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Vancouver BC ...
"By Sea, Land, and Air We
Prosper"
Overview:
Vancouver is a coastal
city and major seaport located in the Lower Mainland of southwestern British
Columbia, Canada. The city is bounded by English Bay, Burrard Inlet, the Fraser
River, the city of Burnaby, and the University Endowment Lands. Vancouver is
named after Captain George Vancouver, a British explorer. The name Vancouver
itself originates from the Dutch "van Coevorden", denoting somebody from
Coevorden, an old city in The Netherlands.
According to the 2006 Census,
the city of Vancouver had a population just over 578,000 and its Census
Metropolitan Area exceeded 2.1 million people. As of July 2009, the city's
estimated population surpassed 615,000 and that of the metropolitan area
exceeded 2.3 million. Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Western
Canada and the third largest in the country, although the city proper is ranked
eighth nationally. Vancouver is ethnically diverse, with 52% of city residents
having a first language other than English.
The area east of Vancouver
was first settled by Europeans in the 1860s as a result of immigration to the
Colony of British Columbia caused by the Fraser and Cariboo Gold Rushes, with
only a very few settling in what would become the city of Vancouver. The city's
roots are based in logging and the founding of a large lumber mill, which gave
birth to Gastown. The settlement expanded into a metropolitan centre following
the arrival of the transcontinental railway in 1887. The Port of Vancouver
became internationally significant as a node in the global trade network of the
British Empire with the combined steamship and railway of the Canadian Pacific
Railway shortening shipping times between the Orient and London. The port is
now the busiest in Canada, and the fourth largest port (by tonnage) in North
America.
Prior to the 1980s, the economy of Vancouver had traditionally
relied on British Columbia's resource sectors: forestry, mining, fishing and
agriculture. Since then it has further diversified, and today its second
largest industry, after forestry, is tourism, and Vancouver has become the
third-largest film production centre in North America after Los Angeles and New
York City, earning it the nickname Hollywood North.
Vancouver ranks as
one of the most livable cities in the world, and has done so for more than a
decade. It is a destination for many international conferences and events,
including the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in 1976 and the
1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication (Expo 86). The 2010
Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Paralympics will be held in Vancouver and
nearby Whistler, a resort community 125 km (78 miles) north of the
city.
History and Culture:
Archaeological records
indicate the presence of Aboriginal people in the Vancouver area from
8,000-10,000 years ago. The city is located in the traditional territories of
Skwxwú7mesh, Xwméthkwyiem, and Tseil-waututh peoples of the Coast
Salish group. They had villages in various parts of present-day Vancouver, such
as Stanley Park, False Creek, Kitsilano, Point Grey and near the mouth of the
Fraser River.
The first European to explore the coastline of present-day
Point Grey and part of Burrard Inlet was José María
Narváez of Spain, in 1791, although Samuel Bawlf contends that Francis
Drake may have visited the area in 1579. George Vancouver explored the inner
harbour of Burrard Inlet in 1792 and gave various places British
names.
The explorer and North West Company trader Simon Fraser and his
crew were the first Europeans known to have set foot on the site of the
present-day city. In 1808, they traveled from the east, down the Fraser River
perhaps as far as Point Grey, near the University of British
Columbia.
The Fraser Gold Rush of 1858 brought over 25,000 men, mainly
from California, up the Fraser River, most bypassing what would become
Vancouver. The first European settlement was in 1862 at McLeery's Farm on the
Fraser River, just east of the ancient village of Musqueam in what is now
Marpole. A sawmill established at Moodyville (now the City of North Vancouver)
in 1863, began the city's long relationship with lumbering. It was quickly
followed by mills owned by Captain Edward Stamp on the south shore of the
inlet. Stamp, who had begun lumbering in the Port Alberni area, first attempted
to run a mill at Brockton Point, but difficult currents and reefs forced the
relocation of the operation to a point near the foot of Gore Street, known as
Hastings Mill. This became the nucleus around which Vancouver formed. The
mill's central role in the city waned after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific
Railway (CPR) in the 1880s. It nevertheless remained important to the local
economy until it closed in the 1920s.
Vancouver is among British
Columbia's youngest cities. The settlement of Gastown grew up quickly around
the original makeshift tavern established by "Gassy" Jack Deighton in 1867 on
the edge of the Hastings Mill property. In 1870, the colonial government
surveyed the settlement and laid out a townsite, renamed "Granville" in honour
of the then-British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Granville. This
site, with its natural harbour, was eventually selected as the terminus for the
Canadian Pacific Railway to the disappointment of Port Moody, New Westminster
and Victoria, all of which had vied to be the railhead. A railway was among the
inducements for British Columbia to join Confederation in 1871, but the Pacific
Scandal and arguments over the use of Chinese labour delayed construction until
the 1880s.
The City of Vancouver was incorporated on 6 April 1886, the
same year that the first transcontinental train arrived. The name, honouring
George Vancouver, was chosen by CPR president William Van Horne, who arrived in
Port Moody to establish the CPR terminus recommended by Henry John Cambie. The
Great Vancouver Fire on 13 June 1886, razed the entire city. The Vancouver Fire
Department was established that year and the city quickly rebuilt. Vancouver's
population grew from a settlement of 1,000 people in 1881 to over 20,000 by the
turn of the century and 100,000 by 1911.
Vancouver merchants outfitted
prospectors bound for the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898. One of those merchants,
Charles Woodward, had opened the first Woodward's store at what is now Georgia
and Main Streets in 1892 and, along with Spencer's and the Hudson's Bay
department stores, formed the core of the city's retail sector for
decades.
The economy of early Vancouver was dominated by large companies
such as the CPR, which provided capital for the rapid development of the new
city. While some manufacturing did develop, natural resources became the basis
for Vancouver's economy. The resource sector was initially based on logging and
later on exports moving through the seaport, where commercial traffic
constituted the largest economic sector in Vancouver by the 1930s.
The
dominance of the economy by big business was accompanied by an often militant
labour movement. The first major sympathy strike was in 1903 when railway
employees struck against the CPR for union recognition. Labour leader Frank
Rogers was killed while picketing at the docks by CPR police during that
strike, becoming the British Columbia movement's first martyr. The rise of
industrial tensions throughout the province led to Canada's first general
strike in 1918, at the Cumberland coal mines on Vancouver Island. Following a
lull in the 1920s, the strike wave peaked in 1935 when unemployed men flooded
the city to protest conditions in the relief camps run by the military in
remote areas throughout the province. After two tense months of daily and
disruptive protesting, the relief camp strikers decided to take their
grievances to the federal government and embarked on the On-to-Ottawa Trek, but
their protest was put down by force. The workers were arrested near Mission and
interned in work camps for the duration of the Depression.
Other social
movements, such as the first-wave feminist, moral reform, and temperance
movements were also influential in Vancouver's development. Mary Ellen Smith, a
Vancouver suffragist and prohibitionist, became the first woman elected to a
provincial legislature in Canada in 1918. Alcohol prohibition began in the
First World War and lasted until 1921, when the provincial government
established control over alcohol sales, a practice still in place today.
Canada's first drug law came about following an inquiry conducted by the
federal Minister of Labour and future Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie
King. King was sent to investigate damages claims resulting from a riot when
the Asiatic Exclusion League led a rampage through Chinatown and Japantown. Two
of the claimants were opium manufacturers, and after further investigation,
King found that white women were reportedly frequenting opium dens as well as
Chinese men. A federal law banning the manufacture, sale, and importation of
opium for non-medicinal purposes was soon passed based on these revelations.
Amalgamation with Point Grey and South Vancouver gave the city its
final contours not long before taking its place as the third largest metropolis
in the country. As of 1 January 1929, the population of the enlarged Vancouver
was 228,193 and it filled the entire peninsula between the Burrard Inlet and
the Fraser River.
For further information, please visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver
This work is
released under CC-BY-SA
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
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