Vancouver

“ Vancouver is very beautifully situated. The ground sloping to the shut sea, girt with those huge, straight trees that give a sense of luxuriance to this northern Pacific coast which no tropic country can excel, is a perfect situation for a big city. Vancouver is a big city. It is so big that many people are afraid for its immediate future. They say that it is already far bigger than it has any right to be, and that by the dubiously beneficent aid of innumerable real estate men, it is increasing at a pace that is bound to end in disaster. ”

“ Between Vancouver, so like one of our own Western towns, and the Land of the Rising Sun, nature provided nothing to prepare the mind for a distinctly different type of landscape and of civilisation. There was only the monotonous watery waste of the Northern Pacific, and the equally monotonous roll of the Empress of China, as she mounted one side and slid down the other, of its long-sweeping billows. ”

“ The great island of British Columbia, and its energetic port city, received the name of Vancouver himself, and Vancouver named most of the places on Puget Sound in honor of his personal friends. He must have had a heart formed for friendship, thus to have immortalized those whom he esteemed and loved. It is the discovery and the naming of mountains, islands, and ports of the Puget Sound that suggest poetic and patriotic celebrations.
The old journals of Vancouver lie before us. ”

“ We find Vancouver’s commercial districts busy and crowded. At the wharves we see twenty ocean steamers loading lumber to be carried to all parts of the world, and learn that sixteen million feet are shipped from here in one month. Vancouver is increasing in importance as a wheat-shipping port. It sends a million bushels or more to the Orient, and twice as much to Europe by way of the Panama Canal. ”

“ Vancouver is the southmost and the largest of the countless islands forming the great archipelago that stretches a thousand miles to the northward. Its shores have been known a long time, but little is known of the lofty mountainous interior on account of the difficulties in the way of explorations--lake, bogs, and shaggy tangled forests. It is mostly a pure, savage wilderness, without roads or clearings, and silent so far as man is concerned. Even the Indians keep close to the shore, getting a living by fishing, dwelling together in villages, and traveling almost wholly by canoes. ”

“ THE DEEP WATERS Far over your left shoulder as your boat leaves the Narrows to thread the beautiful waterways that lead to Vancouver Island, you will see the summit of Mount Baker robed in its everlasting whiteness and always reflecting some wonderful glory from the rising sun, the golden noontide, or the violet and amber sunset. This is the Mount Ararat of the Pacific Coast peoples ”

“ The fierce swell of the Pacific, so very near at hand, is completely warded off by the broad and beautiful islands of Vancouver, Queen Charlotte, Prince of Wales, Baranoff, and Chichagoff, which form a matchless panorama as they slowly pass, day after day, clad in thrifty verdure, before the eyes of the delighted voyager. Throughout so many hours of close observation one never wearies of the charming scene. ”

“ Already they have most of the things that make citizens pleased and proud—a beautiful site, fine streets, the most splendid of public parks, water-ways innumerable in front, and, behind, a country good to look at and rich in potentialities. Vancouver's industries, even if they do not justify the size of the place, are important and prosperous; and its propinquity to the salmon fisheries and vast timber tracts of British Columbia is something which alone would make a great town. In tone it is new world compared with Victoria, but old world compared with Seattle. ”

“ Fort Vancouver in 1845 gradually rising slope of land extends in a superb swell several miles to the north. Every feature of scenery that could delight the eye—Mt. Hood with the Cascades to the east, the Willamette Valley to the south, the Portland and Scappoose hills to the west, the River blending all—seems to have been lavished on Vancouver. It has been a surprise to many that the great city had not grown here rather than at Portland, which, though on an equally fine location, is on the tributary and much smaller Willamette. ”

“ John McLoughlin founded Vancouver, and Vancouver became the homing port and center of attraction for the sea rovers, forest rangers and pioneer immigrants of all the great northwest. It founded civilization in an empire of the greatest possibilities, and became the unwilling nursing mother of the first American gov- ernment on the Pacific coast. And when human activities and commercial pos- sibilities reached the point that demanded the combination of capital to open the country to trade and commerce, Vancouver became the home for the first great transportation company of the northwest. ”

“ Before reaching Vancouver we saw high on the rocks the hull of the old steamer "Beaver". It was the first steamer to cross the broad Pacific brought here long ago by the Hudson Bay company from Bombay. It was wrecked only last year, but is already in this humid climate green with moss and ocean weed.
Vancouver has grown marvelously. Five years since its site was covered by a forest of enormous cedars and firs. Three years ago when I visited there, it had only seven or eight hundred population. Now it boasts having about 15,000. ”

“ Sometimes in the streets of Vancouver, after a checking up with Charlie Hale in the Norquay Trust office, he would have the morbid fancy that the deep traffic roar of the city was like the roar of the rapids by Little Dent, and that he was in a frail craft shooting that fierce economic tiderace to disaster in the financial whirlpools. ”

“ When the British company abandoned it the United States government took possession of Vancouver for a military post; and now the tourist beholds, scattered over the plain, a thriving town of two thousand inhabitants, and bordering on it the wellkept garrison grounds of the troops, with neat officers' quarters encircling the parade. Vancouver is the seat of government of Clarke County, and possesses many advantages, which are to be brought more prominently to light by railroad communication with the Puget Sound region and Eastern Washington in the near future. ”

“ John McLoughlin, the centre of almost every event of importance in the early history, connected with both American and British occupation, and later as the location of the United States military post and preserving the names of Grant, Sheridan, McClellan, Hooker, and others of our famous generals, Vancouver has indeed a rich historic setting. But aside from such associations with the past, every tourist must note the location of Vancouver as one of rare beauty. In fact, the spot is almost ideal for a great city. ”

“ The harbour of Vancouver is thought sufficiently beautiful to be compared to that of Sydney. It is a perfect site for a city, with the wooded ranges of mountains rising on the further shore of the harbour, though it was not until sunset of the second day of our arrival, that the clouds rolled away sufficiently for us to see them. The two peaks, called the Lions, are wonderfully faithful outlines of the lions in Trafalgar Square. The Indian Mission village lying under the mountains, looks clean and bright. ”

“ Neither high nor low, but rising handsomely out of the water; indented with numerous coves, bays, and arms of the sea; its shore being dotted with trees, rather than heavily wooded, with some handsome villas in sight from the steamer, Vancouver's Island makes a good impression at the moment of approach—has, in fact, one of the handsomest approaches to its principal city of any country fronting on the Pacific.
It is impossible to have seen Victoria, the capital of the British possessions on the Pacific, and not give it a passing notice at least. ”

“ Vancouver city, the terminus of the C.P.R., on the mainland, has 25,000 inhabitants (1901) . Until May 1886 its site was covered by a dense forest. In two months it had grown quite a town, then a fire destroyed every house save one. It lies on the fine Coal Harbour, a widening of Burrard Inlet. It is easy to see what a fine city is to be here one day.
I found the Vancouver hotel large, comfortable enough, but ordinary. Stanley Park is the Government reservation, and contains very old and gigantic trees— what a magnificent land, another of the heritages of the British race. ”

“ All the upper reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. ”

“ These others whom I have held back until now that your attention might not falter, are the dauntless, high-adventuring men who crossed the mountains to where the land lieth soft to the sea. These are the men of the new appointed city of Prince Rupert; the men of the fortunate, fair-built city of Victoria, and those of sure-seated Vancouver. ”

“ Here in a wild basin of the mighty backbone of the continent, 2,300 miles from Montreal, nearly 1,000 from Winnipeg, and 600 from Vancouver, with no populous or productive lands contiguous, but surrounded by nature's boldest and roughest works, in which are the haunts of wild beasts—here one finds all the elegances and comforts of a city's suburbs; all of the delicacies and luxuries of a city hotel, coupled with the hygiene of a sanitarium, the ozone and bracing atmosphere of a lofty altitude, and the glorious scenery of a mountain fastness. ”

“ Now that we can take a seat in the railway car at Halifax and leave it at Vancouver, we can form but the very faintest conception of what this country was one hundred years ago, when those hardy mountaineers ranged themselves alongside the Lowland Scot, the Englishman, the Irishman, the German and the Frenchman, to hew down the lords of the forest, to turn the wilderness into well cultivated fields, to turn the log cabins into the mansions that now adorn the plains, and to form, as they do, a sturdy peasantry second to none in the world. ”

“ In 1901 the population of the city was about 27,000; to-day, 200,000 people are citizens of Vancouver and suburbs. Its wharfs are crowded with shipping, more than 18,000 vessels using the port in a single year, while its customs revenue amounts to five millions of dollars annually.
The business and residential sections of Vancouver are extremely interesting and no tourist would willingly miss seeing something of the largest Canadian city on the Pacific Coast. On the evening of February 14, 1916, the first long-distance telephone conversation was held between Vancouver and Montreal. ”

“ Steamers for all ports, China, Japan etc., regularly leave Vancouver. Vancouver is destined to be a large city. It is a gateway of world-wide commerce. The first Canadian Pacific Railway steamer arrived at Vancouver from Yokohama in 1887. The surveys of the Canadian Pacific, Railway which made Vancouver accessible were begun in 1871. A visitor to Vancouver, noticing wide streets and handsome structures, a score of chartered banks, with vessels from many lands in the harbor and business active everywhere, wonders at the change wrought in a single generation. ”

“ To-day it has a population of fourteen thousand people, and builds its houses out of brick with dressed granite fronts. But a great sleepiness lies on Vancouver as compared with an American town: men don't fly up and down the streets telling lies, and the spittoons in the delightfully comfortable hotel are unused ”

“ Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort of men they allow to talk about them.
Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver Baby—i.e. the first child born in Vancouver—had been married. ”

“ It is interesting to watch the life of this remarkable city, situated 1,500 miles from Vancouver and close upon the Arctic circle: upon the plank sidewalks are slouch-hatted, long-booted miners who throng dance-halls and saloons and pay from pouches of gold-dust; busy merchants, traders and storekeepers of all nationalities; well-dressed ladies and children ”

“ Vancouver is a clean, well-built town at the mouth of the Frazer River. The harbour there is large enough for men-of-war to anchor in, and there we found our steamer, the Empress of India, awaiting us--a fine boat of 6,000 tons, painted white and built on the lines of a large yacht. We spent Sunday, the day after our arrival, in visiting the park near Vancouver, where the famous big trees are to be seen--cedars, firs, and spruce; one, perhaps the largest in the world, measures sixty feet round, and a carriage and pair of horses can go inside the trunk, which is hollow. ”

“ A few minutes brought us alongside a wharf at the head of the north channel, and to the little maritime city with an Indian name, which faces the south, and lies at the mouth of the Hoquiam Biver. Like Aberdeen, it requires much planking, being laid out on land which Vancouver, in 1792, described as “low and apparently swampy, the soil thin over a bed of stones and pebbles,” and the country at a small distance covered with wood, “principally pine of an inferior growth.” ”

“ While I drink to your health, your youth, and your wealth,
And the things that you yet will do.
In a vintage rare and olden,
With a flavour fine and keen,
Fill the glass to the edge, while I stand up to pledge
My faith to my western queen.
Then here's a Ho! Vancouver, in wine of the bonniest hue,
With a hand on my hip and the cup at my lip,
And a love in my life for you.
For you are a jolly good fellow, with a great, big heart, I know ”