Browsing “Vancouver Was Awesome Series”

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

In 1899, industrialist Theodore Ludgate persuaded the Dominion government to lease him Deadman’s Island to build a sawmill. What Ludgate got instead was a multi-year legal battle with the City, which claimed that the islet was part of Stanley Park and not a separate federal military reserve.

Ludgate was determined to build his sawmill despite the City’s protests. He announced that he would send a crew of 50 men to start work on the island on 24 April 1899. If the mayor tried to stop him, he said, “it would be a sorry day for Vancouver … and if the policemen try and stop me they are trespassers, not I, and a huge mass meeting will be called at once of citizens, who will request Mayor Garden and the Council to resign as misrepresenting the city’s interest.” Ludgate was buoyed by the fact that his lawyer, “Fighting” Joe Martin, was not just a fellow Liberal, but also served as the Attorney General of BC.

Mayor Garden was equally determined to prevent construction on the island. He warned that a contingent of police would spend the night on the island and arrest Ludgate and his men as they arrived to start work. If Ludgate resisted arrest, “violence will be used.”

As promised, the mayor himself and about 30 police were on the island the next morning and arrested Ludgate and his crew after Ludgate picked up an axe and began chopping. Ludgate was unable to force the mayor and council to resign over the issue, and so continued his fight in the courts.

The case was finally decided by the Privy Council in 1911 in Ludgate’s favour, and the police contingent that had been guarding the island since 1909 (pictured) were reassigned. Ludgate cleared all the trees off the island, but by then his company had gone bust and the sawmill plan was dead. The City kicked all the squatters out in the 1920s, but failed to make any improvements, so the island lay barren until the feds took it back during WWII and built naval reserve base HMCS Discovery, which it remains today.

Driving the Battle of Deadman’s Island were homeowners in the West End – then the toniest neighbourhood in town – who vociferously opposed any industrial use for the island as that would spoil their scenic vista of the North Shore and cause their property values to plunge. It’s unlikely that Deadman’s Island will be reunited with Stanley Park anytime soon, as it is part of the Musqueum First Nation’s land claim in the area. 

Source: Photo by Broadbridge-Bullen, City of Vancouver Archives #St Pk P330

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

After reading a Time Magazine article on the new direction of the Vancouver Sun, a young and still unknown Hunter S. Thompson wrote the paper asking for a job. According to Time, the Sun’s new editorial director, Jack Scott, attempted to liven up the paper by things like sending a sports writer to interview Chiang Kai-shek and a Women’s Page columnist to cover the Cuban Revolution. Nevertheless, it seems Thompson was too outlandish even for Scott. Thompson later insisted the letter was “written in a frenzy of drink.”

To Jack Scott, Vancouver Sun:

Sir,

I got a hell of a kick out of reading the piece Time magazine did this week on the Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer you my services.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley. By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of the Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand.

And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you. I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likeable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.) Nothing beats good references.

Of course if you asked some of the other people I’ve worked for, you’d get a different set of answers. If you’re interested enough to answer this letter, I’ll be glad to furnish you with a list of references — including the lad I work for now.

The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hagridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get the Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my experience has been in sportswriting, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews. I can work twenty-five hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations. I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.

It’s a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip. If you think you can use me, drop me a line. If not, good luck anyway.

Sincerely,

Hunter S Thompson

Sources: Photo: Syntax of Things; letter: Hunter S Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Southern Gentleman, 1955 – 1967

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Jitneys started appearing on the streets of Vancouver and other cities during WWI. They were cars that operated like buses, with fixed (yet flexible) routes, multiple passengers, and a flat fare of five cents (“jitney” was American slang for nickel). Not surprisingly, the monopolistic BC Electric Railway Co. (forerunner to TransLink and BC Hydro) was none too happy with the phenomenon because it forced them to compete with low fares and convenient service, not to mention a reduced ridership.

Initially BCER made the case that jitneys weren’t economically sustainable once maintenance, depreciation, and liability costs were accounted for. To test this theory, they secretly operated three jitneys in the winter of 1914-15, but found that a jitney operator could eke out a living comparable to a factory worker. Still, the profitability of jitneys was whittled away by taxes, licencing and other fees gradually imposed by the City, and were ultimately banned altogether.

Jitneys played a role in industrial relations. The head of BCER blamed a 1917 street car workers’ strike squarely on competition from jitneys, which, he said, destabilized the streetcar industry and made it impossible to meet wage demands. During the 1919 general strike, jitneys were used to mitigate the impact of striking streetcar workers and thus undermined the strike. In 1933, Mayor Taylor averted yet another strike by threatening the head of BCER that the ban on jitneys would be lifted unless they got back to the bargaining table and started making some concessions to the union.

Although they looked like taxis, jitneys were in fact the forerunner to the city bus. The BCER eventually incorporated modern streetcar-style buses into their system and phased out streetcars altogether in the 1950s.

Source: Photo by Philip Timms, City of Vancouver Archives #677-953. Note: The archives description dates this photo to 1923, but it must be before 1922 because that’s when Vancouver switched to driving on the right side of the road, and although some sources say otherwise, jitneys appear to have been banned in 1918.

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

This recently demolished building went up in 1888 as a saloon for Captain William Power of Port Moody at 819 Granville, just south of Robson. A new art deco facade was added in 1929, which has been retained for the new development that’s currently under construction.

The building got a lot of attention earlier this year when a (now gone) ghost sign for Harold Lloyd’s Grandma’s Boy was revealed during the demolition of the Farmer Building next door.

The Burns family became one of the wealthiest family dynasties in Western Canada from their meatpacking business. Dominic Burns took over this building and renovated it in 1911 for their Granville Market, which occupied the building until 1928.

This area has been undergoing its biggest transformation since the Pacific Centre development went up in the late 1960s and 1970s. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the old Eaton’s building once Sears closes up shop.

Source: City of Vancouver Archives #99-3053

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

In 1906 a delegation consisting of Chief Joe Capilano (Squamish), Chief Charley Isipaymilt (Cowichan), and Chief Basil David (Shuswap) travelled to London to seek an audience with King Edward VII. After years of getting nowhere with the BC and Canadian governments, BC native communities selected Chief Capilano to lead a delegation that would petition the King in person.

Their demands included repealing the ban on potlatches and hunting regulations that undermined the self-sufficiency of BC First Nations. More importantly, the delegates lobbied the King to make good on the promises that had been made in the crown’s name concerning compensation for alienated lands. They pointed out that, unlike the rest of Canada, aboriginal title had not been extinguished in BC.

The 15 minute meeting with the King itself failed to bring about any concrete change, but the visit nevertheless marks a significant milestone in the history of native/settler relations in BC.

Planning for the trip was two years in the making. It involved numerous intertribal conferences and Capilano travelling the province to seek a mandate to speak on behalf of all BC First Nations. When speaking with the British press, he was able to tell them that he “carried to the king the handshakes of all 200,000 Indians in British Columbia.”

Back home, Capilano again spent months going around to native communities reporting back on his trip. Three years later, the first of many province-wide native political organizations formed to pursue land claims in BC, a struggle that continues over a century later.

See this article by Keith Thor Carlson for more details of the 1906 trip.

Sources: Top: photo by William Stark of the delegates at a ferry terminal in North Van, City of Vancouver Archives #P41.1; bottom: the BC delegation in London, Daily Graphic, via the British Library

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Jack Black came to Vancouver in 1894 after he and his Chinese cellmate busted out of a Revelstoke jail using a hacksaw. They hopped a boxcar to Vancouver, where Black rolled a drunk, smoked opium at Wing Sang, and got hog-tied in a botched robbery. He continued his perpetual crime spree throughout BC before getting pinched in Victoria, which earned him a two-year stretch at BC Penitentiary in New Westminster, where he was born. While there, the grandfather of another famous New West son, Raymond Burr, gave him the lash.

Jack Black (probably an alias) lived the life of any number of old west stock characters, including yegg, hobo, grifter, desperado, and hophead. More importantly, he eventually went straight and wrote his memoirs, You Can’t Win (1926), giving us a rare interior view of the world inhabited by the mostly anonymous underclass of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The book was a hit and made Black somewhat of a celebrity. He had his portrait (above right) taken by well-known photographer Edward Weston, and heavily influenced the likes of William S. Burroughs, who drew from You Can’t Win to write his classic beat novel, Junkie. MGM Studios recruited Black as a salaried Hollywood writer, presumably to give its crime flicks a touch of authenticity.

For more on Jack Black’s time in BC, check out “A Wild West Wanderer’s Adventures in BC” by John Mackie.

Source: Left: Mugshot printed in the San Francisco Call, 5 January 1912; right: portrait by Edward Weston ca. 1930, via The Chiseler

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world after clobbering Canadian Tommy Burns in Australia on Boxing Day in 1908. This was a big deal in the Jim Crow era, and white supremacists quickly began the search for a “Great White Hope” who could regain the title for the white race.

After winning the coveted title in Australia, Johnson came to Vancouver with Hattie McClay. He introduced her as Mrs Johnson even though they were not legally married. Despite being the most famous black man on the planet, Johnson and his white paramour were turned away from the St Francis, Irving, Metropole, Rainier, and Astor hotels. Finally a black jazz drummer, police trainer, and sports promoter named George Paris put the couple up at his home in the East End.

Johnson was scheduled to fight Denver Ed Martin, aka “The Colorado Giant,” but Martin skipped town before the bout. Next up was a little known boxer from Tacoma named Victor McLaglen. Johnson beat McLaglen, who would later find greater success in Hollywood than he did in the ring, winning the 1935 best actor Oscar for his role in The Informer.

While in Vancouver, Johnson played cards at the Railway Porters’ Club, saw a vaudeville show at the Pantages, and drove around Stanley Park where he and Hattie posed as Napoleon and Josephine for a Hollow Tree photographer. Johnson felt an affinity with Napoleon because the two men fought their way up from humble origins and against incredible odds.

For the full story of Jack Johnson’s Vancouver visit, see Tom Hawthorn’s “When Jack Johnson Fought in Vancouver,” part one and part two, in the Tyee.

Source: Library of Congress #2002695478, via PopArtMachine.com

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Grab a snack, dim the lights, and pull up a chair: it’s home movie time! After schlepping through mountain highways from Alberta, with stops at places like the Sleepee Teepee Motel, Ursula and Hans Gartner arrive in Vancouver at about 6:00. It’s a lovely spring day and they visit the usual tourist spots. One highlight is the Great Vancouver Paint-In art fence hiding the new fountain at the court house.

Source: Gartner8mm on youtube