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

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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

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eight hundred