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You’ve heard of Show Biz. This is Biz Biz, the history
of business in Vancouver, told through the activities of The
Vancouver Board of Trade.
1889
Busy Board
On January 1, 1889 the Daily News-Advertiser
carried an editorial about the Board that bears quoting 118 years
after it appeared.
"The Vancouver Board of Trade was incorporated under the Dominion
Statute and its certificate of Incorporation was issued by the Secretary
of State on December 13th, 1887. The present membership of the Board
is about 50, and includes representative men from every branch of
Vancouver’s industries and commerce. The affairs of the Board
are managed by a President, Vice-President and Council of 8 members.
“During its existence the Board of Trade has
done much to advance the commercial and other interests of Vancouver,
and has originated many matters of importance to the city. Among
the objects which have engaged its attention, the following are
some of the principal:
- steam communication between Vancouver and other places on the
coast
- the development of the mines of the province
- better mail facilities for various interior towns and mining
camps
- reclamation of the Fraser Delta lands by dyking
- the buoying and lighting of the Narrows at the entrance of the
harbor
- the necessity of fortifications for the defence of Vancouver
and the Mainland
- establishment of a quarantine station and immigration agency
- a bridge across False Creek to give the farming community on
the North Arm direct communication with Vancouver
- the development of fruit and hop growing in British Columbia
- the location in Vancouver of a tannery and other industries
- the appointment of a resident county judge and the erection
of a court house
- additional parks and school houses in the city,
and many other subjects of importance to the city
and province. The efforts of the Board in many of these matters
have already been successful. Any person desiring information about
the industries or commerce of the city should address Mr. A.B. MacGowan,
Secretary, Board of Trade, Vancouver, B.C.”
This is an indication of a busy Board. The organization wasn’t
much more than a year old, and at the time they met only quarterly!
Banquet
The March 6, 1889 issue of the Daily News-Advertiser
devoted huge swatches of its space to coverage of the Board of Trade
banquet the night before. Its opening paragraph is a fine indication
of the newspaper writing style of the day:
“It was a brilliant scene that met the gaze
of the banqueters last night in the Hotel Vancouver on the occasion
of the first annual Vancouver Board of Trade banquet. In matters
of trade and commerce, municipal affairs, law, politics and polite
society the assembly represented the flower of the Province, while
the ladies in full evening dress looked down from the galleries
above, where they had assembled in goodly numbers, and intensified
the brilliancy, if possible, of the most important banqueting occasion
hitherto enjoyed in the Province.”
[Incidentally, the Hotel Vancouver referred to is the first one,
which stood at the southwest corner of Georgia and Granville, where
Sears is today.]
Epicurus cited
Now the writer warms up: the event was “in
exquisite taste, and so perfect that Epicurus, himself, were he
present in flesh would be compelled to declare faultless.”
The paper printed the entire menu. We counted 43 separate items,
including halibut, salmon, sweetbreads, chicken, beef tenderloin,
prime rib, spring lamb, roast partridge, ornamented chocolate sandwiches,
Swiss Jumbles, and on and on, with sherry and sauterne and claret
and champagne and port and various cheeses.
And this was all on the front page.
{We looked up Swiss Jumbles: they were “thin,
rich, ring-shaped sugar cookies, often made with sour cream and
scented with rose water.”]
The report told us that Messrs. Painton & Dyke’s orchestra
furnished the music, and followed that note with a list of the musical
pieces they played.
Every guest
And then the paper prints the name of every single guest at the
banquet. Politicians, including BC Premier A.E.B. Davie and most
of his cabinet, the mayors and reeves of a dozen towns, senators,
CPR biggies William Van Horne, Thomas Shaughnessy, Sir Donald Smith,
judges, business leaders, consuls, military men and more, in tiny
print covering a third of the front page.
The banquet lasted two-and-a-half hours and many,
many speakers were noted. One that stood out was Charles Semlin,
the provincial MPP for Yale. [MPP is correct for the era; the title
changed to MLA later.] In the words of the News-Advertiser,
he “spoke of the manufacturing industries in particular, and
remarked that we had all the elements necessary to make an industrial
success. Already we manufacture everything from the ponderous steam-engine
to the finely tuned piano. The speaker reviewed the mining, agricultural
and other resources of the Province, in a speech which for fluency
and comprehensiveness was not surpassed by any of the evening.”
[We looked up Semlin on Google, where we learned he was first elected
to the Provincial Legislature in 1872, where he served the Yale
riding continuously to 1900. In 1882 he had become leader of the
opposition and finally served as Premier of B.C. from 1898 to 1900.
He died at Cache Creek in 1927 at age 91. There is a street in the
east side of Vancouver named for him.]
Annual Report
The March 13, 1889 issue of the News-Advertiser
(Page 8) devotes much space to the annual meeting of the Board,
and treats at length the report of the outgoing president, David
Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer notes in passing the smallpox that had
recently been raging through the area, with a note of relief that
“our sanitary precautions and the expenditure of a large amount
of money were sufficient to prevent the spreading of the fell disease,”
but also makes passing reference, with no details, to “steps
chosen by the civic authorities in the recent controversy with the
Canadian Pacific Navigation Company’s steamers . . . whichever
way the pending supreme judicial decision may turn, I do not think
there is one citizen in our midst who would not admit that the best
intentions have guided those who are responsible for Vancouver’s
health, safety and commerce.”
At one point President Oppenheimer notes, with deep
regret, “that a kind of apathy seems to have overcome the promoters
of a submarine cable from Australia to Canada, and it is to be hoped
that the previous efforts will gain reanimation.” [In fact,
such a cable would not be completed until 1902.] Against that, trade
with China and Japan was steadily on the increase.
He makes note of railway projects, at least one
of which—the Gulf Railway—sounds like a pipe dream. “This
City will shortly become the connecting link between (1) The Seattle,
Lake Shore and Eastern Railway; (2) the New Westminster and Southern
Railway; (3) the Gulf Railway across Seymour Narrows to Vancouver
Island; (4) the Delta Railway, the preliminaries of which lines
are being rapidly pushed, so that de facto Vancouver cannot help
becoming and remaining the actual terminus of five railway systems
on the North Pacific slope for transmission of freight and passengers
to and from the Orient and Australasia . . .”
Saccharine Matter
President Oppenheimer spoke at length on every aspect
of local industry and resources, and found much to admire. Everything
was going well. As an example, all lumber mills in the area were
“running at their fullest capacity, and finding new markets
for their enormous output, besides a steady and augmenting local
demand.”
There was a promising sugar beet industry looming
“in our neighboring agricultural districts and municipalities.”
He cites several agricultural experts, and says, “According
to these reliable sources our experimental beets have, in many instances
even without proper attendance or treated by inexperienced hands,
yielded a percentage of saccharine matter which is totally unknown
in the old world.”
He then compares the cost of growing sugar beets
as against that of wheat, and the beets win easily. “I should
judge the estimated area of lands from Harrison River to the Pacific
Coast to contain capable of beet culture about 400,000 acres, at
$100 an acre—$40 million, as returns to the farmers. Besides
this return the industry will give steady employment to about 40,000
men, and it will further support many industries incidental thereto.”
Then follow some remarks on the fruit industry of
the province, which had been slowed by “stringent land sale
conditions” (not elaborated on), but which looked as if it
would soon prosper, too.
And then there’s . . .
“In recapitulating,” the News-Advertiser’s
report continued, “the President referred to the passing of
the Mechanics’ Lien Act, the improved school accommodation,
the North Arm bridge being under contract, the establishment of
a savings bank, the mail service to the North Arm of the Fraser
and the placing of letter boxes in prominent parts of the city.”
He looked forward to the appointment of a resident judge and an
immigration agent, “the erection of immigration sheds and a
post office, the cession of the False Creek foreshore, an interinsular
mail subsidy [?], the establishment of a marine hospital, a quarantine
and a land registry office and the fortification of Burrard Inlet”"
As for the planned street railway, “. . . the next six or eight
months would, it was stated, see it in running order.” [His
prediction was optimistic: the city's first streetcars would rattle
into service June 27, 1890—15 months after this speech—following
a rectangular route along Main, Cordova, Granville and Pender streets.
Oppenheimer, by the way, was a major partner in the street railway
company.]
The completion of the North Arm Road would make it easier for Fraser
Valley farmers to bring their produce to the city.
Oppenheimer’s peroration zeroed in on three
industries: Fisheries, Fruit Culture and Mining. “Any one of
these has been sufficient in the United States to build up a rich
and prosperous commonwealth. To what prosperity may not British
Columbia then attain if these three industries are all prosecuted
with energy! Vancouver, from its situation, is better situated than
any other place in the Province, to become the centre of these three
industries.”
And thus the term of the Board’s first president came to an
end.
President Bodwell
A new executive was elected at the March 13 session. President
for the next year would be E.V. Bodwell. [The initials stood for
Ebenezer Vining.] Vice-President: R.H. Alexander.
Bodwell’s tenure would prove to be tragically short. The April
23 Board meeting, little more than a month later, was informed he
was resigning his post because of ill health. Vice-President Alexander
was elected President. [Alexander would finish this term and be
elected to serve as President in 1890, too.) H.T. Ceperley was elected
Vice-President.
Bodwell died October 18 at age 62. Remarks reported
on at the April 23 meeting at which his resignation was announced
left no doubt he had been held in high regard by his fellow members.
There was a brief discussion on the question of the removal of
the sandbars obstructing False Creek. [It was the removal of those
sandbars—or, better perhaps, their rearrangement—that
would eventually make Granville Island possible.]
A mildly funny item arose out of that April 23 session.
“The question of the establishment of a pulp factory was considered.
A Mr. Alpenes, who was present, was called upon to give his views
as to such a factory, and as to whether a trade in this article
could be established with the Orient. Mr. Alpenes, however, did
not, unfortunately, have the necessary papers with him, having lent
them to a member of the Board, and was therefore unable to give
particulars that evening.”
Odlum back from Japan
Some of the Board’s members met in a special
session on April 6 to hear from Edward Odlum, a Vancouver-based
scientist and teacher, just back from Japan. The News-Advertiser
carried a long article on Page One the next day, but the gist can
be conveyed briefly: Odlum had spent some time in the country and
believed there was a real opportunity for the export there of Canadian
goods. He cited butter, apples, hams, flour, blankets, corn beef
and books. Canadian textbooks were cheaper than Americans, which
Japanese students were using (presumably for the teaching of English).
Our butter had been preferred over that from San Francisco. “Canned
butter from Italy, France, Denmark, etc., was used by the wealthier
classes and commanded a high price.”
Wheat flour was gaining popularity, but California
was supplying most of the demand. “He had imported some flour
from the Ottawa valley, which was made from a mixture of Manitoba
and Renfrew wheat, which he bought at retail prices (emphasis
added), and could lay it down at a less price than the current prices
in Japan and still make a small profit.”
Japanese style of dress was changing extremely rapidly to Western
style, and there was opportunity there. But Odlum cautioned that
the Japanese preferred to manufacture for themselves everything
they could. So it was raw materials—leather, fabrics, etc.—that
we should export.
“The nation,” reported the News-Advertiser
(April 7, 1889, Page 1), “is turning largely to beef-eating.
The Jap is conscious of his physical inferiority as compared with
the Anglo-Saxon, and is endeavoring to make his race large by eating
flesh and lots of it.”
Canada needed a trades agent in Japan, Odlum said.
And he closed by expressing the belief that rice, tea and Japanese
oranges could be grown successfully in British Columbia.
Idle Land
E.V. Bodwell’s first session as president was
at a special meeting April 22, 1889. The Daily News-Advertiser
of the next day said he had drawn the attention of the Board “to
the fact that large tracts of agricultural land were being granted
by the Government to speculators and non-residents to the exclusion
of bona fide settlers and suggested that the Board should move to
have the law so amended as that crown lands should be reserved for
actual settlers.”
“Mr. Keith,” said the newspaper, referring
to James Keith, one of the members and a future Board president,
“said that he knew of cases where men were in possession of
five and six thousand acres, which they were holding for a rise
in prices and while they were capable of supporting a great number
of families were lying idle.” A resolution to advise the provincial
government of the Board’s feelings on the matter was unanimously
adopted.
“There was dissatisfaction with the mail service
between Vancouver and New Westminster. A resolution was carried
that the board would telegraph Mr. Chisholm [presumably the local
postmaster] requesting him to use his influence with the Postmaster-General
to have mails between those important points carried by railway
instead of by a pony team as at present.” The members also
passed a resolution to telegraph Chisholm strongly urging a direct
mail service between Nanaimo and Vancouver.
The Street Railway
The April 27, 1889 issue of the News-Advertiser
had a brief and perfunctory report on Page 8 of the meeting of the
Board the night before, Nothing substantive there, but the story
just above it is interesting: it announced that the board of directors
of the Vancouver Street Railway Co. had awarded the contract for
the construction of the company’s system of railways to H.P.
McCraney of Vancouver. “Work will be commenced at once, and
the whole is to be completed by August 15th next.” [As noted
above, the first streetcars started running June 27, 1890.]
“It is a matter of general satisfaction,”
the paper concluded, “that a resident of Vancouver was successful
in obtaining the contract in competition with tenders from persons
in other Canadian and United States cities.”
Quarterly Meeting
Curiously, the April 27 News-Advertiser report
just cited referred to “the usual monthly meeting” of
the Board. But the report of the meeting of June 4, 1889 begins:
“The quarterly meeting of the Board of Trade was held last
evening.” A puzzlement.
One of the newspaper’s June 5 items: “Mr.
Wm. Skene [Skene appears to have been a regular member of the Board
at this time. He would later become its salaried secretary] spoke
on the advisability of making the Board of Trade rooms attractive
by having newspapers on file with a view to making it the commercial
centre of the City.”
A list of under-reported items concludes with: “It
was moved by Mr. McLagan, seconded by Mr. McDowell, that the City
Council be requested to make an appropriation towards advertising
the advantages Vancouver possesses for making it a manufacturing
centre. Carried.”
John McLagan, incidentally, was the founder and
editor of the Vancouver Daily World.
Tax, Tax, Tax
The June 15, 1889 issue (Page One) of the News-Advertiser
reported on a special general meeting of the Board the night before.
It had convened to hear the report of the Board’s legislation
committee on the subject of the Trades License By-Law.
The committee didn’t like the by-law at all.
It said that “the enforcement of the licenses
provided by such measure would be most detrimental to the trade
and commerce of Vancouver.”
They recommended that the licenses “on all
ordinary traders and agents, whether wholesale or retail, should
be abolished, as such charges most trend to restrict trade; also
that the license for commercial travellers should be abolished.
“Your committee also thinks that the imposition
of a license fee on boarding houses and theatres is impolitic, while
it sees no objection to the levying of a license fee on auctioneers,
pawnbrokers, secondhand and junk dealers, peddlers, hawkers, etc.”
And it approved of license fees for “scavengers, bill posters,
drays, hacks, omnibuses, etc.”
They were of the opinion “that the imposition
of any tax on real estate agents is injudicious, as this class of
business men has done more than any other for the advertising and
development of the City.
“Your committee is further impressed with the
fact that the amount to be deducted by the eliminations recommended
herein would not be in any way sufficient to compensate for the
greater injury done to our business interests.”
Prominent People
The report was signed by Francis Carter-Cotton and H.T. Ceperley.
These were two of the most prominent figures in early Vancouver.
In 1889 Yorkshire-born Carter-Cotton, who’d
arrived in Vancouver after the Great Fire of 1886, was the publisher
of the News-Advertiser—from which we’ve been distilling
these reports of the Board’s activities. He had formed the
paper in 1887 with the merger of the News and the Advertiser.
The N-A was the first paper to classify advertising in Vancouver,
first on the continent with an electric-powered press and first
with machine-set type. Carter-Cotton was also Vancouver's PC MLA.
Henry Ceperley had arrived in Vancouver in 1886
from New York and founded a real estate and insurance firm that
would grow to become the largest in B.C. The home he and his wife
Grace would build in 1911, Fairacres, by Deer Lake in Burnaby,
has been the home since 1967 of the Burnaby Art Gallery. The family
also bequeathed funds to establish the Ceperley Park Playground
in Stanley Park.
Fireworks!
The Cotton-Ceperley report cited in the previous
paragraph resulted in a hot and heavy session of the Board. Member
John McLagan’s newspaper, The Vancouver World, had,
apparently, made remarks in print about the two authors of the report
that they, and other members, took exception to. (In essence, the
paper claimed that the Council of the Board had sent the report
to the City Council without clearing it with the full Board, which
might not have approved it, and that there hadn’t been a quorum
of the Council, anyway. There were eight members of the Council,
and a quorum was five. Another point of contention: the World believed
some of the proposed license fees were acceptable.)
Precisely what was printed in the World wasn’t
described, but the Board secretary, William Skene, was moved to
say: “In all such assemblies as this a rule of gentlemanly
conduct prevails. A certain license can be taken by the public press
in ordinary matters, but when a man presumes on his position as
a member of a body and takes advantage of his opportunity as editor
of a paper to vilify his fellow members, it should not be allowed
to pass. I think that in such a case that gentleman should make
an apology for the grossly untrue and scurrilous statements which
he is responsible for.”
Not Easily Frightened
Cotton and Ceperley were both willing to drop the
matter, but McLagan, far from apologizing, came out swinging. “I
am not a novice in public life,” he said, “and not easily
frightened or brow-beaten. Whether I wrote the article or not is
not to the question. But I have yet to learn that there was anything
wrong in it or not in accordance with facts. I was informed on good
authority that the meeting was irregular.” He was told that
there had been, in fact, a quorum of the Council, and that the Board’s
constitution gave the Council the authority to do what it had done.
The whole article takes up the better part of a broadsheet page
in tiny print, and we mention it here mostly to illustrate that
the early newspapers covered the dealings of the Board in more detail
and with more color than they do these days.
The fact that the story appeared in the News-Advertiser,
whose publisher was one of the two men whose names were attached
to the report, likely played a part!
And see the June 16 editorial cited below.
Digression
On Page 8 of the same June 15 News-Advertiser
that carried the dustup described above, is a notice placed by D.
Oppenheimer, Mayor. It reads: DOMINION DAY CELEBRATION If sufficient
support can be found to hold a Ball on the night of the Second of
July (Tuesday), it has been decided to have one. The price of Tickets
for Gentlemen will be $10. All who desire to participate are requested
to put their names down on the list to be seen at the Mayor’s
Office, City Hall.
Editorial
“It is to be supposed,” the Daily News
editorialized in its June 16 issue, Page 4, “that in the face
of the unanimous condemnation by the Board of Trade of the Trades
License By-Law the City Council will not attempt to put the measure
in force . . . those most competent to judge say that the revenue
to be derived from the measure is ridiculously insignificant when
the annoyances and difficulties which will arise from the Operation
of the By-Law are considered.”
Coda
Again, a caveat: many of the early newspapers are difficult—sometimes
impossible—to read on microfilm, so there is material missing
from 1889.
What else was
happening locally in 1889?
For a once-over-lightly look at the history of The
Vancouver Board of Trade, go here.
Next: 1900 »
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