed eye over the muddy, squalid little settlement, then delivered himself of one of our local history’s more pithy remarks: “What is the meaning of this aggregation of filth!”

Gastown could be a tense and dangerous place, with lots of drinking, fighting and theft. As well, many local native people were resentful of the intrusion into their land. In July of 1869 a man named Alfred Ferry was axed to death by a native man named Stackeye, who confessed and was hanged. In Making Vancouver (published in 1996), Robert A.J. MacDonald writes interestingly of racial, economic and social levels in Gastown.

In February 1870 San Francisco-based owners bought the BC and VI Mill, which had closed, and changed its name to Hastings Mill (in honor of Admiral G. E Hastings, commander of the British naval squadron at Esquimalt). The lumber market was so depressed the new owners delayed reopening. Only the busy mill across the inlet kept Gastown going.

A six-acre townsite—bounded by today’s Water, Carrall, Hastings and Cambie streets, and including Gastown within it—was surveyed by the Crown and named Granville after the colonial secretary of the time. Many people continued to call it Gastown, and British Admiralty charts showed “Gastown” well into the 1880s. Gassy successfully bid $135 on one of the lots, half in cash, and built a larger establishment called Deighton House. Two stories high, it included a hotel and billiard parlor. In August the Hastings Mill re-opened and Granville/Gastown was back at full throttle.

The entry of British Columbia into Canada on July 20, 1871 caused less of a stir in the townsite than the appointment the same year of its first constable. Jonathan Miller, who would go on to hold several other posts including customs collector and postmaster, and who lived in a cottage with a small lockup in the backyard, next to Deighton House. The two-cell log-built jail had no locks on the doors. Gaoler’s Mews, in modern Gastown, recalls that early lockup. Then another indicator of stability appeared: at a public meeting residents agreed to start a private school. It opened the next year, called at first the Hastings Mill School, then, eventually, Granville School. Its students may have been among the crowd on April 24, 1872 when Gassy climbed to the roof of Deighton House and hoisted the first Canadian flag to fly in Burrard Inlet. The year 1872 also saw the establishment of the Granville Post Office, set up in the Hastings Mill Store. Then Polish-born Louis Gold arrived at Granville, and he and his wife Emma rented premises from Gassy and opened a general merchandise and grocery store. George Black started a butcher shop, built out over the water so meat could he lowered to customers who came by boat. New roads were connecting Granville to distant places like Hastings Townsite, Eburne (Marpole) and the Fraser Valley. It was still a rough, humble spot—and a small one: the 1873 population was 75. New Westminster’s was about 1,500 at the time.

On May 29, 1875 the long-ailing Gassy Jack Deighton died. He was 44.

The tiny settlement’s first church was established in 1876 by Methodist missionaries at water’s edge at the northwest corner of Water and Abbott streets. Most of the parishioners were native mill workers which, says Making Vancouver, made non-natives reluctant to go. They attended Anglican services in the Masonic Hall on the north shore until St. James Anglican (sponsored by the filth-detesting James Raymur) began services in 1881.

The end of Gastown/Granville came suddenly. By the time William Van Horne, the Canadian Pacific Railway’s hard-nosed general manager, visited in August of 1884 it was known that Port Moody was out as the railway’s terminus and that Granville—more precisely, Coal Harbour—was in. During his visit Van Horne was taken on a rowboat tour of the area by the CPR’s local land commissioner, Lauchlan Hamilton. Looking around, Van Horne became excited. “Hamilton,” he said, “this is destined to be a great port, and it must have a name commensurate with its greatness. And Vancouver it shall be, if I have a say in the matter.” A word in the right ears in Ottawa and Victoria, and Granville vanished as a name. There was an explosion of real-estate activity in this place called “Vancouver.” Lots bought for $66 before the news broke sold for $2,000 after.

Lauchlan Hamilton began laying out the Vancouver townsite in 1885, and on January 15, 1886 there appeared the first issue of the Vancouver Weekly Herald and North Pacific News. People were calling it Vancouver already, with incorporation as a city still three months away.

The old, the original, Gastown had disappeared after 29 years of life. As the years passed and the city grew, its centre of activity moved west and south. Beginning around the time of World War I the old area, which had become a warehouse district, started to sink into a slow decline. As Gastown observer Marc Denhez has written, “Gastown was being left alone—and thus began a 50-year journey on the slippery slope of economic stagnation and social decline. The warehouses gradually emptied, and the hotels often became home for Vancouver’s skid-roaders.”

The story of the fight to save the area—at a time when the civic, provincial and federal levels of government were in favor of demolishing it for massive redevelopment—is practically a book in itself. (In fact, Denhez wrote several chapters about it in Heritage Fights Back, published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1978.) The campaign began as early as the late 1950s. Said Garry Marchant, writing in The Review: “ ... a small group of Gastown property owners had already started renovating their buildings and had launched a clean-up campaign in that part of the city. They were joined in the campaign—by an unusual coalition of ‘urban rebels’—young businessmen and professionals, even younger street-corner entrepreneurs who sold crafts from stalls, academics, the Community Arts Council, architects, planners, and university professors, the Chinese community and various citizens’ groups concerned with Vancouver’s heritage.” On September 22, 1968 Vancouver’s Community Arts Council, which had been showing heritage film and slide shows on the area for years, sponsored a walking tour to point out Gastown’s charming buildings and colorful past. More than 700 people showed up in the rain. The CAC organized more tours, and the prospect of Gastown’s demolition began to fade. The Old Spaghetti Factory opened on Water Street in 1970, and its funky ambience drew big crowds to the area. Then in February 1971 the Provincial government designated Gastown an historic site, and that ensured the old brick buildings would be saved from demolition.

The city joined in the beautification of Gastown in 1972. Next the federal government gave money, then the provincial. Utility wires were buried, trees were planted, and old-fashioned street lights, modeled somewhat after the originals, were installed. Subtle, unobtrusive touches were added: the chain-linked bollards between the sidewalks and the roadways are there to discourage jay-walking. That they happen to look good is a bonus. The streets were paved with brick. The city’s planner for Gastown then, Jon Ellis, said it was the first time a North American city had torn up good streets to rebuild them in the old style. (Elis, incidentally, is the man who conceived of Gastown’s famous steam clock, created by Raymond Saunders and dedicated September 24, 1977.) When Gastown threw a party in September 1975 to celebrate the reopening of Water Street some 200,000 people showed up.

Today’s Gastown is a lively collection of shops, art galleries, antique stores, offices, studios and ethnic restaurants housed in dozens of restored and refurbished heritage buildings. It is a magnet for thousands of tourists and locals.