Henry Ogle Bell-Irving

Henry Ogle Bell-Irving served as Alderman for Ward 4 of the City of Vancouver from 1887-1888, at the same time acting as chairman of the Civic Board of Works. In the fall of 1890, he secured the options to several B.C. canneries and, with the help of English capital, formed the Anglo-British Columbia Packing Company. By April of 1891, the Company had purchased seven Fraser River canneries and two canneries on the Skeena River. In 1891, the Company produced slightly more than one-quarter of B.C.'s total salmon pack. In 1901, H. Bell-Irving and Company Ltd. was incorporated as Canadian agent for the Company, which was British registered. Since incorporation, the Company has remained within the Bell-Irving family for three generations.

Trained in Karlsruhe, Germany, as a civil engineer, Henry was employed as a surveyor-engineer on the Rocky and Selkirk Mountain sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway line in 1882.

Henry built The Strands on Harwood Street in 1910 where he lived until the 1920s