The History of Metropolitan Vancouver

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You'll note that this year includes events listed under “Also in . . .“ These are events for which we don't have a specific date. If YOU know the
specific date of an event shown there, please notify us . . . and cite the source! Many thanks!
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January 1 David Jones Greenlees was born in Richmond at 1:01 a.m. To mark the event the city named Greenlees Street in 1959.

January 9 J.V. Clyne was named chairman of MacMillan Bloedel, the giant forestry company. Clyne had earlier resigned as a judge on the B.C. Supreme Court.

January 16 The Sun reported that Boyd Haskell, 43-year-old Simpsons-Sears executive (he was the General Manager of the Burnaby store) had been named President of the Greater Vancouver Tourist Association. “He succeeds George Bradley, President of Home Oil Distributors Ltd." Haskell had been on the board for three years previous to his appointment. Named as one-year directors were: William Mercer, President of W. M. Mercer Ltd.; Emerson West, Assistant General Manager of T. Eaton Co.; and Lawrence Dampier, Assistant Publisher Vancouver Sun. “The association will spend $3,500 this year on a survey and analysis of its entire activities and workings.”

January 28 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, visited Vancouver briefly en route to New Zealand and Australia.

January 31 Stung by the success of Sputnik (launched by the Soviet Union October 4, 1957) the USA launched its first satellite.

January The Esco Company established its first Canadian Alloy Steel Foundry in Port Coquitlam—its accessibility to the mainline of the CPR would facilitate the export of the finished product.

Also January Lots in the first subdivision at Lions Bay went on sale, and the first home there would be started by Charles and Mary Coltart in the spring. Writes Max Wyman, “They needed a special permit to transport building materials over the unfinished highway. Situated on the waterfront, the house was a cathedral-ceiling, modernist structure of cedar and glass that set the tone for much of the later architecture in the village.”

Also January Louie Gim (Gum) Sing (also known as Loy Sum Sing), a pioneer Chinese builder, died in Vancouver at 107, the oldest Chinese resident of Canada. He was born June 6, 1850 in China. He left a job in Hong Kong to work as the foreman of a CPR Chinese crew. He arrived in Victoria June 25, 1884. He helped lay the last track into Vancouver, survived the Great Fire, and helped rebuild the city. He was noted for his great strength and education, and for fighting to preserve the rights of Chinese workers before the courts. In later years, he took up truck farming on Lulu Island before settling in Chinatown.

February 28 The famed “Interurban” tramlines had their final run today on the Marpole-Steveston run, the region’s last remaining route. According to Henry Ewert, author of a history of the B.C. Electric Railway, the last regularly scheduled train [whether single or multiple cars, they are always known as trains] consisting of car #1225 left Marpole at 12:30 AM, Friday, February 28, 1958 for Steveston. The car was full, most of the passengers (Ewert included) being railfans. The same car made the last northbound return trip, leaving Steveston at 1:00 AM with a 1:30 AM arrival at Marpole. The passengers got off and the car went to the Kitsilano carbarn (under the south approach of the Burrard Bridge) for the last time. That last ‘deadhead’ [passenger train running empty] move was made from Marpole to the Kitsilano carbarn along what we know today as the Arbutus corridor.

Later in the same day the interurban once again came to life for a ceremonial last run. Two trains of two cars each (1231+1222;1208+1207), made one last round trip leaving Marpole at 11:00 AM. Passengers were invited guests, municipal and B.C. Electric officials. The return trip paused at Brighouse for a luncheon hosted by the utility. After passengers were let off in Marpole, the two trains made their way back to the Kitsilano carbarn arriving at 3:00 PM . . . and as Henry Ewert writes, “68 years of electric railway passenger service came to an end.” The overhead trolley wires were removed in 1959 and more diesels were purchased.

“Interestingly,” says railfan Jim McGraw, “many of the diesels are still running . . . right in front of my [Queensborough] house! They even have the same numbers, although they have gone through the many paint schemes of subsequent owners [B.C. Electric, B.C. Hydro Rail, Itel and the Washington Group].”

Those shiny new (in 1958!) diesel locomotives took over the freight duties, and diesel buses of the company's intercity bus division, Pacific Stage Lines, began to handle passenger traffic.

February After seven years of negotiations 110 owner-drivers of Yellow, Star and Checker Cabs bought the 85-car Yellow Cabs Co. Ltd.

March 12 Gordon Farrell, president of B.C. Telephone Co for 30 years, stepped down and was succeeded by Cyrus H. McLean.

March 13 Prime Minister John Diefenbaker spoke to 8,500 people at the Forum.

March 14 The present Main Post Office (architect Bill Leithead) opened at 349 West Georgia. Public Works Minister Howard Green and Postmaster-General William Hamilton jointly officiated. Hamilton arrived in a helicopter that landed on the PO’s roof heliport. The heliport was later closed: mail delivery by helicopter was too expensive.

The $13 million building, more formally known as the Vancouver Mail Processing Plant was, at the time, the largest welded steel structure in the world. “It’s a giant, five-storey machine,” Andrew Scott wrote in The Greater Vancouver Book, “covering an entire city block. The conveyor system, once state-of-the-art, whips mail from floor to floor, up ramps, down chutes and along three kilometres of whirling belts. Clanking mechanized parcel sorters dump boxes through slots. The building is connected to the CPR station by a conveyor-equipped tunnel, but as transport by truck grew more efficient, the tunnel became obsolete. By 1965, it wasn't used at all. Neither was the roof pad, designed for helicopter loads of 4.5 tonnes per wheel. Helicopter mail delivery turned out to be too expensive.”

Writer Sean Rossiter says he has a theory that it’s this building at which the City Hall statue of Capt. George Vancouver is pointing.

Also March 14 The Sun reported that Tom Hood, “boss of Vancouver Shipyards,” said the St. Roch is “good for another 200 years.”

March 21 The Province reported that GVTA President Haskell (see January 16 item) had asked the City of Vancouver to increase its grant to $75,000 from $40,000.

April 5 Ripple Rock was blown up. Thanks to CBC-TV Archives, you can actually see and hear it happen. Go here and watch as Bill Herbert (left) and Ted Reynolds (right) of the CBC count us down to this spectacular event. The twin peaks of Ripple Rock, lurking just below the surface of the waters of the Seymour Narrows, had over the years caused the sinking of more than 100 ships and the loss of more than 100 lives. This was the largest non-nuclear explosion in history to that time. There is an excellent description of the project by Jeremy Leete at this site.

April 19 Professional baseball tickets were sold on Sunday for the first time in Vancouver, at Capilano Stadium. On April 28 the Supreme Court of Canada would uphold B.C.'s approval of a Vancouver City Charter bylaw amendment permitting Sunday sports. Newspapers called it the end of the biggest public issue of the decade.

April Ladner was connected to Lulu Island via the Deas Island Tunnel (which would later be re-named the George Massey Tunnel). Six sections comprising 663 metres of concrete and steel were sunk to construct the tunnel, which was opened to traffic later in the spring. See this site. The official opening was May 23, 1959. See that year for more detail.

Until the tunnel, river crossings were made via the Ladner-Woodward's Landing Ferry. Within 20 years after the opening of the tunnel Delta's population would increase by 400 per cent.

May 28 The P&O liner Chusan arrived. One observer noted it was an historic event, re-establishing passenger vessel links with the Orient which had lapsed for almost 20 years with the last voyages of the great CPR Empress liners. We had wondered if this was the beginning of Vancouver’s cruise trade, but Gary Bannerman (author of, among other books, Cruise Ships: The Inside Story) tells us “the modern cruise era began on our coast with the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 when Stan McDonald of Seattle chartered an old ship to do a circle: Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Soon after, McDonald launched Mexican cruising (and Princess Cruises) by chartering CP's Princess Patricia in the winter months. The real cruise era began then on the west coast and, simultaneously, by Norwegian companies in the Caribbean, all this in the late 1960s.” See more on this at Gary’s site here.

“1958,” Gary continues, “was the year P&O made Vancouver a regular port of call. Their first ship that year was actually SS Himalaya. Panoceanic passenger ship visits back then were fairly rare, each one greeted by the fire boat and brass bands on the pier.”

It was a big year for the late Dean Miller, who had been retained as public relations representative for P&O. Dean first made his mark in the industry in 1954 representing a P&O subsidiary, The Orient Line, when one of their famous ‘O Boats’—SS Oronsay—sailed into Vancouver harbor. (P&O would acquire 100 per cent of the shares of The Orient Line in 1965 and retire the name). After P&O established Vancouver as a regular port in 1958, Dean not only made the maiden visit of each ship an extraordinary local event, he eventually became synonymous with the industry itself. By the time of his death in 1997, Vancouver had become not merely a ‘port of call,’ but one of the international cruise industry's principal ports of embarkation.

June 17 The new Second Narrows Bridge collapsed during construction. Eighteen workmen and one rescue worker died and 20 more were injured. On June 17, 1994 the bridge was renamed in their and other workers' honor. It is now officially the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing.

July 1 Premier W.A.C. Bennett announced that B.C. would establish its own ferry service between Vancouver Island and the mainland. The move was prompted by labor strife in both the Black Ball and Canadian Pacific ferry systems.

July 13 The 100th anniversary of the creation of the (mainland) colony of British Columbia.

July 20 Harry (Henry) Frederick Reifel died in Vancouver, aged 62. He was born December 3, 1895 in Vancouver. He and his brother George, the brewer, built and owned the Commodore Block on Granville (1929) and the Vogue and Studio theatres in the 1940s. Harry Reifel raised purebred Jersey cows in Milner, B.C.

Also July 20 George James Bury, rail pioneer, died in Vancouver, aged 92. He was born March 6, 1866 in Montreal. He studied shorthand and joined the CPR as a $20-a-month junior clerk, the start of a 40-year railway career. In 1907 he was supervisor of western branch lines. During the First World War he returned to Montreal as vice president of CPR's operating system. In 1917 Britain asked Canada for his services. Bury was sent to Petrograd to report on the Russian railway system (and the revolution) for the British war cabinet. He was knighted on recommendation of the British prime minister, Lloyd George (1917). As president of Whalen Pulp & Paper (from 1920), Sir George named Woodfibre, B.C.

July 23 Princess Margaret visited. While here she opened the reconstructed Fort Langley.

July 28 Terry Fox was born in Winnipeg. He was born Terrance Stanley Fox, came with the family when they moved to Port Coquitlam in 1966.

Also July 28 Jazz giant Jack Teagarden recorded an album at the Orpheum Theatre. Its title: Muskrat Ramble.

August 4 The Oscar Peterson trio (Oscar Peterson, piano; Ray Brown, bass and Herb Ellis, guitar) played a gig at the Orpheum Theatre. The concert was recorded, but the album wasn’t released until 2003!

August 18 CKNW 1320 moved to 980 on the dial the same day as CKLG 1070 switched to 730. See this site.

August 30 Ferry service between Vancouver and North Vancouver ended, until the start-up of the Seabus 19 years later. Detailed descriptions of the interesting years of ferry service on the inlet—so important to the history of the north shore—can be found in two books, Ferry Across the Inlet, by former master James Barr, and the informal Echoes of the Ferries, by J. Rodger Burnes. North Vancouver Ferry No. 5, built in False Creek in 1941 as the last car ferry for the North Vancouver Ferry system, became the Seven Seas Restaurant. (By the time the fondly-recalled ferry service ended more than 112 million passengers had been carried.)

Summer A 100-foot-high Kwakiutl totem pole was raised in front of Vancouver's new Maritime Museum, in honor of the centennial of the founding of the colony of British Columbia.

Also summer 8,000 people celebrated B.C.'s centennial at a barbecue atop Burnaby Mountain. A pavilion was built there as a centennial project.

September 9 An exaltation of archbishops and bishops pitched in to put the finishing touches on the brand new St. Mark’s College on the University of British Columbia campus. Operated by the Basilian Fathers, St. Mark’s was the first Roman Catholic college of university level in Vancouver. “It will provide living accommodation for 50 UBC students,” the Province reported, “and will be the centre for the university’s 1,300 Roman Catholics.”

The college, designed by architect Peter Thornton, was blessed by the Most Rev. Giovanni Panico, apostolic delegate to Canada.

September 10 The Province reported that: “Proposals for developing Tsawwassen Beach as the mainland terminus of the projected new Vancouver Island-Lower Mainland ferry service have been forwarded to the provincial government.” Also developed would be “a boat harbor and public beach. Site is on the Gulf of Georgia, about four miles (6.4 km) north of Point Roberts.”

The paper also said that Swartz Bay was one favored Vancouver Island base, and only one mile longer than a rival suggested route from Point Roberts.

September 16 Frank Ross Begg, auto dealer, died in Vancouver. He was born in Lindsay, Ontario, came to Vancouver in 1898. “From 1904 to 1906,” Constance Brissenden writes, “with his brother Fred he operated a garage on Hastings. They soon opened Begg Motor Co., Vancouver's first auto dealership. Frank left an estate of nearly $2 million.”

October 5 The Surrey Centennial Museum opened. W.E. Ireland, Provincial Archivist, is there with his wife, a descendant of Eric Anderson, a Surrey pioneer whose log cabin is now a part of the museum.

November 6 From the Province: “Tourist inquiries up 71 per cent this year . . .”

November 15 Russell Francis Baker, pioneer bush pilot, died in West Vancouver, aged 48. He was born January 31, 1910 in Winnipeg. Writes Constance Brissenden: “He was an early bush pilot for several airlines, including Western Canada Airways and Canadian Pacific. In 1946 Baker began Central B.C. Airways with a B.C. Forest Service fire-patrol contract. He took over airlines in B.C. and Alberta to create an independent airline to serve western communities. In 1953 the company name was changed to Pacific Western Airlines. It grew to be the largest western regional air carrier. PWA bought CP Air in 1987.”

December 22 A French adventurer completed a swim of the Fraser River from Prince George to New Westminster’s Pattullo Bridge. (NOTE: in December!)

December 30 From Wilf Bennett's column in the Province:
A Canadian on holiday in Paris was trying out his French in a restaurant.
“Hi, garsong,” he said after a lengthy study of the menu, “je desir Consomme Royal et un piece de pang et burr . . . no, dang it, half a minute! A piece of bang.”
The waiter said helpfully, “I'm sorry, sir, I don't speak French.”
“Very well,” said the diner irritably, “for heaven's sake send me someone who can.”

December 31 A tunnel under Burrard Inlet! What a clever idea! Budgeted at $150 million, the idea was proposed to Vancouver city council by Ald. Halford Wilson. The tunnel, conceived by the engineering firm H.H. Minshall and Associates, would run for 2.7 miles (4.3 kilometres) from a point on the North Shore about one- half mile (800 metres) east of Lions Gate Bridge to come out on False Creek flats just south of the Georgia Street Viaduct. Highways Minister Phil Gaglardi called the proposal a “pipe dream.”

The B.C. Centennial of 1958 was commemorated by the construction of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which would open in 1959. The centennial also saw the premiere of the Vancouver International Festival, a world-class performing arts showcase mixing local and international acts that would remain an annual event for the next decade. Various venues were used that first year: the Orpheum Theatre, the Georgia Auditorium, and the Hotel Vancouver Ballroom.

The Maritime Museum was built as a B.C. Centennial Project. It would open to the public in June 1959. There is an excellent history of the facility at this site.

The Buchanan Building—officially opened by Premier W.A.C. Bennett—became the new home of the liberal arts at UBC. Built at a cost of $2 million, the facility accommodates almost 8,000 students and 650 regular faculty members representing 19 departments and four schools. Most lectures in the Faculty of Arts are held here. A striking example of contemporary west coast architecture, the building took 16 months to construct. The name honored the late Dean of Arts and Sciences, Daniel Buchanan, who died in 1950.

Composer Michael Conway Baker, born March 13, 1942 in West Palm Beach, Florida, came to Vancouver. (His mother was born here.) He is considered one of Canada’s most prolific and successful composers, with popular works in a variety of musical genres, including symphonic, ballet, film, TV and special events. He has over 120 film, television, and video music scores and more than 110 concert works to his credit and is the recipient of numerous awards. His best known works include Fanfare for Expo 86, the Music for the BC Pavilion film at Expo 86, the superb Washington Square ballet music (commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada), the soundtrack music for Planet for the Taking, the popular Canadian film The Grey Fox, and the music for two episodes of The Road to Avonlea. For a sampling of his beautiful Vancouver Variations, go to this site, and for a good brief bio see this site.

Ritchie Bros., now the world’s leading industrial auctioneer, held its first auction sale in a Kelowna, B.C., boy scouts hall.

As spokesperson for Save Our Parklands Association Rebecca Belle Watson played a major role in preserving the Shaughnessy Golf Course from development.

In a poll taken on the North Shore, people in all three municipalities overwhelmingly supported building a new hospital. Lions Gate Hospital will open April 22, 1961.

Shaughnessy Golf Course negotiated with the Department of Indian Affairs a long-term lease for part of the Musqueam Indian Reserve. The natives protested the terms when they learned of them, and in 1985 a Supreme Court of Canada decision would uphold a $10 million award to the band because the department had not acted in the best interests of the natives.

Louie Gim Sing, a pioneer Chinese builder, died at 107, the oldest Chinese resident of Canada. He was born June 6, 1850. He helped lay the last rail track into Vancouver in 1887.

In 1958 a treehouse built by gently eccentric deaf twins Peter (1872-1949) and David Brown (1872-1958) on their heavily-treed property in Surrey was demolished. They had lived in the treehouse for many years. A replacement of a quite different (more formal) design was installed. The twins, who lived in the treehouse for years, planted many different kinds of trees on their property . . . more different trees, in fact, than anywhere else in BC! They left 59 acres to Surrey, which turned the property into the charming Redwood Park.

Minnekhada Lodge in Coquitlam, built as a country retreat and hunting lodge by Eric W. Hamber, was acquired by Col. Clarence Wallace, a former Lt.-Gov. It is now managed by GVRD Parks.

Canadian Pacific Airlines became a jet airline, when it bought turboprop Bristol Britannias. See this site.

Empress of Scotland, which had started in life in 1930 as Empress of Japan and was renamed in 1939 when she became a troop ship, had another name change when CP Ships, which had reclaimed her after the war, sold her in 1957 to Hamburg Atlantik Linie. She was put into service in 1958 as Hanseatic, but after fire damage in New York on September 7, 1966 would be scrapped.

A statue of King George VI was carved by Sir Charles Wheeler. It was a gift of P.A. Woodward to the Vancouver Branch of the War Amputations of Canada, who presented it to UBC. Originally located at the War Memorial Gymnasium, the statue stands now by the Woodward Biomedical Library. A second casting of the work stands near Buckingham Palace in London.

Other sculptures placed at UBC this year include Hanging sculpture, by Gerhard Class, at the Buchanan Building, and Asiatic Head, by Otto Fischer-Credo, near the Frederic Wood Theatre.

A huge mural, Symbols for Education, at Brock Memorial Hall, was gifted to UBC by the graduating class of 1958. Assembled by Lionel Thomas, a distinguished artist and UBC architecture professor, the mural represented the various disciplines taught at the university.

Today's Times, a Vancouver-based monthly publication with news and life-style topics aimed at persons 50 and older, began publishing.

The Windmill Herald: Western Edition, a publication with news and views of Netherlands and overseas Dutch-speakers, began publishing (in Dutch and English).

Fred Steiner sold his Toronto radio store and moved to Vancouver. He opened a shop here, and called it A&B Sound. Why A&B? A&A was taken. True story.

Lucky Lager Breweries was acquired by Labatt's, and Molson's bought out the American-owned Sick's brewery and became a major player in B.C. with a plant at the south end of Burrard Bridge.

The Tunnel Town Curling Club opened four sheets of ice in a Boundary Bay air hangar.

James Lovick & Co. Had become the largest advertising agency in Canada, with additional offices in Edmonton, London, Ont., Halifax, New York and San Francisco. It built its own headquarters at 1178 West Pender Street.

Professor Elod Macskasy, who had come to Vancouver from Hungary in 1956, won the Canadian Open Chess Championship. Macskasy, born in 1919, taught mathematics at UBC for over 30 years, and was B.C.'s top chess player for most of that time. A listing of B.C. Chess Federation Provincial Champions (Macskasy is in there from 1958 to 1962 inclusive) can be found here.

Mungo Martin, Henry Hunt and David Martin carve a 30.5-metre-high Kwakiutl totem pole for BC’s Centennial. The original was presented to Queen Elizabeth II, and stands in England's Windsor Great Park. A replica is in Vancouver’s Hadden Park, on Ogden Avenue between Chestnut and Maple Streets, near the Maritime Museum.

Thomas Reid, who in 1937 as the Liberal MP for New Westminster (1930-49) helped form the Fisheries Commission, and who was devoted to rehabilitation of Fraser salmon run, was credited with the river’s best run this year since 1905. B.C. packed more than one million cases.

The Centennial Museum, along with the Maritime Museum, became city departments under control of a Civic Museum Board. The former is known today as the Vancouver Museum.

Bill and Alice McConnell founded Klanak Press. “Klanak Press books,” says collectionscanada.com, “combine elements of fine book design, typography and printing. A dozen books were published under the imprint over a 14-year period including Maria Fiamengo's The Quality of Halves which was the Press’s first publication.”

Dick Diespecker, radio announcer and writer, moved to San Francisco to join a public relations firm. He was an influential radio personality here. In 1948 Diespecker won a Columbus Award for a three-part radio documentary Destination Palestine. He wrote more than 400 radio plays for CBC, BBC and the South African Broadcasting Corp. He was a columnist with the Vancouver Star, News-Herald and Victoria Colonist.

Radio CKWX started a locally-shaped hit parade (The Sensational Sixty), the first in the city. Langley radio buff Jim Bower has started a web site that will list the tunes ’WX and other stations played. He makes the point that Vancouver’s hits were sometimes different from those listed in Billboard and other trade publications, influenced by our own deejays like Dave “Big Daddy” McCormick and Red Robinson. Have a look at the 1958 hits (here)!

Alexander Campbell Des Brisay, about 70, became chief justice of the B.C. Court of Appeal, the province’s senior court.

Buda Hosmer Brown (née Jenkins) was elected the Social Credit MLA for Vancouver Point Grey). She was born June 10, 1894 in Bellingham, Washington.

The book New Westminster, the Royal City, a history by Barry Mather and Margaret McDonald, was published.

Jurgen Hesse, who was born in Germany in 1924 and grew up in Italy, came to Canada. Hesse has received numerous awards for his radio documentaries. He has written many books, including two self-help titles, The Radio Documentary Handbook and Mobile Retirement Handbook. In Voices of Change: Immigrant Writers Speak Out he interviewed 15 immigrant writers. Go to this site for more detail, and to read a good commentary by Hesse on self-publishing.

1958 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud
[Photo: Alf Spence]

Chronology Continued

1958