of the
Canadian Expeditionary Force in Vancouver, December 1915
Economy With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, Vancouver's seaport was able to compete with the major international ports for global trade because it was positioned as an alternative route to Europe. During the 1920s, the provincial government successfully fought to have freight rates that discriminated against goods transported by rail through the mountains eliminated, giving the young lawyer of the case,
Gerry McGeer, a reputation as "the man who flattened the Rockies". Consequently, prairie wheat came west through Vancouver rather than being shipped out through eastern ports. The federal government established the Vancouver Harbour Commission development. With its completion in 1923,
Ballantyne Pier was the most technologically advanced port in the British Empire. The CPR, lumber exporters, terminal operators, and other companies based on the waterfront banded together after
World War I to establish the
Shipping Federation of British Columbia as an
employers’ association to manage industrial relations on the increasingly busy waterfront. The Federation fought vociferously against unionization, defeating a series of strikes and breaking unions until the determined
longshoremen established the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union local after
World War II. By the 1930s, commercial traffic through the port had become the largest sector in Vancouver's economy. shortly after its completion in 1911. The rise of automobiles led to the construction of new bridges that could accommodate vehicles over
False Creek. The rapid growth in automobiles and trucks after 1910 led to the construction of new bridges over
False Creek, including the
Granville Street Bridge (built 1889, rebuilt 1954), the
Burrard Bridge (built 1932), and the
Cambie Bridge (built 1912, rebuilt 1984). Auto traffic to North Vancouver was facilitated with the construction of the
first Second Narrows Bridge in 1925 and by the completion of the
Lion's Gate Bridge in 1938, across the
First Narrows. In 1923,
Warren Harding became the first
US president to set foot in Canada. He received by the
premier of British Columbia and the
mayor of Vancouver and spoke to a crowd of 50,000 in Stanley Park. A monument to Harding designed by
Charles Marega was unveiled in Stanley Park in 1925.
Labour disputes Although the provincial resource-based economy allowed Vancouver to flourish, it was nonetheless not immune to the vagaries of organized labour. Two general strikes were launched by labour groups during the years following World War II, including Canada's first general strike following the death of a trade unionist,
Albert Goodwin. Major recessions and depressions hit the city hard in the late 1890s, 1919, 1923, and 1929.
Great Depression British Columbia was perhaps the hardest Canadian province hit by the
Great Depression. Although Vancouver managed to stave off bankruptcy, other cities in the Lower Mainland were not so lucky, such as
North Vancouver and
Burnaby. Vancouver also happened to be the target destination for thousands of transients – unemployed young men – who travelled across Canada looking for work, often by hopping on
boxcars. This was the end of the line and had for years been a "
mecca of the unemployed" because, as some cynically joked, it was the only city in Canada where you could starve to death before freezing to death. "Hobo jungles" sprouted up in the earliest days of the depression, where men built makeshift
shanty towns out of whatever they could find or steal. The largest of these was shut down allegedly for being unsanitary. officers attack
Relief Camp Workers' Union protesters in 1938. Several protests over unemployment occurred in the city during the
Great Depression. Vancouver was also the launching pad for the
Communist Party of Canada–led unemployed protests that frequented the city throughout the decade, culminating in the
relief camp strike and the
On-to-Ottawa Trek in 1935. Communist agitators and their supporters also led strikes in other industries, most notably the 1935
waterfront strike, and organized a large proportion of the
Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion from Vancouver to fight fascism in the
Spanish Civil War as Canada's (unofficial) contribution to the
International Brigades.
Asian immigrants Economic hard times fuelled social tensions. In particular, members of the new and growing Asian population were subjected to discrimination as well as periodic upsurges of more physical objections to their arrival. The most overt expression of this came in the
1907 riots organized by the
Asiatic Exclusion League, a group formed under organized labour and inspired by its counterpart in
San Francisco. Some politicians and publicists promoted and disseminated controversial ideologies through popular books such as H. Glynn-Ward's 1921
The Writing on the Wall and
Tom MacInnes’s 1929
The Oriental Occupation of British Columbia. Newspapermen such as
L. D. Taylor of the
Vancouver World and General
Victor Odlum of the
Star generated a glut of editorials analyzing and warning about the "Oriental menace", as did
Danger: The Anti-Asiatic Weekly. This determination of European settlers to secure British Columbia as a "White Man's Province" influenced federal politicians to pass immigration laws such as the
head tax and the
Chinese Exclusion Act. What may be called a "climate of fear and hysteria" in the 1920s culminated in the "Janet Smith case", in which a Chinese national was accused of killing his young, white, female co-worker. The evidence for his guilt was perhaps based more on stereotyping than facts. that resulted in Indian migrants being denied entry after they arrived to Vancouver. A growing population of Indians, primarily from the province of
Punjab and of the
Sikh religion, were also required to abide by immigration laws starting in 1908, despite the fact that they were subjects of the British Empire. This culminated in the 1914
Komagata Maru incident, in which most of 376 immigrants on the
Komagata Maru, most of them from Punjab, were not permitted to disembark because they had not complied with immigration laws that required that they come by a continuous passage from their home country. A group of residents of Indian origin rallied in support of the passengers. After losing a court challenge of the immigration laws, the ship remained in Burrard Inlet while negotiations continued concerning its departure. When negotiations dragged on, the head immigration officer in Vancouver arranged an attempt by the Vancouver police and other officials to board the ship, who were repelled by what the
Vancouver Sun reported as "howling masses of
Hindus". Subsequently, the federal government sent a naval ship and after concessions made by the federal Minister of Agriculture, an MP from
Penticton, the ship departed. After returning to India, twenty of the passengers were shot by police in an incident after they refused to return to Punjab.
Vice and politics was a
rum-rummer that used Vancouver as its home port during the
Prohibition Era of the neighbouring United States. Vancouver, was also the home port of the
Malahat, a five-masted
schooner known as the "Queen of Rum Row", maintained an active liquor trade throughout the
Prohibition Era of the neighbouring United States, despite efforts to bring prohibition to Canada. opening a playground in
Chinatown, Vancouver Vancouver's longest serving and most often elected mayor,
L. D. Taylor, followed an "open town" policy prior to his final defeat in 1934 to Gerry McGeer. Essentially, the policy was that vice crimes such as prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging would be managed, rather than eliminated, so that police resources could be directed towards major crime. A consequence of this, in addition to assumptions that Taylor was colluding with the criminal underworld, was the maintenance of
red light districts in
racialized neighbourhoods, such as
Chinatown,
Japantown, and
Hogan's Alley, which perpetuated the association of non-whites with immorality and vice crime. Taylor suffered the biggest electoral defeat the city had seen in 1934, largely on this issue. McGeer ran on a law and order platform, resulting in a crackdown on vice crimes, which, after years of Taylor's "open town" policy, sought to clean up crime. Unfortunately, policing non-white communities was key to successfully executing the plan. Even the East End (today's
Strathcona) had by World War I been largely vacated by English, Scottish, and Irish residents who moved to the wealthier (and whiter) new developments of the
West End and
Shaughnessy. The East End, the original residential district that grew up around Hasting's Mill, was left to successive waves of new immigrants, and became associated with poverty and vice.
Neighbourhood and property development , residing there until his death in 1958. The first act of the
Vancouver City Council at its first meeting in 1886 was to request that the military reserve be handed over for use as a park. Historians have pointed out that this may seem a strange priority for the nascent city as there was an abundance of green space at the time. The West End, however, was designated to be an upscale neighbourhood by speculators with connections to the CPR; they did not want the scattered settlements on this property to grow into another industrial, working-class neighbourhood. This act also signalled the beginning of the process that would see the remaining inhabitants of various origins evicted as squatters in the 1920s for the creation of a seemingly pristine park. It has been suggested that perhaps the new Stanley Park would ultimately be purged of any trace of its former Indigenous population. However, over time, the
Vancouver Park Board has added Indigenous carvings. 's first campus in Fairview, 1917. The university moved to its permanent location at
Point Grey in 1925. In 1877, Superintendent of Education John Jessop submitted a proposal for the formation of a provincial university.
An Act Respecting the University of British Columbia was passed by the provincial legislature in 1890, but disagreements arose over whether to build the university on Vancouver Island or the mainland. A provincial university was formally called into being by the
British Columbia University Act of 1908, although its location was not yet specified. Originally titled McGill University College of British Columbia (associated with
McGill University in Montreal), it was selected in 1910 to be constructed at a site at
Point Grey, though the outbreak of World War I delayed construction. The now-independent
University of British Columbia began operations in 1915. In 1911, Vancouver expanded with the amalgamation of the Hastings Townsite (originally called New Brighton). The former municipality's name continues on in the
Hastings–Sunrise neighbourhood, which covers the same territory (together with northern
Renfrew–Collingwood). Residents of the nearby Squamish village of
Sen̓áḵw were forcibly evicted as part of this expansion in 1913. Even the West End was becoming less exclusive. CPR developers once again established a new enclave for the city's white and wealthy elite that would pull them from the West End and be the destination for the "coming smart set". Point Grey was incorporated in 1908 for this purpose, and Shaughnessy Heights would be developed exclusively for the "richest and most prominent citizens", who were required to spend a minimum of on the construction of new homes, which were to conform to specific style requirements. These patterns of economic segregation were apparently secured by 1929, when Point Grey and South Vancouver were amalgamated with Vancouver. Point Grey included the current neighbourhoods of
West Point Grey,
Dunbar–Southlands,
Arbutus Ridge,
Shaughnessy,
South Cambie,
Kerrisdale, western
Oakridge, western
Marpole; and South Vancouver included the current neighbourhoods of
Riley Park–Little Mountain (excluding its northeast corner), central and southern
Kensington–Cedar Cottage, southern Renfrew–Collingwood,
Sunset,
Victoria–Fraserview,
Killarney, and eastern parts of
Oakridge and
Marpole.
William Harold Malkin was the first mayor of the new city, having defeated incumbent
Louis Denison Taylor, the champion of amalgamation, in the 1928 civic election.
Civic celebrations Vancouver was the site of major celebrations in 1936, in part to bolster civic spirit in the midst of the Great Depression, as well as to celebrate Vancouver's
Jubilee. Mayor McGeer provoked considerable controversy by organizing expensive celebrations at a time when the city was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and civic employees were working at a significantly reduced pay rate. Nevertheless, he did find a great deal of support from those who agreed a celebration would ultimately be good for the city's prosperity. While some large expenditures were roundly criticized – for example, the "ugly" fountain erected in Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon ==World War II==