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Chronology Continued
[1757
- 1884] [1885 - 1891] [1892
- 1899]
[1900 - 1905] [1906
- 1908] [1909] [1910]
[1911] [1912]
[1913] [1914]
[1915] [1916]
[1917] [1918]
[1919] [1920]
[1921] [1922]
[1923] [1924]
[1925] [1926]
[1927] [1928]
[1929] [1930]
[1931] [1932]
[1933] [1934]
[1935] [1936]
[1937] [1938]
[1939] [1940]
[1941] [1942]
[1943] [1944]
[1945] [1946]
[1947] [1948]
[1949] [1950]
[1951] [1952]
[1953] [1954]
[1955] [1956]
[1957] [1958]
[1959] [1960]
[1961] [1962]
[1963] [1964]
[1965] [1966]
[1967] [1968]
[1969] [1970]
[1971] [1972]
[1973] [1974]
[1975] [1976]
[1977] [1978]
[1979] [1980]
[1981] [1982]
[1983] [1984]
[1985] [1986]
[1987] [1988]
[1989] [1990]
[1991] [1992]
[1993] [1994]
1915
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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 11 Mewa Singh died in New Westminster.
After the 1914 Komagata Maru incident (see the 1914 Chronology)
tensions arose among members of Vancouver's Sikh community. Some
had a particular enmity for William Hopkinson, a local customs official,
formerly with the Calcutta Police Force. Mewa, a supporter of India's
independence movement and the passengers of the Komagata Maru, shot
Hopkinson to death at the Vancouver provincial court house in 1914.
He was hanged for the crime January 11, 1915. A hall in the Ross
Street Sikh Temple is named for him.
January 23 The last spike of the Canadian
Northern Railway (running from Quebec to Vancouver) was driven at
Basque, BC, near Ashcroft. This line would eventually be absorbed
into what became CN, the Canadian National Railway.
January 29 Richard Henry Alexander, former
manager of the Hastings Mill, died at 70 in Seattle.
February 2 Golfer Stan Leonard, said to be
British Columbia’s greatest golfer, was born in Vancouver.
Leonard would caddie at Shaughnessy Heights for 50 cents in the
late 1920s.
February 15 The Imperial Theatre opened a
brand-new musical comedy, Fifty Years Forward. Among its predictions
for 1965: a lady mayor in Vancouver.
February 25 Israel Wood Powell died. He was
the first Masonic Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of B.C. He donated
the site for Vancouver’s first city hall, and has Powell Street
named for him.
March 12 Seattle longshoremen and others on
the West Coast boycott all ships going to or coming from Vancouver,
B.C., in support of striking Vancouver longshoremen.
March 26 The Vancouver Millionaires win the
Stanley Cup in the Denman Arena, led by the scoring of Cyclone Taylor.
There’s a big photograph of the team on the wall of the White
Spot on Marine Drive in Vancouver.
March In a room in the old Mount Pleasant
School on East 8th Avenue the first class for deaf students in B.C.
began. There were nine boys and girls, ranging in age from nine
to 16 years. Mabel Bigney, who had come from the Halifax School
for the Deaf, was the teacher. (In 1922 deaf students—62 of
them by then—would get their own building.)
April 25 Pharmacist Sam Bass was born in Winnipeg.
In 1945 he will begin London Drugs in Vancouver.
April The creosoted wood deck of the Cambie
Street Bridge caught fire, with the collapse of a 24.4-metre steel
side-span. (This is obviously not the current bridge!)
May 15 Walter Moberly, important in the planning
of the CPR’s route through the west, died. (An oddity: he also
designed New Westminster’s first sewer system.)
May North Vancouver City Council made enquiries
of all not-yet-naturalized city residents of German or Austrian
birth to determine if they should be interned or deported. (Remember,
World War One was raging.)
June A sports ground was opened at Mahon Park
in North Vancouver.
Spring To avoid violating American neutrality
a Seattle company, British Pacific Engineering, built submarines
for Russia at top-secret plants in Burnaby and Vancouver. Once completed
the hulls are dismantled and shipped to Petrograd for re-assembly.
July 1 The first Georgia Viaduct opened to
extend Georgia Street over the CPR's Beatty Street yard. (There
was no Dunsmuir Viaduct in the beginning.) It was named the "Hart
McHarg" bridge for a World War I hero, but the name didn’t
catch on. The viaduct was badly made, and in later years chunks
began to fall off and threaten pedestrians below.
July 7 Captain G.P. Bowie, who designed the
original Lumbermen's Arch (note the plural), erected at Pender and
Hamilton for the 1912 visit of the Duke of Connaught, was killed
at Ypres.
July 30 The White Rock pier was officially
opened. It had been built the year before at a length of 628 feet
long, had a further 983 feet added this year.
August 11 The North Shore's Marine Drive was
opened by Premier Richard McBride, allowing access to previously
secluded areas such as Caulfeild.
August 26 North Vancouver City Hall relocated
in the old Central School, whose staff and pupils had moved to the
new Queen Mary's School. Council intended it as a temporary structure,
but met there for many years. It is now Presentation House, home
of North Vancouver's Museum, a theatre and a photographic gallery.
August 28 The Canadian Northern Pacific Railway
completed its rail line and its first through train from the east
arrived in Vancouver today. The railway later became part of the
CNR, Canadian National Railway. The terminal is still here, now
named Pacific Central Station.
September 11 William Cornelius Van Horne,
former CPR president who supervised construction of the railway
across Canada and who named Vancouver (it had been Granville), died
at 72 in Montreal.
September 30 The first president of the University
of British Columbia was Frank Wesbrook. On taking office today at
the “Fairview Shacks,” a ramshackle collection of wooden
buildings at West 10th and Laurel in Vancouver’s Fairview neighborhood,
he said “We take occasion this morning to congratulate ourselves
that, though the Empire is at war, such a good beginning of the
university has been possible.” There were 379 students in three
faculties: Arts and Science, Applied Science, and Agriculture. (UBC
moved to its present location in 1922.) An Officers Training Corps
was established at UBC this year.
October 12 The UBC Alma Mater Society was
formed.
December 15 Vancouver lawyer William John
Bowser (1867-1933), Conservative, became premier, succeeding Sir
Richard McBride. Bowser will serve less than a year, to November
23, 1916.
Winter The Hoffar-Beeching Shipyard at 1927
West Georgia, at the foot of Cardero Street on Coal Harbour, began
assembling aircraft, when the Hoffar brothers, Henry and Jimmie,
fitted floats to the Curtiss Jenny belonging to Vancouver's first
licensed pilot, Billy Stark. (Two years later the company will be
owned by Boeing.)
Also in 1915
Seaton Street disappeared as a name and became a
simple extension of Hastings Street west of Burrard. It had been
originally named in1886 by Lauchlan Hamilton after a lake he chose
at random from a B.C. map. (Because a lot of wealthy folk lived
along Seaton at the time, it was called “Blueblood Alley.”)
The 255 hectares of Moodyville joined the City of
North Vancouver which then took on its present shape. The following
year the abandoned sawmill will be destroyed by fire.
French inventor George Claude was granted patents
for neon light this year. This will later have an important effect
in Vancouver.
Wallace Shipyards and North Shore Iron Works got
contracts for high-explosive shells.
Alexandra Park Bandstand opened on Beach Avenue at
Burnaby Street in the West End.
The year began with Louis D. Taylor as mayor. He
was succeeded by Malcolm Peter McBeath, an alderman in Vancouver
from 1912-14.
One of the city’s great stories concerns Mayor
L.D. Taylor. When former US President Teddy Roosevelt and his wife
visited Vancouver this year on holiday the Vancouver Board of Trade
unwisely did not include Mayor Taylor in the official reception
at the CPR station. (They didn’t like him.) Undaunted, Taylor
boarded the train at an earlier stop, greeted the Roosevelts, introduced
himself and chatted amiably with them as they came into Vancouver.
The train stopped at the station, the Board of Trade party surged
forward . . . and Mayor Taylor stepped down onto the platform. He
introduced the Roosevelts to the open-mouthed Board members, then
whisked the former U.S. president and his wife off for a drive around
Stanley Park. The story is told in Daniel Francis’ lively book,
LD: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver, published this
year by Arsenal Pulp.
The eminent planner Thomas Adams, in an essay Report
on the Planning of Greater Vancouver, wrote in 1915 that it “is
unique both in regards to natural beauty and business prospects,"
but "is suffering in a special degree from haphazard growth
and speculation in real estate, notwithstanding the progress that
has taken place in the last few years in regard to the control of
sanitary matters and local improvements.”
Brazil established a consulate in Vancouver.
Goodman Hamre (see 1914) expanded his bus service
with a line from New Westminster to White Rock.
Ivor Neil began a sightseeing bus and taxi service
in Vancouver.
The newly-created Harbour Commission gave Ottawa
one dollar for False Creek sandbars and received clearance to reclaim
the land. What was beginning to be created was Granville Island.
The Vancouver Exhibition (today’s PNE) had become
a permanent fixture in Hastings Park, housing nearly a dozen buildings
and an athletic field. The 1915 Exhibition also had a new feature:
$50,000 in prizes.
Scotland-born (1874) James Inglis Reid, who had come
to Vancouver in 1906, opened his own butcher shop at 559 Granville.
The store became famous for its meats, including Ayrshire bacon,
Belfast ham, black pudding and oatmeal-coated sausage, its haggis,
and its sign: “We hae meat that ye can eat.”
Professor Frederick Wood, the first B.C.-born educator
at UBC, founded the Player’s Club there this year. The troupe
produced their own very popular shows in downtown Vancouver.
Helena Gutteridge convinced the Vancouver Trades
and Labour Council to support equal pay for equal work in their
constitution.
There was a woman's hardball team in Vancouver in
1915. They were called the Minnehahas.
The Phoenix Cannery began operation, and would last
until 1967.
Capt. Alexander MacLean died when he fell overboard
from his tug in False Creek. MacLean was the model for Capt. Wolf
Larsen in Jack London’s novel Sea Wolf.
Imperial Oil, which had relocated its refinery to
Ioco, an acronym for Imperial Oil Company (see 1914) began to build
a company town there. The refinery processed 1,000 barrels a day.
1915 Ford T
[Photo: www.edge-inc.net]
Continued...
[1757
- 1884] [1885 - 1891] [1892
- 1899]
[1900 - 1905] [1906
- 1908] [1909] [1910]
[1911] [1912]
[1913] [1914]
[1915] [1916]
[1917] [1918]
[1919] [1920]
[1921] [1922]
[1923] [1924]
[1925] [1926]
[1927] [1928]
[1929] [1930]
[1931] [1932]
[1933] [1934]
[1935] [1936]
[1937] [1938]
[1939] [1940]
[1941] [1942]
[1943] [1944]
[1945] [1946]
[1947] [1948]
[1949] [1950]
[1951] [1952]
[1953] [1954]
[1955] [1956]
[1957] [1958]
[1959] [1960]
[1961] [1962]
[1963] [1964]
[1965] [1966]
[1967] [1968]
[1969] [1970]
[1971] [1972]
[1973] [1974]
[1975] [1976]
[1977] [1978]
[1979] [1980]
[1981] [1982]
[1983] [1984]
[1985] [1986]
[1987] [1988]
[1989] [1990]
[1991] [1992]
[1993] [1994]
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