Vancouver in the modern sense has
existed for a little over 110
years. Over the course of the
previous nine thousand years the
Fraser Valley was home to the
Tsawwassen, Musqueam and another
twenty or so native tribes, who
made up the Stó:lo Nation, or
"people of the river".
The fish, particularly salmon, of
this river were the Stó:lo
lifeblood. Over the millennia
these people ventured relatively
little into the mountainous
interior, something that remains
true to this day. One of the
things that makes modern Vancouver
so remarkable is how wild and
empty British Columbia remains
beyond the Fraser's narrow
corridor. The Stó:lo inhabited
about ten villages on the shores
of Vancouver's Burrard Inlet
before the coming of the
Europeans. A highly developed
culture, the Stó:lo were skilled
carpenters, canoe-makers and
artists, though little in the
present city - outside its museums
- pays anything but lip service to
their existence. Vancouver Island
is the nearest best bet if you're
in search of latter-day tokens of
aboriginal culture.
Europeans appeared on the scene
in notable numbers during the
eighteenth century, when Spanish
explorers charted the waters along
what is now southwestern British
Columbia. In 1778 Captain James
Cook reached nearby Nootka
Sound while searching for the
Northwest Passage, sparking off
immediate British interest in the
area. In 1791 José Maria Narvaez,
a Spanish pilot and surveyor,
glimpsed the mouth of the Fraser
from his ship, the Santa
Saturnia . This led to
wrangles between the British and
Spanish, disputes quickly settled
in Britain's favour when Spain
became domestically embroiled in
the aftermath of the French
Revolution. Captain George
Vancouver officially claimed
the land for Britain in 1792, but
studying the Fraser from a small
boat decided that it seemed too
shallow to be of practical use.
Instead he rounded a headland to
the north, sailing into a deep
natural port - the future site of
Vancouver - which he named Burrard
after one of his companions. He
then traded briefly with several
Squamish tribespeople at X'ay'xi,
a village on the inlet's forested
headland - the future Stanley
Park. Afterwards the Squamish
named the spot Whul-whul-Lay-ton,
or "place of the white
man". Vancouver sailed on,
having spent just a day in the
region - scant homage to an area
that was to be named after him a
century later.
Vancouver's error over the
Fraser was uncovered in 1808, when
Scottish-born Simon Fraser made an
epic 1368-kilometre journey down
the river from the Rockies to the
sea. In 1827 the Hudson's Bay
Company set up a fur-trading post
at Fort Langley , 48km east
of the present city, bartering not
only furs but also salmon from the
Stó:lo, the latter being salted
and then packed off to company
forts across Canada. The fort was
kept free of homesteaders, despite
being the area's first major white
settlement, their presence deemed
detrimental to the fur trade.
Major colonization of the area
only came after the Fraser River
and Cariboo gold rushes in 1858,
when New Westminster
bustled with the arrival of as
many as 25,000 hopefuls, many of
whom were refugees from the 1849
Californian rush. Many also
drifted in from the US,
underlining the fragility of the
national border and the precarious
nature of British claims to the
region. These claims were
consolidated when British Columbia
was declared a crown colony, with
New Westminster as its capital.
Both were superseded by Fort
Victoria in 1868, by which time
the gold rush had dwindled almost
to nothing.
In 1862, meanwhile, three
British prospectors, unable to
find gold in the interior, bought
a strip of land on the southern
shore of Burrard Inlet and -
shortsightedly, given the amount
of lumber around - started a
brickworks. This soon gave way to
the Hastings Sawmill and a
shantytown of bars which by 1867
had taken the name of Gastown
, after "Gassy" - as in
loquacious - Jack Leighton,
proprietor of the site's first
saloon. Two years later Gastown
became incorporated as the town of
Granville and prospered on
the back of its timber and small
coal deposits. The birth of the
present city dates to 1884, when
the Canadian Pacific Railway
decided to make it the terminus of
its transcontinental railway. In
1886, on a whim of the CPR
president, Granville was renamed
Vancouver, only to be destroyed on
June 13 that year when fire razed
all but half a dozen buildings.
The setback proved short-lived,
and since the arrival of the first
train from Montréal in 1887 the
city has never looked back.
