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The Communities
Carrall Street has been home to many diverse cultures and communities. Descendants of the early residents -both actual and spiritual-continue to live in the neighbourhood today.
The First People
It is important to remember that even before there was a Carrall Street, the area had an identity and traditions that stretched back for ages. The site of the current Maple Tree Square had been a summer gathering place and camp of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam First Nations, who came to the south shore of Burrard Inlet to hunt and forage for food, especially berries, which were dried and preserved for the coming winter.
A kilometre to the east was Kumkumlye-"Big Leaf Maple"-the site of another, larger summer campsite where Captain Edward Stamp set up his British Columbia and Vancouver Island Spar Lumber and Sawmill Company, later Hastings Mills.
The first white settlers on Burrard Inlet at Moodyville across the water, at Kumkumlye and at Luk'luk'i , were predominately male. During the early years of European settlement, many of these men took aboriginal brides. Both of Gassy Jack Deighton's wives were aboriginal.
When British Columbia joined confederation in 1871, things began to change for aboriginal people. As white settlers continued to arrive in BC, the federal government took steps to free up land for white settlement and development. Aboriginals were relocated to reserve lands, many of them unsuitable and too small for the aboriginal communities' needs. Aboriginals were further marginalized through laws, and in 1874 the BC legislature that denied their right to vote in provincial elections. The same law denied voting rights to Chinese immigrants.
Despite these challenges, aboriginal people and their cultures persist in the area. Today, the Downtown Eastside is home to a large aboriginal community. About ten per cent of Vancouver's aboriginal population lives here. There are a number of community organizations to look after the needs of, and advocate for the urban aboriginal community, including the Urban Aboriginal Health Centers, the Vancouver Native Health Society and its sister organization, Sheway, (a Coast Salish word meaning "growth").
A creative community-based project named Storyscapes is working to increase the visibility of Aboriginal history, images and perspectives in Vancouver through story-telling, public art video and other media.
The Mills
The mills at Moodyville across the Burrard Inlet and at Kumkumlye provided employment for white settlers and for aboriginal people. By the late 1880s, Chinese and Japanese laborers were added to the mix.
There was also a large Kanaka community working at Stamps Mill. These were native Sandwich Islanders-Hawaiians-brought over by the Hudson's Bay Company to work at Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territory and later at Fort Langley, as indentured servants or recruited labour. There used to be a Kanaka squatter community at the foot of Denman. For decades, this part of the West End was known as Kanaka Ranch. Kanaka Creek, near Maple Ridge, is named after them.
Alexander Street, the successor to the trail linking Gastown to the Hastings Mill, became home for mill managers and other well to do. Hastings Mill manager R. H. Alexander, Malcolm Alexander MacLean (Vancouver's first mayor), and the Bell-Irving family had their first stately homes built here.
Vancouver's first horse races were held on Alexander Street and its first visiting circus set up their tents on vacant land beside the Alexander residence. Although much-altered from its original state, a house at 414 Alexander still stands, a testament to Alexander Street's bygone glory days.
The Port
Vancouver's history is inextricably linked to its port on Burrard Inlet, which began shipping lumber to New Westminster and points beyond in 1863. Vessels from San Francisco, England and Australia docked in Burrard Inlet to take cargoes of lumber.
The port's function changed drastically in the 1880s with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The CPR built a number of docks to the west of Gastown. Cargoes of tea and silk from Japan and China were loaded onto trains destined for Montreal and New York. High-speed steamships plied the waters between Vancouver and Asia, drastically reducing the time it took for cargo to be shipped to London.
Carrall Street was an important entry point to Vancouver for people and cargo arriving by sea. The growing town's original dock, the City Wharf was located at the foot of Carrall Street. The Carrall Street docks were taken over by the Union Steamship Company in 1889. The Union Steam Ship Company had been established to serve northern communities and became a formidable rival to the CPR. It was the mail and supply link to Vancouver for logging camps, canneries, and many communities along the BC coast. Later it would transport tourists along the coast, taking weekend visitors to popular excursion spots like Bowen Island.
At the end of the logging or cannery season, the Union Steam Ships would bring thousands of seasonal workers back to Vancouver. A number of these loggers, miners and cannery workers had family in the city, but a significant number lived in the residential hotels and rooming houses that still line the streets of Gastown and the Downtown Eastside. These workers supported untold numbers of businesses in the Downtown Eastside.
Longshoremen and laundry workers on dock at Moodyville Sawmill (1889)
City of Vancouver Archives, Mi P2
Photographer: Charles S. Bailey |
The early longshoremen worked as mill hands, loggers, fishermen and laborers when there were no ships in port. Many of the early longshoremen were from the Squamish Nation.
Aboriginal people were the mainstay of the fishing and canning industries in the 1800s. It was highly seasonal work. Men fished and women worked in the canneries. Eventually, Japanese, Scandinavian and Yugoslavian fishermen grew in numbers. Many of these men lived in houses and rooming houses in the east end, close to the harbour, but many without families lived in the residential hotels in Gastown and the Downtown Eastside.
Things changed over time for the Vancouver port and the Downtown Eastside, as bridges were built to the North Shore, as automobiles and air travel became popular, and with the decline of the forest industry and the closing of mill and fishing communities along the coast.
The North Shore ferry services and the Union Steamships stopped operations in the 1940s and 1950s, eliminating thousands of pedestrian commuters from the neighbourhood, negatively impacting many Downtown Eastside businesses.
Gastown
Hotels and rooming houses continued to be built in Gastown well into the early 20th century that catered to the needs of seasonal workers-miners, loggers, and fisherman-who worked out of town for months at a time. Their seasonal lodgings survive today throughout Gastown and along Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside as residential hotels.
Up until the late 1890s, Cordova Street between Carrall and Cambie was Vancouver's main shopping street. Eventually Hastings, and later Granville, became the centre of retail activity and Water Street became a wholesale warehouse district.
Through the decades, Gastown has gone through prosperous and hard times. Restoration efforts began in the late 1960's, adding touches such as the distinctive brick streets and vintage-style street lamps. Many private developers became involved with renovating and preserving the area's heritage buildings. In 1971 the Province of BC designated Gastown and Chinatown as historic districts.
Chinatown
Vancouver's Chinatown grew up in the 1880s on tidal flats south of Gastown. Most of the buildings on the south side of Dupont Street between Abbott and Columbia were built on piles over tidal water.
It certainly was not choice land to build on, but with the resourcefulness and determination of the Chinese immigrants, many of whom came to Canada to work in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1880s, Chinatown developed into a thriving community. Despite discrimination, Chinatown prospered, expanding south along Carrall Street, west to Shanghai Alley and Canton Alley, and eventually east along Pender to Gore Street.
At present, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is undergoing a transformation. There have been a number of public and private investments, including rehabilitation old character buildings, into the area to revitalize the area.
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