B6 - Sunday, June 29, 1983 - North Shore News

By ELEANOR GODLEY

IT WAS A REAL frontier birthing. The bearded

pioneers who stood

in loco parentis, the

wholesome environs of the milkfarm which was
the scene of the accouchement, the strong wester-
ly winds of destiny and rivalry which then pre-
vailed—all the signs and portents pointed to a
hearty welcome for new little North Vancouver.

When it first saw the light
in August, 1891, its
horoscope held nothing but
promise. It stood on the
edge of one of the world’s
great natural harbours; at its
back was the excitingly
awakening Interior;around it
swarmed the natural timber,
the abundance of water-
courses, the elbow-room to
attract the thousands of
settlers who would use these
resources to make it another
mighty Pittsburgh.

Mr. Wickenden, Mr.
Phibbs, Mr. Keith and Mr.
Thompson had no reason to
doubt that the fledgling
would soon be ready to snap
its galluses and reel off assets
of mills, docks, railway
termini and aie dense
population revelling in the
joys of living above the fog-
level.

One of the first’ con-
siderations of these op-
timistic regents to the litde

prince was roads and
communications. First tap
the interior, which was

longing for a connection
with the budding Pearl of
Burrard Inlet. The Lillooet
Trail, begun in the 70s and

abandoned after one heart-
breaking cattle run through
the barrier of the Howe
Sound Mountains, petered
out at their back door, so to
speak. Lynn and Seymour
Creeks must be spanned,
and the trail brought down to
the waterfront. They called
for tenders, stipulating a top
price of thirty-five dollars a
mile for the work, and the
building of the link was
taken in hand.

The contractor who took
it on lived on the banks of
the Seymour and had had
some experience with. the
impulsive nature of that river
when wet and roused. So
when he came to bridge it he
took the extra précaution of
reinforcing it with forty-five
dollars worth of iron, and
had the temerity to present
council with a bill for this
insurance.

They nearly went through
the roof of what they called
the Council Chambers.
Hadn't they already
allocated fourteen dollars
for the lumber for this very

bridge: Iron indeed — what

frivolous extravagance! This
sort of thing if countenanced

could only lead to the in-
discriminate use of iron in
bridges all over the North
Shore. They disallowed it.
Then there was Pipeline
Road, up the Capilano,
clamouring for their at-
tention. They voted the
Staggering sum of five
thousand dollars to augment
what the City of Vancouver
had already invested in the
way of slashing and the
laying of the pipeline, and
got quite touchy because the
larger municipality used
some of it to pay for cribbing

of the canyon walls. They
had seen this with their own
eyes, having toured the
trail’s length on foot. (In full
beards and decent black
worsted this was in itself an
earnest of their application
to duty.)

A stiff letter to Vancouver
council elicited no
Satisfaction. The cribbing
remained, and they were
further assessed an annual
one hundred and fifty dollars
towards maintenance of the
road. This remained their
portion until the days of the

AN

this article are re

er ere

happy boom, when Pete
Larson's classy hotel, the
Canyon View, boasted an
annual guest-list of two
thousand come to verify his
advertisement of “the finest
tourist and health resort on
the Coast with a full stock of
wines, liquors and cigars”. It
was necessary then to im-
prove the road so that Mr.
Larson could make good his
claim that visitors were
transported free from the
end of the car-line, and

when they asked Vancouver
for help, they got only a

. : — . x
“THE BEND” in Lonsdale Avenue at 8th Street shortly after the turn of the century. The lot
with the tree stump is the location, today, of the Lonsdale Pharmacy. Pictures accompanying

courtesy Hancock House Publishers from “The Boom Years”, a

book of old North Van photos by G.G. Nye, written and compiled by Donald J. Bourdon.

LYNNTERM...

PROUD TO BE A PART OF
NORTH VANCOUVER’S
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT

Contractors for Ports Canada © Port of Vancouver, owner and Operator of the terminat.

Wester Stevedoring Company Limited

687 Powell St. Vancouver,BC V6A 1H3 Tel (604) 253-6661 Telex 04-55344 Cable “Westevedor:
Serving British Columbia Ports as a General Stevedoring Contractor tor over 25 years.

measly
dollars.

Lonsdale Avenue, their
own main street, would have
stayed a morass except for
the generosity of Moodyville
and the North Vancouver
Improvement Society. One
hundred dollars from each of
these bodies built the road
from the wharf up to Fif-
teenth Street. Even after this
expenditure it continued to
carry a load restriction of
two thousand pounds behind
ane span of horses, which
made the settlers up the hill
a trifle restive. They were
wearing out their tempers
and their equipment by
having to make repeated
trips, even though an
auxiliary road had been built
to angle off from the wharf
along First and Chesterfield
to meet Keith Road.

This tangential evidence
still exists as confirmation of
the local row as to whether
North Vancouver should be
laid out on a true north and
south or a magnetic north
and south pattern. Lonsdale
and magnetism won.

Keith Road of course was
the main artery of the North
Shore. After all, the District,
comprising four huge wards,
extended from Howe Sound
to the North Arm, and
though there were only
eighty-two souls registered
on the voters’ list they were
scattered the length and
breadth of this vast shore.

Mr. J.C. Keith was the
chief instigator in the

CONTINUED ON PAGE B7

eight hundred