Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
anticipation of the railway coming, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) employed Willi-
am Hamilton to map streets out of the wilderness. He laid out a downtown core in a grid
pattern, naming streets after CPR officials (and one after himself). The following year on
April6,1886,Granville(pop.1,000),wasofficiallyincorporatedastheCityofVancouver,
in honor of the first Englishman to sail through the heads.
By the end of the 1880s, Vancouver had become “Terminal City,” Canada's transport-
ation gateway to the Orient. In the process, its population increased tenfold to 10,000, ec-
lipsing that of New Westminster. As well as port facilities at the end of the rail line, more
sawmills were built to fill the never-ending demand for lumber, most of which was used
for housing. Other industries also sprouted, including a floating cannery on Coal Harbour.
Granville and Hastings Streets developed as commercial strips, with the former leading
from the original Gastown through a large tract of CPR-owned land to False Creek. By
1890 other aspects of modern-day Vancouver had taken shape: 400 acres west of down-
town had been set aside as Stanley Park; wealthy residents began building large houses in
the West End; European workers built houses in Yaletown; and the thousands of Chinese
workers that arrived to help build the railway settled at the head of False Creek near the
southern end of present-day Carrall Street.
Continuing Growth
Vancouvercontinuedtoboomthroughoutthelastdecadeofthe1800sbecauseofthecity's
strategic location more than anything else. By the turn of the 20th century, Vancouver's
population reached 24,000, having doubled yet again within the space of a decade, this
time surpassing the population of Victoria, the provincial capital. With Vancouver devel-
oping as an important manufacturing and financial center, and with many mining develop-
ments in the southern interior in the early years of the 1900s, the young city experienced
a population and real estate boom: In the first decade the population more than
tripled
to
80,000 by 1910.
After the Great Fire of 1886, stone and brick buildings replaced the burned-out timber
ones, and while many of Gastown's buildings are from this era, it wasn't until 1913 that
the first skyscraper, the World Building, was completed. The onset of World War I saw a
demandfornewships,andby1918shipbuildinghadbecomeVancouver'slargestindustry.
By1936,whenthecitycelebratedits50thbirthday,thepopulationhadgrowntomorethan
250,000.
