Introduction to "Vancouver-City of Adventurers. (Staunton series)

                           Introduction

             Vancouver- City of adventurers

         The City of Vancouver lies in the southwest corner of the Canada’s Province of British Columbia, at the mouth of the mighty Fraser River. Although we now focus on its modern history, the area had been inhabited continuously by Indigenous First Nation’s tribes for more than 10,000 years. They included the Squamish, Musqueamand, and Burrard peoples. 

The beginnings of the modern city, which was originally named Gastown, grew around the site of a makeshift tavern on the western edges of Hastings Sawmill. The Tavern was bult by Its owner “Gassy Jack” Deighton.  Stories differ as to whether Jack’s nickname arouse by explosions of hot air from one end of his body or the lower regions.

The sawmill itself was built on July 1, 1865 Edward Stamp. He had been backed by a British financial consortium who raised all of the money necessary to purchase land in the area. The Canadian government had granted the company a massive tract of treed land for its use. At its start, Vancouver was a logging town. Loggers are both rough and tumble roust abouts. Their colorful antics would people stories of the history of the City, as it grew into a major urban area.

Gastown registered as a townsite in 1867. It also included Granville, Burrard’s Inlet, the small settlement on Granville Island in the City’s harbor. Gastown was then renamed "Vancouver" in 1886, in a deal reached  with the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railway. The Company extended their line to the city in 1887. The City was named after British explorer and seaman George Vancouver, who had sailed these waters a hundred years before. As luck would have it, a raging fire swept through the City three months after its incorporation. Virtually every building in the city was burned to the ground.

There was plenty of lumber available locally and plenty of businessmen looking to establish themselves. Woodward’s, Spencer’s and the Hudson Bay Store quickly bult stores and filled the commercial gap. The small village grew exponentially from its humble beginnings. By 1889 the populations had reached 27,000 souls.

A minor gold rush had swept through the area in the late 1850’s. Placer gold had been found in sand and gravel banks along the Fraser River, washed down from the north over thousands of years. The gold rush ended shortly, when these surface runs of gold dust were panned out. 

But the memories were left behind, repeated in beer filled reverie by the old prospectors, who had come north from California, seeking the almost mythical piles of gold. They remembered the gold fever and treasured the adventures they had experienced in seeking for the fabled treasure in the wilderness. Salmon were abundant in the Fraser River and wood grew all around them, so none of them readily starved or succumbed to the elements. The Winter temperatures here abouts are milder than up north, so the miners fared better. But, with the miners came the practiced ladies of the evening, sharp eyed gamblers and all other such rascals that wanted to feed off the miner’s success. The California Gold Rush had occurred but ten years earlier in 1849. It had drawn adventurers and gold seekers from around the world. Many of them drifted north, looking for another adventure.

The residue of all of this chicanery had left several waterfront establishments, kindly labeled as “saloons.
 Part gambling parlor, part whore-house and always an assembly of rascals, the stories of these places, and all of the characters in them, are both varied and colorful.

Staunton’s was but one of the palaces of pleasure. It sat astride a spot along the harbor shore, convenient to the emerging downtown area and available to any and all of the many ships that docked in its harbor, laden with hungry and thirsty sailors.

It is here that our story begins.

                                                           -30-

                                                    (647 words)

                                              Joseph Xavier Martin