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]
1942
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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 7 Joe Quoy, jockey, died in New Westminster,
aged about 54. He was born about 1867 in New Westminster, writes
Constance Brissenden, to parents who had come from California following
the gold rush. His father ran a store in New Westminster and owned
several horses. The first races in New Westminster were held on
Columbia Street, then unpaved. Joe was 12 years old and 90 pounds
when he first raced. He rode at tracks in B.C., including Langley
and Nanaimo, and in Seattle, Portland and Walla Walla. After putting
on weight, he turned to sulky riding.
January 8 Physicist Stephen Hawking was born.
January 10 The Vancouver Fire Department's
‘inhalator’ crew, the Rescue and Safety Branch, was put
in service. Over the years, these men saved the lives of many.
January 13 His first speech in the legislature
was made by W.A.C. Bennett.
January 14 Ottawa announced that all Japanese
were to be removed from the west coast to government camps. Fearing
Canada might be next after Pearl Harbor, and that collaborators
might be harboured aboard Japanese boats in Steveston, the Canadian
government invoked the War Measures Act.
January 18 Newspaper publisher Don Babick
was born.
January 22 The federal government announced
plans for an RCAF storage depot on the Kitsilano Indian Reserve
west of Burrard Bridge.
February 26 British Columbia’s Japanese
were ordered interned.
March 3 The City of Vancouver began the acquisition
of land from Stanley Park to Burrard Street.
March 26 Hastings Park in Vancouver became
an internment camp for Japanese-Canadian citizens.
April 1 Japanese-Canadians begin to be moved
from the west coast to internment camps in the interior and points
east. The government "took into custody" 1,337 of their
fishboats, as well as houses and other property. The owners received
little or no compensation. Not only the entire fishing fleet, but
also other businesses, radios, cameras and cars were confiscated.
Newspapers were suppressed and language schools were closed. The
owners received little or no compensation. Steveston was particularly
hard hit.
And a light in a Stanley Park monument built to honor
Japanese-Canadian soldiers who had fought bravely and with high
casualties for Canada in World War I was turned off.
May 1 Canadian Pacific Airlines was born with
the amalgamation of 10 northern bush plane companies by the CPR.
Their first planes were Canadair C4 Argonauts and then DC6s. The
new company focused at first on servicing routes within the province
from the airport on Richmond’s Sea Island, would expand into
the far northern reaches of the other provinces and territories.
May 20 The Crosline, a vessel launched
in Seattle June 22, 1925 for the Crosby Direct Line Ferries Company,
arrived from Seattle to join Burrard Inlet ferries. She could carry
300 passengers and 65 cars, was purchased because of the need for
more ferries to take shipyard workers to the north shore. In 1947,
after the war, the Crosline was sold to the ferry system of the
Washington State Department of Highways who rebuilt her. (Her final
years were weirdly interesting, according to this
excellent website. “Her last trip was the 9:55
p.m. departure on Labor Day of 1967. The ferry system sold her on
December 19th of the same year. She was first used as a warehouse
on Lake Union. Sold again in 1975, she was moved to Coos Bay, Oregon
to be used as a restaurant. The venture fell through, and instead
her superstructure was removed to become a shore-based warehouse.
Her hull was eventually disassembled, the remaining timbers and
planks of the Crosline became part of a fishing boat and
a dock.”)
Also May 20 William Marr Crawford, master
mariner, died in Vancouver, aged about 59. He was born in 1883 in
Limekilns, Fife, Scotland, came to Canada in 1911. He joined Empire
Stevedoring, B.C.'s largest waterfront employer, as manager. In
1923 he was named president and managing director. In 1930 he launched
the Fyfer, "the finest private yacht on the Pacific,"
and in 1941 donated her to the Canadian Navy for war use. In the
First World War, Captain Crawford had served as marine master to
the ministry of shipping without pay, and served in the same role
in a civilian capacity in World War Two.
June 21 Broadcaster and Mount Pleasant organizer
Dave Adair was born.
June 30 DJ, VJ, actor and interviewer Terry
David Mulligan was born.
July 1 Alexander Maitland Stephen, writer
and poet, died in Vancouver, aged about 60. He was born in 1882
in Hanover, Ontario. In his early years, Stephen tried ranching
and mining, as well as rural teaching. He was wounded in the First
World War. Back in Vancouver, he opened an engineering company.
He was a well-known progressive social activist, a nationally known
critic and the author of two novels, plays, romances and poetry.
His 1934 poem Vancouver
was widely anthologized; a portion of it was reproduced on the inside
covers of the 1997 The Greater Vancouver Book. (See 1934.)
July 5 Industrialist Edgar Kaiser was born.
July 28 The Nine O’Clock Gun was silenced
to save gunpowder.
August 9 A.E. McRae’s Hycroft mansion
in Shaughnessy, built at a cost of $109,000 in 1909, was sold by
the McRaes to a grateful federal government for $1. (There were
rising costs and the Second World War made hiring of staff difficult.)
Shaughnessy Military Hospital was full to bursting with convalescent
soldiers and Hycroft was put to immediate use to handle the overflow.
It would serve as an auxiliary to the hospital for
18 years. Then a new wing was added to Shaughnessy and Hycroft was
emptied. It sat empty for two years, then the University Women’s
Club bought it, and they’ve occupied it ever since. Incidentally,
women were not allowed to hold mortgages in their own right at the
time and so the club was required to pay in full. It took them a
year to raise the money.
In its original configuration Hycroft was a 30-room
home (11 of them bedrooms), with a coach house, stables, a swimming
pool, an Italian garden and more, all on 5.2 acres.
August 19 Vancouver's Colonel Cecil Merritt
became the first Canadian in World War II to win the Victoria Cross.
His citation reads, in part, "For matchless gallantry and inspiring
leadership whilst commanding his battalion during the Dieppe raid
on the 19th August, 1942. From the point of landing, his unit's
advance had to be made across a bridge in Pourville which was swept
by very heavy machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire: the first
parties were mostly destroyed and the bridge thickly covered by
their bodies. A daring lead was required; waving his helmet, Lieutenant
Colonel Merritt rushed forward shouting, ‘Come on over! There's
nothing to worry about here.’" For more, see this
site.
August 24 The Wartime Prices and Trade Board
began the issue of ration books covering purchase of sugar, coffee
and tea.
September 13 Some World War Two excitement
was engendered today. Writing in The Vancouver Book (1976),
Peter Moogk relates: "It was a hazy Sunday when a fish-packer
sailed in across the ‘examination line’ from Point Atkinson
to Point Grey, oblivious to the wartime crisis. As the boat chugged
on towards the First Narrows, the gunners at the fort received a
message to fire a ‘stopping round’ ahead of the boat to
compel the master to come to a stop and to identify himself. It
was customary on such occasions to fire a non-explosive, solid shell
that would kick up a large splash in front of the offending vessel
. . . When one of the 12-pounder guns of the fort fired the ‘stopping
round,’ the shell hit a wave and started to ricochet across
the water at an oblique angle. Beyond the fish-packer in English
Bay was the Fort Rae, a 9,600 ton freighter that had been
launched the month before and was still on its sea trials. The skipping
round hit the freighter above the waterline. As the shell passed
through the number 3 hold it turned sideways and punched out a hole
below the waterline on the other side. At first this was not noticed.
The ship was evidently on its way back to the Burrard Drydocks when
the captain received word of flooding in the hold. He beached the
freighter on the north shore, just inside the First Narrows. It
remained there, on the tidal flats, until it could be patched up
and floated off . . ."
September 30 The first group of women workers
was hired by Burrard Dry Dock in North Vancouver. At the peak of
wartime activity 1,000 of the yard's 13,000 workforce were women.
October 6 The last Japanese-Canadians left
Vancouver for internment camps.
October 11 The St. Roch ended its voyage.
November From minutes of the Building Owners
and Managers Association (BOMA): “Mr. Marshall, Regional Coal
Controller, addressed the Association, conveying to members the
seriousness of the present coal shortage. He stated that supply
was 33 per cent short of requirements and suggested that office
building temperatures should range from 64 to 68 degrees maximum.
In fact, the coal shortage became so acute that the Yorkshire Building
sent a letter to its tenants urging heat conservation . . .”
November 5 Journalist and newspaper executive
Don MacLachlan was born.
November 6 One of the lions (carved in 1908
by John Bruce) in front of the provincial courthouse, the one on
the west side, was damaged by a bomb. The culprit was never caught.
November 18 Actor, broadcaster, author and
X-Kalay administrator David Berner was born.
November 20 The Alaska Highway (then called
the Alcan Highway) was officially opened.
December 2 Physicist Enrico Fermi split the
atom.
December 21 Butter was rationed.
December 31 Canadian wordsmith Bill Casselman
was born.
Also in 1942
The Workmen’s Compensation Board opened the
Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver to treat injured workers. During
the last three months of the year an average of 262 workers were
treated daily at the Centre.
The Ovaltine Cafe opened at 251 East Hastings. The
cafe has survived intact with coffee counter, booths, mirrors and
varnished woodwork. It’s often seen during scenes on CBC-TV’s
hit series DaVinci’s Inquest.
The Shriners’ Gizeh Temple was moved from Victoria
to Vancouver.
Masumi Mitsui, who had received the Military Medal
for Bravery while fighting for Canada in 1917, and his family were
forcibly moved from their seven-hectare Port Coquitlam chicken farm
and new house to an internment camp in Greenwood, B.C.
To fill the gap left by the departure of the Japanese-Canadian
workforce, many people came from the Prairies which had been slower
to recover from the Depression.
The fishing industry was declared an essential service
during the war and workers were exempt from conscription. Convicts
were released to work on the fish-boats.
Much of Surrey's strawberry crop was lost with the
departure of the Japanese farmers to internment camps.
Commercial blueberry farming began in Pitt Meadows.
Baseball's Athletic Park, dedicated in 1913, was
renamed Capilano Stadium.
Burnaby finally came out of its Depression-mandated
receivership: from 1933, Burnaby had been administered by the provincial
government through a Commissioner. Now residents once again could
elect a reeve and council.
John Murray Jr. (1859-1942), known as “Mr. Port
Moody”, and who named the streets of the municipality, died.
His father John Sr. was Port Moody’s first settler.
Wartime housing shortages prompted the federal government
to issue an order in council allowing Shaughnessy homes to be split
up into smaller units. That order in council would not expire until
1955.
The Dollar Mill at Roche Point on Indian Arm closed
down. The mill was established in 1916 by shipping magnate Robert
Dollar and was a major employer for many years.
“At their peak in 1942,” writes military
historian Peter Moogk, “he Lower Mainland's coastal batteries,
from Steveston to Point Atkinson, were manned by 720 gunners, supported
infantry regiments, and auxiliary units. Anti-aircraft batteries
of 40-mm. and 3.7-inch calibre guns appeared at Point Grey, Little
Mountain, Ambleside and elsewhere.”
Granville Island was declared crucial to the war
effort and closed to the public to protect island industries from
saboteurs.
At Essondale Mental Hospital 34 patients died this
year from tuberculosis. This was also the year electro-convulsive
shock therapy (ECT) was introduced at Essondale.
Gordon House opened in the West End, one of the city’s
oldest neighborhood houses. (Alexandra House preceded it by four
years.)
Vancouver’s first Kinette Club, a women’s
counterpart to the Kinsmen Club, was established.
Pax Regis, a semi-annual publication featuring
articles and news for alumni of the Seminary of Christ the King,
and for those interested in Roman Catholic seminary education, first
appeared. (It issues today from Westminster Abbey in Mission.)
In 1942 Straits Towing was formed by Harold Elworthy
and Stan McKeen out of the one-tug Preston-Mann fleet and McKeen's
Standard Towing.
After two hard, slogging years fighting the Arctic
ice, the St. Roch—which had left Vancouver June 23,
1940—arrived in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Con Jones, an ex-bookie from Australia, a tobacco
retailer—he was known for the slogan “Don't argue: Con
Jones sells fresh tobacco”—and sports entrepreneur, died.
In 1908, says a web site citing him, Jones had “helped form
the Pacific Coast ‘Association Football’ League consisting
of teams from Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Ladysmith and Seattle.
By 1910 seventeen senior teams were playing on the Lower Mainland
. . . In 1912 he built Con Jones Park, a wooden structure completely
surrounding the field of play, bounded by Renfrew, Oxford, Kaslo
and Cambridge Streets, across from the Pacific National Exhibition
grounds, for his Vancouver field lacrosse team and for soccer. Con
Jones Park was destroyed by a night fire July 29, 1934, but was
rebuilt soon after.” See this
website.
Baseball’s Capilanos—named after the Capilano
Brewery, owned by beer magnate Emil Sick of Seattle—stopped
playing because of war-time travel restrictions. Play would resume
in 1946.
Exhibition Park was closed to the public and turned
into a “processing centre” for more than 8,000 Japanese
Canadians who were exiled to the interior of British Columbia by
order of the federal government. After they left Hastings Park served
as a military facility until 1946 when it was renamed “Exhibition
Park.”
Emily Carr donated 145 paintings and sketches to
the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Vancouver writer Roy Miki, a third-generation Japanese
Canadian, was born this year, six months after his parents had been
shipped from Haney to a sugar beet farm in Manitoba.
Austin Taylor was named chair of the B.C. Security
Commission. Among other activities, they administered the internment
of local Japanese. In 1947 Taylor would be awarded the CBE for his
wartime service.
Writer and teacher Jill Wade was born. Her book,
Houses For All (1994), is the story of the struggle for social
housing in Vancouver between 1919 and 1950.
The bombing of England’s Canterbury Cathedral
this year had one unusual result. Shattered fragments of the 11th
century stained glass from the cathedral were given to wartime parishioner
Archdeacon Greig, who later settled in Vancouver. The Sanctuary
and Chancel Memorial Windows at St. John's Shaughnessy Anglican
Church at Nanton and Granville Streets in Vancouver are made of
those fragments. “They were taped together by matching colors,”
writes Faith Bloomfield, “and the windows, measuring two feet
by seven feet are now installed in the sanctuary above the choir
stalls.” (Faith Bloomfield is a member of the Bloomfield family,
which contributed so much to stained glass work in this city.)
Earle Birney won his first (of two) Governor General
Awards for his poetry.
Stuart Keate, future publisher of the Vancouver
Sun, aged about 29, began service as an information officer
in the North Atlantic and Pacific theatres. He will serve in that
capacity until 1945.
Doctor Masajiro Miyazaki, who had arrived in Vancouver
June 29, 1913, aged about 13, and who took part in UBC's Great Trek
in 1922, practiced medicine in Vancouver until 1942. Then he was
interned in the Bridge River-Lillooet area. He served as the doctor
for 1,000 internees. (In 1945 the town of Lillooet would petition
for his release to replace its deceased doctor.) He would receive
the Order of Canada in 1977.
Winnipeg-born Leo “Nick” Nicholson began
to broadcast box lacrosse games in Vancouver. He left broadcasting
briefly this year to become sports editor of the News-Herald.
The well-known United Church minister, Scotland-born
Andrew Roddan, was also a gifted amateur painter and charter member
of the Vancouver Art Gallery. He gave assistance to local artists
and, this year, exhibited his own paintings.
Saba's, the largest retail house in Western Canada
specializing in silks, experienced a riot when 500 women stampeded
the store to buy 300 pairs of nylon stockings (no one was hurt).
Darshan A. Sangha, born in 1917 in Langeri, Punjab,
India, became the first person in Vancouver’s Hindustani community
to be drafted.
1942 Buick Estate Wagon
[Photo: www.prewarbuick.com)
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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