History

"East Vancouver" is born  

Front page story in The Vancouver World on this day, August 17, 1906  

Another suburban Vancouver is about to arise on the shores of Burrard Inlet: another point has been set towards which this young and growing city will ere long extend. A Calgary syndicate, in association with a number of Vancouver capitalists, has marked and surveyed "East Vancouver," the site of a new townsite on Burrard Inlet, about halfway between Hastings and Barnet. The preliminary survey, made by Major Vaughan of this city, shows a full mile of waterfront and an area of 350 acres, embracing district lots 189 to 218. The warterfrontage is probably the best on the inlet and the CPR runs through the townsite, parallel with the water. The promoters have secured by deed the right to cross the railway at three points. With a location so admirably adapted for transportation of commercial products, the erection of business warehouses, elevators, etc, is only a matter of a comparatively short space of time. In point of fact, the promoters have secured from the provincial government the right to erect at least two grain elevators, whenever they choose to exercise that right. Seldom indeed has any local newspaper been able to make an announcement of greater or more farreaching importance to the commercial development of Vancouver and district than the announcement which The World makes today of the birth of East Vancouver. The new townsite abounds in lovely residential sites which command a view of the water to the east and west. East Vancouver is located on a small promontory which is sheltered on the east but is gracefully and beautifully swept by the winds that wanton up Burrard Inlet from the west. Scenically and sanitarily, East Vancouver is one of the most favoured spots in British Columbia. When The World got wind of this big deal in real estate, inquiries were at once set on foot, as a result of which The World man was soon busy poring over a map of the new townsite which may be seen in the office of the Western Corporation on Hastings Street. In the laying out of the new town the acres run lengthwise, so as to provide the largest extent of frontage possible. The majority of the lots are 66 feet wide. The line of the waterfront is Water Street, which extends a full mile, as if the promoters had wisely and sagaciously taken a long leap forward in fancy to the time when East Vancouver's Water Street will join the interrupted street of the same name in the mother city. The promoters claim that the water frontage in East Vancouver is unexcelled even by Vancouver water frontage itself. Among the promoters are the Western Corporation, the La Penotiere, Watson and Bowen company, Mr J C Keith, and a Calgary syndicate. There is no doubt whatsoever that grain elevators will be erected in the new townsite, nor that the long-cherished desire to bring the wheatfields of the northwest in to direct touch with Burrard Inlet will be speedily realized. The rise of the new townsite will mark an important point in the development of the port of Vancouver, and brings appreciably nearer the inevitable day when the riches of Canada's incomparable wheat belt will pour through the western gateway of the Dominion to the greatest of all the coming markets of the commercial world, the awakening Orient.