About the Neighbourhood

Ownership Information

Documents

Rezoning Documents

Development Applications and DPB Decisions

Public Involvement

Related Links

Join our Mailing List

Contacts

Southeast False Creek: A Historical Overview

The Site

The 1800s
1850s: The End of an Era Lasting 10,000 Years
1860s: The First Non-Native Settler
1880s: First Land Development
1890s: Mount Pleasant is Developed

The 1900s
1900s: Sawmills & Shingle Mills
1910s: The Great War
1920s: Post War Years
1930s: The Great Depression
1940s: Second World War
1950s: Post War Years
1960s - 1980s: Industrial Decline
1990s: The Present Decade

2000s
What Can Be Used To Represent This Past?

Are There Really No Other Physical Remnants?

The Site

This overview will focus on the lands between Cambie and Main streets, from False Creek to 2nd Avenue. This site has undergone tremendous change in just over a century, and already has a rich and varied history.

The original head of land that projected into False Creek perfectly straddled the west and east sides of Vancouver, being symmetrically centred on the north-south zero point of Vancouver’s street system that originated at Gassy Jack’s saloon in Gastown. This great dividing line in Vancouver, known as Carrall Street north of False Creek, becomes Ontario Street to the south. Our site, Southeast False Creek, is the only neighbourhood in the city to straddle what are usually called the city’s West Side and East Side.

[top]

The 1800s

1850s: The End of an Era Lasting 10,000 Years
People have been living in the Lower Mainland for a very long time—since shortly after the last Ice Age ended almost 11,000 years ago. On Burrard Inlet in the 1890s an old Squamish Native elder began his traditional recitation of the history of the Squamish nation with the words "In the beginning, there was water everywhere...," a reference to "the Flood" here at the end of the last ice age. Not far from Vancouver are village sites almost 10,000 years old.

Southeast False Creek was originally covered with a thick forest of fir, cedar, hemlock, spruce and salal, and in the marshy land near the shoreline was a dense growth of crabapple bushes. The waters off the large tidal beach area were home to sole, perch, sturgeon, and a variety of waterfoul, while elk, deer, bear and beaver were at home on the land. All these resources were traditionally used by local Native peoples in a myriad of ways.

An ancient trail ran near the shoreline and joined another following a route that later evolved into Main Street, but no Native village sites are presently recorded. Nearby there are two villages sites on False Creek and others known to be have been inhabited at least 2,000 and 3,000 years ago. Thus Southeast False Creek would have been frequented by First Nations peoples for at least 3,000 years, and likely for about 10,000 years. The area is a part of the territory traditionally used by the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil’waututh peoples.

Our oldest recorded story of the area comes from Pauline Johnson’s Legends of Vancouver, where she recounts a story about Old Chief Capilano harpooning a giant seal near the entrance of False Creek about 1820. He was pursuing it by the shores of Southeast False Creek when it dove out of sight just before reaching Khiwha’esks, where Main Street is now located.

1860s: The First Non-Native Settler
In 1867 Julius Voight pre-empted District Lot 200A, 180 acres that includes most of the present Southeast False Creek site. He built the first cabin in the area near present day Main Street and 1st Avenue. He was one of the first non-Native settlers in Vancouver and, according to current knowledge, the only person living in Southeast False Creek in the 1860s.

1880s: First Land Development
Most of Southeast False Creek was first subdivided into streets by Israel Powell in 1888, the year Mount Pleasant was named by H.V. Edmonds, a former owner of D.L. 200A. Powell was one of the chief proponents of colonial British Columbia's 1871 entry into Canada, and his naming of the streets in D.L. 200A was done as a symbolic representation of the whole of Canada (see map). He named the streets from west to east, in order, after the Canadian provinces in 1888: [British] Columbia Street, Manitoba Street, Ontario Street, Quebec Street, [Nova] Scotia Street, [New] Brunswick Street, and Prince Edward [Island] Street. Later, after the Yukon and Alberta joined Canada in 1898 and 1905, respectively, these streets were added. Saskatchewan Street and Newfoundland Street have yet to be added.

The east-west streets he named numerically, and after the governor-generals of Canada. For example, 4th Avenue was named Lansdowne Street after the 4th governor-general of Canada after B.C. joined Confederation. It is also interesting to note that the province of Ontario is known as Central Canada, and in Powell’s naming system the central point of Vancouver’s street system (zero hundred block) occurs at Ontario Street, with the western province streets to the west, and the eastern province streets to the east.

1890s: Mount Pleasant is Developed
In 1886 the City of Vancouver came into being as the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad across Canada heralded the rapid growth of the designated western terminus on Burrard Inlet. In the 1890s the city’s residential development first spilled south over False Creek, creating the city’s first suburb, Mount Pleasant, but its shoreline was still not yet built upon.

[top]

The 1900s

1900s: Sawmills & Shingle Mills
In this decade False Creek really became lined with sawmills and shingle mills—eventually 17 sawmills employing 10,000 workers. Mount Pleasant filled with houses to 1st Avenue, with large sawmill/lumberyards and construction industries taking up the waterfront. In 1909, from west to east, the large waterfront plants were the W.F. Hutting Lumber Co., Dominion Glazed Cement Pipe Co., Prudentianl Builders Sectional House Factory, Western Gravel Co., W.W. Stuart Lumber Co., the Vancouver Clear Cedar Mill Co., and the City Market at Main Street.

1910s: The Great War
The Vancouver City Yard relocated to the shore just east of the Cambie Bridge and an incinerator was built there in 1910. Most jobs in these pre-automobile days were in the industrial plants inside the Fairview Beltline streetcar route that circled False Creek.

Note: today a rail line currently passes along the edge of Southeast False Creek’s 1st Avenue, and recently an old street car has been operating on the section west of Cambie Street.

During the First World War the city block at the foot of Columbia Street (the Canron site) was home to Coughlan’s shipyard, where a large contract to build 8,800 ton naval ships made the company Vancouver’s largest employer in 1918. Here 2,000 Vancouverites fought the war on the home front, toiling amidst great noise and smoke to produce the largest tonnage of steel ships in the British Empire.

In 1918, at 95 East 2nd, Columbia Block and Tool constructed a typical new metal working facility out of heavy first growth fir columns and beams (now called the Opsal Steel Building). This building, with its interesting Moderne addition next door, used to be an A building on the city’s Heritage Inventory and is a good example of the facilities that sprang up on False Creek to service the equipment needs of the forest industry. The 1919 Maynards Auctioneers Building at 365 W. 2nd Avenue/1920 Wylie Street is an example of a postwar brick warehouse from this period, and is currently a B building on the city’s Heritage Inventory.

1920s: Post War Years
A number of new wood yards and coal yards appeared along the Southeast False Creek shore, while the sawmills and metal working industries thrived. In 1924 the B.C. Telephone Company built a 4 storey brick warehouse at 380 W. 1st/1955 Wylie Street (the local short streets Wylie, Crowe and Cook were all renamed in 1925 after early Vancouver alderman). The warehouse is currently known as the Best Cleaners Building and is a B building on the city’s Heritage Inventory. Coughlan’s large facility burned to the ground and its wharf wasn’t rebuilt until the Second World War.

1930s: The Great Depression
Despite the Depression, Southeast False Creek was the site of significant new activity in the 1930s. In 1931 the Vancouver Salt Company constructed a new building at the foot of Manitoba Street. Today this building is the only building expected to be retained on all the city-owned land north of First Avenue.

A huge new steel fabrication plant was constructed in 1935 by the Hamilton Bridge Company at the former site of Coughlan’s Shipyard. This 3 acre plant later became known as the Canron Building. Some of the first jobs done here were the fabrication of the steel for the First Avenue Viaduct, the Patullo Bridge and the towers of the Lions Gate Bridge.

1940s: Second World War
In the Second World War 2,000 steelworkers laboured inside the Canron Building, then known as Western Bridge, fabricating large sections of 10,000 freighters to replace the ships sunk by German U-boats in the North Atlantic. Just outside the building 3,000 shipbuilders working for Westcoast Shipbuilders assembled and launched a total of 55 of these 10,000 ton freighters in just 4 years. Westcoast Shipbuilders and Western Bridge were also the site of giant Victory Bond rallies where stars like Susan Hayward, Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Benny and Rochester came to entertain thousands of workers and cajole them into buying war bonds.

On the site immediately to the east, the Sitka Spruce Lumber Company took prime Queen Charlotte Island spruce and milled it into structural members for WWII aircraft.

In the war years the Industrial Age peaked in Vancouver’s False Creek as 5,000 union workers laboured at the Canron site alone, while thousands of others at over a dozen sawmills cranked out materials for the war effort, and smaller machine shops, foundries and manufacturers of industrial equipment filled the spaces between.

In these years women entered the industrial labour force in large numbers for the first time and union membership soared, increasing 10 fold in the forest industry alone.

1950s: Post War Years
The main plants along the Southeast False Creek shore, from west to east, were the city yard, Dominion Bridge, Western Bridge (later Canron) Steel Fabricating, Sauder Lumber Company, Vancouver Salt Company and Ruskin Cedar Products.

1960s - 1980s: Industrial Decline
In the 1960s industry began to leave False Creek and not be replaced. In 1970 city council decided to rezone much of False Creek for housing and parks. In the 1980s Expo 86 became the reason to clear all industry from the north shore of False Creek.

Meanwhile, in Southeast False Creek, workers in the Canron Building were fabricating steel for sites all over the world, as well as for downtown Vancouver highrises, the Alex Fraser Bridge, West Edmonton Mall, Canada Place, Seattle’s Husky Stadium, and for the largest free-standing building in the world, the Boeing plant in Everett, Washington.

1990s: The Present Decade
The industries of Southeast False Creek held on till 1990, when Canron moved out of the Canron Building. This huge historic building was torn down in 1998.The end of the 1990s presents an almost blank slate at Southeast False Creek north of 1st Avenue—a site that soon will be as vacant as it was at the end of the 1890s.

[top]

2000s: What Can Be Used To Represent This Past?

The Vancouver Salt Building (1931), 85 W. 1st Avenue
This interesting 16,000 square foot wooden building with wooden roof trusses was originally built on piles over False Creek. Today it is still facing 1st Avenue, and it is still sitting on piles over water, even though years of filling in False Creek has left it quite a distance from the shore. The Vancouver Salt Company refined and stored most of the salt shipped into Vancouver to be used in the fishing industry for canning and refrigeration, in cold storage and tanning plants, and by food packers.

There are two interesting one-story buildings off 1st Avenue, just inside the entrance to the city works yard, that could serve as part of low-rise entry area to the west end of the Southeast False Creek site. On your left as you drive into the yard is an old brick car and truck storage building, c.1920, with arched windows and two large double sliding doors. Next on your left is the Central Machine Shop, c1920, which features, running the length of the building, a classic sloping roof/skylight and the original overhead belt-drive shaft.

Remnants of the 1935 Western Bridge (Canron) Plant, 195 W.1st Avenue
In 1998 city council authorized the spending of $100,000 to set aside representative pieces of the Canron Building as a historical legacy for use in the Southeast False Creek redevelopment. One of the 50 ton overhead gantry cranes (the single most important piece of equipment in the building) and 4 A-frames used for supporting the 2 tracks on which it moved were saved, as well as a few steel columns that might be used in some way to mark the footprint of the building. They are currently stored at the old Canron site by the water at the foot of Columbia Street.

At least two of the people who helped select the pieces of the building suggested the 1st Avenue side of the Canron site would be the best place to reinstall the pieces, on the footprint of the old building. The old rail line that is currently being used by a restored streetcar passes by there. This could be one way to begin to commemorate Vancouver’s industrial heyday, when False Creek was the throbbing and smoldering heart of the city.

Bruce Macdonald November, 1998

[top]

Questions or Comments? E-mail: sefc@vancouver.ca

© 2010 City of Vancouver