@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Arts, Faculty of"@en, "Geography, Department of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "McCririck, Donna"@en ; dcterms:issued "2010-03-29T22:46:59Z"@en, "1981"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Master of Arts - MA"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """During its formative years Vancouver appeared to offer unusual; potential for land and home ownership to its blue collar workers. The coincidental growth of the city's streetcar system with that of the early population itself, gave settlers of moderate means greater housing choice than that available to workers in the older cities of central Canada. The large supply of residential land opened up by the streetcar favoured the spread of detached family homes in the suburbs, in contrast to the attached and semi-detached dwellings characteristic of the older pedestrian city, which housed many Canadian urban workers. The study examines the availability of residential land and the extent to which it benefitted Vancouver working men prior to 1914. Vancouver's early real estate market however, was subject to speculative swings which constrained opportunities for blue collar land ownership. Initially, virtually all residential land was in the hands of the C.P.R. and a few B.C. entrepreneurs who together, fostered a speculative land market in the city. The records of early land companies, and after 1900, the real estate pages of Vancouver dailies, record the rapidly rising price of residential land in workingmen's areas as investors and speculators traded blocks and further out, acreage, among themselves. Land prices dropped temporarily during the depression of the mid 1890s but tax sales and auctions mainly benefitted those with the capital to ride out economic malaise. During the massive wave of immigration between 1904 and 1913, rising urban land costs and speculation in suburban land were endemic to Canada's rapidly growing cities. In Vancouver however, land values rose faster than elsewhere, culminating in the real estate boom of 1909-12. During this period, economic security for many workers was precarious. Seasonal as well as cyclical unemployment was a feature of the city's lumber manufacturing and construction industries. A large Asian minority added to the general preponderance of single male migrants in the city produced a labour surplus; and high hourly wages were offset by the high costs of living in the city. As Vancouver's population climbed after 1904, suburban settlement began to take shape. Two residential areas which attracted workingmen--Hillcrest and Grandview, are examined in some detail to determine the nature of the settlement process and, where assessment rolls are available, early land holding patterns. In general, large areas of both suburbs were owned by investors/speculators until 1909. By 1912 almost half the lots in Grandview and Hillcrest still remained undeveloped although rooming houses and small apartment blocks could be found near the streetcar lines. Turnover among Grand-view residents was high and a large minority did not yet own homes, a reflection of the volatile land market in the city. With the exception of a few years during the late 1880s and early 1900s, the struggle for home ownership in Vancouver differed little from the struggle in most Canadian cities."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/23004?expand=metadata"@en ; skos:note "OPPORTUNITY AND THE WORKINGMAN: A STUDY OF LAND ACCESSIBILITY AND THE GROWTH OF BLUE COLLAR SUBURBS IN EARLY VANCOUVER by DONNA McCRIRICK B.A., The University of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1967 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Geography) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September 1981 © Donna McCririck, 1981 I n p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l m e n t o f t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r a n a d v a n c e d d e g r e e a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a , I a g r e e t h a t t h e L i b r a r y s h a l l m a k e i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r r e f e r e n c e a n d s t u d y . I f u r t h e r a g r e e t h a t p e r m i s s i o n f o r e x t e n s i v e c o p y i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r s c h o l a r l y p u r p o s e s m a y b e g r a n t e d b y t h e h e a d o f m y d e p a r t m e n t o r b y h i s o r h e r r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s . I t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t c o p y i n g o r p u b l i c a t i o n o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n s h a l l n o t b e a l l o w e d w i t h o u t m y w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . D e p a r t m e n t o f Q f l O °\\A(X.P^ T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a 2 0 7 5 W e s b r o o k P l a c e V a n c o u v e r , C a n a d a V 6 T 1W5 D a t e polo ho* )if ^ p*} DF-fi (2/79} ABSTRACT During i t s formative years Vancouver appeared to offer unusual; pot e n t i a l for land and home ownership to i t s blue c o l l a r workers. The coincidental growth of the c i t y ' s street-car system with that of the early population i t s e l f , gave s e t t l e r s of moderate means greater housing choice than that available to workers i n the older c i t i e s of central Canada. The large supply of r e s i d e n t i a l land opened up by the street-car favoured the spread of detached family homes in the suburbs, in contrast to the attached and semi-detached dwellings charac-t e r i s t i c of the older pedestrian c i t y , which housed many Cana-dian urban workers. The study examines the a v a i l a b i l i t y of r e s i d e n t i a l land and the extent to which i t benefitted Vancou-ver working men pr i o r to 1914. Vancouver's early r e a l estate market however, was subject to speculative swings which constrained opportunities for blue c o l l a r land ownership. I n i t i a l l y , v i r t u a l l y a l l r e s i d e n t i a l land was in the hands of the C.P.R. and a few B.C. entrepreneurs who together, fostered a speculative land market i n the c i t y . The records of early land companies, and after 1900, the re a l estate pages of Vancouver d a i l i e s , record the r a p i d l y r i s i n g price of r e s i d e n t i a l land in workingmen's areas as investors and speculators traded blocks and further out, acreage, among themselves. Land prices dropped temporari-l y during the depression of the mid 1890s but tax sales and auctions mainly benefitted those with the c a p i t a l to ride out economic malaise. During the massive wave of immigration between 1904 and 1913, r i s i n g urban land costs and speculation in suburban land were endemic to Canada's rapidly growing c i t i e s . In Vancouver however, land values rose faster than elsewhere, culminating in the r e a l estate boom of 1909-12. During t h i s period, economic security for many workers was precarious. Seasonal as well as c y c l i c a l unemployment was a feature of the c i t y ' s lumber manufacturing and construction industries. A large Asian minority added to the general preponderance of single male migrants i n the c i t y produced a labour surplus; and high hourly wages were of f s e t by the high costs of l i v i n g i n the c i t y . As Vancouver's population climbed a f t e r 1904, suburban settlement began to take shape. Two r e s i d e n t i a l areas which attracted workingmen--Hillcrest and Grandview, are examined in some d e t a i l to determine the nature of the settlement pro-cess and, where assessment r o l l s are available, early land holding patterns. In general, large areas of both suburbs were owned by investors/speculators u n t i l 1909. By 1912 a l -most h a l f the lo t s in Grandview and H i l l c r e s t s t i l l remained undeveloped although rooming houses and small apartment blocks could be found near the streetcar l i n e s . Turnover among Grand-view residents was high and a large minority did not yet own i v homes, a r e f l e c t i o n of the v o l a t i l e land market in the c i t y . With the exception of a few years during the late 1880s and early 1900s, the struggle for home ownership i n Vancouver d i f f e r e d l i t t l e from the struggle in most Canadian c i t i e s . V TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i i LIST OF TABLES v i i LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF MAPS x ACKNOWLEDGEMENT x i Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 Vancouver, 1886-1914: Introduction 1 Notes . 11 II. THE LAND MARKET ON VANCOUVER'S EAST SIDE, 1886-1912 13 The Concentration of Land Ownership, 1886-1893 ... 13 The Depression and the Land Market 22 Early Building Companies 33 The \"Blue C o l l a r \" Land Market After 1904 39 Building Companies and the Real Estate Boom, 1909-1912 44 Conclusion 46 Notes 48 III. THE WAGE EARNER AND THE URBAN ECONOMY OF EARLY VANCOUVER 52 Introduction: The Composition of the Labour Market, 1891-1911 52 The Labour Surplus 54 v i Employment Conditions 58 Wages 63 Livin g Costs i n Vancouver, 1900-1912 67 Housing Costs 73 Conclusion 80 Notes 83 IV. THE GROWTH OF WORKINGMEN'S SUBURBS: HILLCREST AND GRAND VIEW 87 Introduction 87 H i l l c r e s t 88 Grandview 100 Conclusion I l l Notes 114 V. CONCLUSION 117 Notes 128 BIBLIOGRAPHY 130 Books and Pamphlets 130 General 130 Vancouver, H i s t o r i c a l and Contemporary Literature 131 A r t i c l e s 133 Government Documents 134 Government of Canada 134 Province of B r i t i s h Columbia 134 City of Vancouver 135 Directories and Atlases 135 Newspapers arid Contemporary Journals 135 Thesis and Unpublished Papers 136 Personal and I n s t i t u t i o n a l Records 137 v i i LIST OF TABLES Number Page 2:1 Vancouver's Largest Property Owners by Assessed Value, 1886 15 2:2 Major Landowners on Vancouver's East Side, 1889.. 17 2:3 Major East Side Landowners i n Vancouver Transpor-tation and U t i l i t i e s , 1889 18 2:4 Prices of East Side Lots, 1886 and 1890 21 3:1 D i s t r i b u t i o n of the Labour Force - Vancouver, 1891, 1901, 1911 53 3:2 Employment Conditions i n Vancouver, 1905-1913: A Comparison of Rankings with Winnipeg and Toronto 61 3:3 Vancouver Hourly Wage Rates, 1891-1911 65 3:4 Annual Wages in Manufacturing i n Canadian C i t i e s , 1911 67 3:5 The Weekly Family Budget Index for Canadian C i t i e s , 1900, 1905 and 1912 69 3:6 Prices of Staple Commodities, Vancouver and Toronto - 1900, 1905 and 1910 71 3:7 A Comparison of Water Rates i n Three Canadian C i t i e s , 1900 - 1909 . 72 3:8 Prices of 33' Lots in Working Class Areas of Vancouver, 1903-1911 77 3:9 Price Ranges for Workingmen's Houses i n Vancouver and Suburbs, 1901-1911 77 3:10 Prices for Workingmen's Homes in Three Canadian C i t i e s , 1901-1911 79 ^ v i i i Number Page 4:1 Land Tenure i n H i l l c r e s t Sample--Main St. to Fraser between 16th and 19th Avenues 1897-1910 97 4:2 Occupancy Status of Lots, D.L. 301, Vancouver, 1912 98 4:3 Former Address of Grandview Residents, 1904-12 106 ix LIST OF FIGURES Number Page 2:1 Price L i s t of Property of Oppenheimer Bros., February, 1899 25 2:2 Vancouver Improvement Co'y Limited Property, Lots offered for sale in 1886 37 3:1 Average R e t a i l Prices i n Major C i t i e s of B.C., Manitoba and Ontario, 1900-1912 70 3:2 Rental Costs i n Toronto and Vancouver, 1900- 1912 76 3:3 House Prices.in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto, 1901- 1911 78 3:4 Wages for Motorman and Carpenter, Vancouver, 1901-1911 81 3:5 Lot Prices i n Vancouver, 1901-1911 81 4:1 Track Housing - Grandview, 1911 104 X LIST OF MAPS Number Page 2:1 Vancouver and Outlying Areas, 1886: Major Land Owners 14 2:2 Vancouver 1900 - Blue Collar Residential Areas 19 2:3 Vancouver Improvement Co. - Lots for Sale 1886 35 2:4 Developed Lots - 1889. . 35 4:1 The Suburbs of Grandview and H i l c r e s t , Vancouver 1912 89 4:2 Vancouver City. Plan of Subdivision of Lot 301, Group 1 91 4:3 H i l l c r e s t Landowners, 1897 94 4:4 H i l l c r e s t Landowners, 1904 94 4:5 H i l l c r e s t Landowners, 1910 94 4:6 H i l l c r e s t : Lots with Highest Turnover 1897-1910 96 4:7 Grandview, Density of Settlement, 1911 102 4:8 Previous Addresses of Grandview Sample, 1903-1912 107 4:9 New Addresses of Grandview Sample, 1905-1913 . 110 x i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would l i k e to thank my supervisor Graeme Wynn for his continuing encouragement and thoughtful assistance in the production of this thesis. 1 I s INTRODUCTION Vancouver, 1886-1914: Introduction In 1886 Granville Townsite, one of three sawmill set-tlements on Burrard Inlet established i n the mid-1860s, was incorporated as the City of Vancouver, the new P a c i f i c termi-nal of the Canadian P a c i f i c Railway (C.P.R.). As the new c i t y expanded, transportation and service a c t i v i t i e s eclipsed sawmilling as the centre of the l o c a l economy, yet Vancouver remained an investment hinterland rather than a regional metro-p o l i s . During the depression of the mid-1890s c i t y growth slowed and the number of r e a l estate boosters i n Vancouver dwindled, but the Klondike gold rush of 1897-98, together with mining development in the West Kootenays and expansion of the lumber market accompanying p r a i r i e settlement, brought new prosperity by the end of the century. By 1900 Vancouver's commercial and wholesale functions were firmly established and the c i t y had replaced V i c t o r i a as p r o v i n c i a l centre of banking, trade, and transportation. 1 Vancouver grew steadily but not remarkably u n t i l 1905 when a surge of population growth and a f l u r r y of con-struction a c t i v i t y marked the start of the c i t y ' s second land boom. A large scale westward migration from central 2 and eastern Canada, together with heavy immigration from B r i t a i n and, to a much smaller extent, continental Europe and Asia, produced unparalleled growth in the c i t y . Between 1906 and 1911, Vancouver's population doubled from almost 50,000 to over 100,000. This rapid growth together with the a n t i c i p a t i o n of further expansion following completion of the Panama Canal, culminated in the extravagant land boom of 1909-1912. During this period, i n d u s t r i a l a c t i v i t y ex-panded in the False Creek area of the c i t y and r e s i d e n t i a l development spread east and south of the older c i t y core. By 1914, Vancouver's metropolitan functions were well estab-lis h e d and i t s suburbs were open, i f not yet f i l l e d . The c i t y ' s f i r s t c r i t i c a l period of growth was over. Recent studies of Vancouver's development between 1886 and 1914 have focussed on the c i t y ' s e l i t e , stressed the extent to which a closely k n i t group of business leaders shaped the c i t y ' s early growth, and described the evolution of r e s i d e n t i a l Vancouver into westside/middle class and eastside/working class d i v i s i o n s . 2 A l l have emphasized the pervasive influence of the C.P.R. as major landowner, developer and employer on the c i t y ' s evolution. Generally, l i t t l e attention has been paid to the experience of wage earners in the early c i t y . In his study of Vancouver's West End e l i t e , Angus Robertson explains the i n s t i t u t i o n a l basis of power i n the c i t y and i t s manifestation i n s p a t i a l form; 3 he argues however, that pre-war Vancouver was \"a land of private opportunity\" for everyman. Like Deryck Holdsworth's work on house and home i n early Vancouver, Robertson's study stresses the value attached to suburban home ownership with-out questioning i t s r e a l i z a t i o n . Both writers assume that the opportunities available to wage earners i n Vancouver were merely a scaled down version of those available to the e l i t e . Edward Gibson has treated the developing c i t y as a r e f l e c t i o n of the b e l i e f s , values and p o l i t i c a l decisions of d i s t i n c t s o c i a l groups among the population. Gibson assumes that a l l s o c i a l groups had similar opportunity to shape the i r r e s i d e n t i a l landscape. In this view the white c o l l a r resident is concerned with order and v i s u a l coherence i n his neighbour-hood while the blue c o l l a r home owner i s highly i n d i v i d u a l i s t i c , unconcerned with the appearance of public space or (in some cases) his own front yard. Such a reading of the blue c o l l a r landscape vastly underestimates economic r e a l i t i e s at the l e v e l of both costs and wages, and discounts the influence of senior government, whose funding p o l i c i e s for such blue c o l l a r suburbs as H.illcrest (D.L. 301) and South Vancouver were less generous than those for the c i t y proper. The argu-ment that the white c o l l a r worker and the blue c o l l a r worker held d i s t i n c t l y d i f f e r e n t ideas about desirable housing and r e s i d e n t i a l space overlooks the question of d i f f e r e n t oppor-t u n i t i e s . 4 One writer who has recognized the economic r e a l i t i e s facing early Vancouver wage earners i s Robert Galois who examined the development of early Vancouver from the formal th e o r e t i c a l position of h i s t o r i c a l materialism. He sees the evolving urban landscape as the s p a t i a l expression of the s o c i a l inequality inherent i n capitalism. Thus Galois examines the roles of monopoly c a p i t a l (C.P.R.), the l o c a l bourgeoisie ( e l i t e ) , and the i r relationship with labour to explain the inequality of opportunity i n the c i t y . This study has brought the experience of the wage earner into the foreground, providing valuable information on wages, cost of l i v i n g and poverty i n the early c i t y but the focus on the tension between wage earner and c a p i t a l i s t precludes treatment of any comparative improvements i n the l i v e s of Vancouver 1s workers. After 1900 there was a re l e n t l e s s shortage of decent detached homes for blue c o l l a r workers i n the older c i t i e s of North America. 3 In Canada, the Labour Gazette recorded a similar housing shortage for the nation as a whole by the end of 1903.h While the si t u a t i o n varied from c i t y to c i t y , the housing shortage r e f l e c t e d both a lack of reasonably priced rental accommodation and increasing r e s t r a i n t s on blue c o l l a r home ownership. The housing shortage was most acute i n Montreal where over 80% of the population were tenants, 5 and the i n f l u x of immigrants to the i n d u s t r i a l c i t i e s of Ontario produced a similar and considerable pres-sure on the housing stock; and, as the price of urban land 5 rose rapidly, the rate of home ownership f e l l . 6 In contrast, the burgeoning c i t i e s of the West appear-ed to offe r new opportunity for wage earners to acquire t h e i r own homes. In this context, Vancouver's early period of growth bears comparison with that of Canada's older c i t i e s . As a new settlement i n a t h i n l y populated province, the growth rate of Vancouver i n the 1880s was not s i g n i f i c a n t l y d i f f e r e n t from that of Winnipeg ten years .earlier, or Toronto in the early 1800s. 7 Unlike these c i t i e s however, Vancouver's i n i t i a l growth came primarily from the i n f l u x of native born migrants (over 60% were Canadian born and over half that number were native to the province 8), with expectations based on experi-ence in the New World and a readiness to exploit the pote n t i a l of the f r o n t i e r c i t y . The r e a l estate boom accompanying th e i r a r r i v a l was abetted by the same generous lending p o l i -cies practised by l o c a l banks in V i c t o r i a i n the 1860s and Winnipeg i n the early 1880s. 9 For those with c a p i t a l or a l i n e of c r e d i t , urban r e a l estate was a popular speculative investment at a time when urban growth appeared to be as i n f i n i t e as i t was inevitable. Contemporary booster l i t e r a t u r e extolled Vancouver as a place of economic opportunity for everyman. Local p u b l i -cations such as B.C. Magazine and Saturday Sunset made extrav-agant claims for Vancouver's future, while the c i t y ' s d a i l i e s regularly issued \"Souvenir Edi t i o n s \" e x t o l l i n g Vancouver's economic progress. Underneath l o c a l pride however, were the insecurity and uncertainty of l i f e in a new and rapidly 6 changing environment, and the necessity to \" s e l l \" Vancouver to p o t e n t i a l residents and investors. Comparing contemporary re a l estate pages of Canada's major d a i l y newspapers, one is struck by the difference between the f r a n t i c claims made by western re a l t o r s and the more restrained [advertising] copy appearing i n Toronto papers. The c i t i e s of Canada's far West were a product of the transportation technology of the late nineteenth century. Vancouver emerged at a time when r a i l l i n e s spanned a c o n t i -nent and streetcar tracks expanded the c i t y . As a creation of the C.P.R., Vancouver was i n a sense, an embodiment of the urban East, r e f l e c t i n g the i n s t i t u t i o n s of older Canadian c i t i e s . Vancouver's new entrepreneurs, for example, quickly formed e l i t e groups remarkably similar to th e i r counterparts 'back E a s t , ' 1 0 shaping the s o c i a l landscape of the c i t y , in f a m i l i a r forms. The implementation of a streetcar system by 1890, however, produced d i s t i n c t i v e features in Vancouver's r e s i d e n t i a l growth. The c i t y ' s morphology was, generically, modern as suburbs defined by streetcar l i n e s were l a i d down in a n t i c i p a t i o n of, rather than in response to, settlement, in l o c a l i t i e s determined by large and i n f l u e n t i a l property owners who frequently held positions in l o c a l government. Thus, large tracts of forest were made available for r e s i -dential use and clusters of wood frame cottages soon rose over the rough cleared landscape i n a manner unfamiliar i n the older, r e s i d e n t i a l l y compressed s i t e s of eastern and central Canada. 7 The extent to which this t e r r i t o r i a l expansion c r i -t i c a l l y lowered the threshold of access to land for the ordinary resident of the c i t y remains to be determined. In 1912, a s o c i a l survey of Vancouver undertaken by the Methodist and Presbyterian churches i d e n t i f i e d three d i s t i n c t \" s o c i a l grades\" i n the c i t y : the business and pro-fessional class, the artisan or man of moderate means, and the immigrant c l a s s . 1 1 The l a t t e r included over f i f t e e n percent of the c i t y ' s population and was composed of Chinese, Japanese, I t a l i a n s , a small Scandinavian contingent and some central Europeans. For this group, economic opportunity was sought by setting the entire family to work, by leaving wife and family behind, or by crowding fellow immigrants into the home as lodgers. Confined to Vancouver's \"immigrant quarter\" i n the East End, this group generally l i v e d i n unsa-n i t a r y , substandard housing. Yet i t must be recognized that such housing conditions were not r e s t r i c t e d to the non-English speaking population. Among the 5094 household heads enumerated in a 1913 survey of Vancouver's immigrant quarter, thirty-two .percent were B r i t i s h born and another twenty-one percent Canadian or American b o r n . 1 2 The greatest part of Vancouver 1s urban society was comprised of the 'man of moderate means.1 This group included wage earners i n s k i l l e d or semi-skilled trades, and those in modest non-manual occupations, such as postman, conductor or r e t a i l clerk, as well as the lower middle-class of foremen, inspectors, o f f i c e workers and small shop keepers. 1 3 As 8 Vancouver's suburban landscape took shape after 1900, this group occupied the r e s i d e n t i a l suburbs east and south of False Creek where house and land costs were generally lower than those i n the middle-class suburbs to the west.11* (Map 2:1, p. 15) In 1911, three out of four Vancouver residents were newcomers to the province, carrying with them the mixed bag- . gage of aspirations and expectations which accompanied new-comers everywhere. Migrants were a select population group, many with mental or material resources superior to those of t h e i r counterparts \"back home.\"15 Those who met with disappointment or f a i l u r e tended to leave the c i t y , producing l i t t l e or no record of the i r experiences, while many of those who stayed and prospered might have fared as well in many another Canadian c i t y . In any event, the experiences of Vancouver working men i n the years before 1914 cannot be determined from the contemporary rhetoric of c i t y boosterism. Attention must be turned to the r e a l i t i e s of speculation, l i v i n g costs and employment opportunities in order to under-stand the nature of opportunity offered to men of moderate means in the burgeoning c i t y . Because the notion of opportunity has been frequently coupled with the control of land, chapter II of this inquiry into working man's Vancouver examines the r e s i d e n t i a l land market i n the eastern r e s i d e n t i a l area of the c i t y . Here the pattern of land ownership for the c i t y ' s early years (1886-1891) i s explored, along with the subsequent ef f e c t . of the depression of the mid 1890s on thi s i n i t i a l land holding pattern. Discussion of the early r e s i d e n t i a l land market focusses on a c c e s s i b i l i t y and choice; the role of early b u i l d -ing companies in the provision of homesites and/or houses for workers i s b r i e f l y examined; the changes in the land market around 1900 and f i n a l l y , during the c r i t i c a l period of Van-couver's population growth between 1905-1913 are evaluated. In the absence of most assessment r o l l s for t h i s period, quan-t i t a t i v e proof of changing land ownership and land values is piecemeal; nevertheless broad trends in the working class land market are uncovered. Chapter III examines the economic conditions which supported blue c o l l a r l i f e and home ownership in Vancouver. After a b r i e f review of the c i t y ' s developing urban economy, a discussion of the size and nature of the labour market i s counterposed with an analysis of employment conditions. The cost of l i v i n g in Vancouver, 1901-1912, i s examined with par-t i c u l a r emphasis on the cost of home ownership. F i n a l l y , the cost of housing w i l l be put into national perspective by comparing house and land costs in the c i t y and i t s suburbs with those i n Winnipeg and Toronto. A study of the economic r e a l i t i e s which confronted wage earners i n Vancouver provides one perspective on urban development, but a f u l l e r understanding of the working man's experience in the c i t y must include some closer observations of settlement patterns. Therefore chapter IV focusses on the growth of two Vancouver's blue c o l l a r suburbs. Near 10 complete assessment r o l l s for one suburb provide a view of changing land ownership patterns and property turnover for a f i f t e e n year period. For both areas, the changing rate and size of settlement are i d e n t i f i e d less precisely from c i t y d i r e c t o r i e s . Photographs and f i r e insurance atlases together provide a glimpse of the kind of houses purchased by wage earners and their density in the suburban landscape. Housing tenure i s examined, and a study of r e s i d e n t i a l mobil-i t y among these new suburbanites suggests a further dimen-sion of the settlement experience in the early c i t y . Through-out this study, then, c i t y building i s viewed from the stand-point of i t s carpenters instead of i t s architects. NOTES Chapter I •\"•Summing up th i s f i r s t stage of Vancouver's growth, Robert McDonald states, \"Railroad and r e a l estate interests rather than wholesale merchants, lumbermen or salmon canners were Vancouver's i n i t i a l c i t y - b u i l d e r s . \" R. McDonald, \"City-Building i n the Canadian West: A Case Study of Economic Growth in Early Vancouver, 1886-93,\" B.C. Studies, No. 43, Autumn, 1979. 2See E.M.W. Gibson, \"The Impact of Social B e l i e f on Landscape Change: A Geographical Study of Vancouver,\" Ph.D. diss., U.B.C., Vancouver, 1972; D.W. Holdsworth, \"House and Home in Vancouver: Images of West Coast Urbanism, 1886-1929\" in G. Stelter and A.J.F. A r t i b i s e , eds., The Canadian City, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart), 1977; A. Robertson, \"The Pursuit of Power, P r o f i t and Privacy: A Study of Vancouver's West End E l i t e , 1886-1914,\" M.A. Thesis, U.B.C., Vancouver, 1977; and R. Galois, \"Social Structure in Space: The Making of Vancouver, 1886-1901\" Ph.D. diss., S.F.U., Burnaby, 1979. 3Sam B. Warner, J r . , The Urban Wilderness,(New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 19. \"Labour Gazette, Vol. IV, pp.. 367-380. 5Terry Copp, The Anatomy of Poverty, Working Class Montreal, 1897-1929, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), p. 70. 6 I n Toronto, a minority of homes in the blue c o l l a r areas of the c i t y were occupied by th e i r owners in 1914. M.J. Piva, The Condition of the Working Class in Toronto, 1900-21, (Ottawa: U. of Ottawa Press, 1979), p. 125. The demands of newly arrived immigrants for rental housing and the movement of longer se t t l e d wage earners to the suburbs beyond the c i t y may p a r t l y explain the low rate of home ownership in the c i t y proper. 12 7Norbert MacDonald, \"Population Growth and Change in Seattle and Vancouver, 1880-1960,\" in J. Friesen and H.K. Ralston, H i s t o r i c a l Essays on B r i t i s h Columbia, (Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 1976), p. 204. 8The proportion of native born was 62.4%.for 1891 and 61.3% for 1901; B.C. born made up 33.4% in 1981 and 36.9% in 1901. Census of Canada, Vol. I, 1891 and 1901. 9 V i c t o r Ross, A History of the Canadian Bank of Com-merce , Vol. 1, (Toronto-! Oxford University Press, 1920) , and R.C. Bellan, Winnipeg F i r s t Century: An Economic History, (Winnipeg: Queehston House, 19/8), p. 20. 1 0J.M.S. Careless, \"Aspects of Urban L i f e i n the West,: 1870-1914,\" in Stelter and A r t i b i s e , eds., The Canadian City, p. 136. 1 1Vancouver > B.C., A Preliminary and General Social Survey, 1912, The Methodist and Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, 1912, p. 11. 1 2B.C. Federationist, October 3, 1913, p. 7. This survey included the area bounded by Gore and Campbell avenues, Cordova Street and False Creek, deliberately excluding China-town whose inhabitants were seen as i n c o r r i g i b l e heathens. 1 3 T h i s broad c l a s s i f i c a t i o n of \"ordinary f o l k \" i s recognized as forming a legitimate entity by urban socio l o g i s t s who have found that the economic status, values, and behaviour of one stratum merge very gradually into another, forming a discernible urban community. Marc Fried, The World of the Urban Working Class(Cambridge ,: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973) 1 \"*West side suburbs such as K i t s i l a n o were not ex-c l u s i v e l y white c o l l a r , just as the east side of the c i t y contained some wealthy residents. The s o c i a l sorting of the c i t y was not r i g i d , nevertheless the east-west d i v i s i o n had c l e a r l y been set. The category, \"blue c o l l a r suburb\" i s used in. this study to indicate r e s i d e n t i a l areas of the c i t y where blue c o l l a r households predominated. 1 5 E r i c k s o n has investigated the backgrounds of various immigrant groups and individual p e r s o n a l i t i e s , as revealed in records of family correspondence. She found d i s t i n c t i v e t r a i t s in her subjects which bore strongly upon t h e i r s e t t l i n g experience i n 19th century North America. C. Erickson, I n v i s i b l e Immigrants, (London: Leicester Univ. Press, 1972). 13 II. THE LAND MARKET ON VANCOUVER'S EAST SIDE, 1886-1912 The Concentration of Land Onwership: 1886-1893 At the incorporation of Vancouver, 1886, v i r t u a l l y a l l c i t y and suburban land was owned by the C.P.R.1 and a handful of entrepreneurs from New Westminster and V i c t o r i a (Map 2:1, p. 14). For making Vancouver the western terminus of the railway, the p r o v i n c i a l government granted the C.P.R. the central t h i r d of the downtown peninsula, half the suburban land south of False Creek to the c i t y boundary, and 4,000 acres south of the c i t y l i m i t s . In addition, private landown-ers to the west and east of Granville Townsite relinquished one-third of their holdings to the railway company. The C.P.R. concentrated on the commercial and i n d u s t r i a l development of the c i t y centre and the creation of an e l i t e r e s i d e n t i a l d i s t r i c t in the.West End. With the exception of \"Yaletown,\" a blue c o l l a r enclave housing railway yard workers, working class r e s i d e n t i a l areas generally grew on land outside the C.P.R.'s domain, i n the eastern and south eastern portions of the c i t y . These areas were owned i n i t i a l l y by a few large speculators. 15 The importance of these early property owners i s i n d i -cated by the assessed values of their holdings.(Table 2:1). With the exception of Morton, Brighouse and Hailstone, who together owned approximately two-thirds of the West End, the c i t y ' s largest landowners controlled almost the entire area destined to house the c i t y ' s workers. The Hastings Sawmill was the main landowner in the East End - Vancouver's f i r s t r e s i d e n t i a l d i s t r i c t ; c o n t r o l l i n g interest in the m i l l was shared between London and San Francisco investors, but a large minority of shareholders (37%-47%) were l o c a l businessmen, active in the Vancouver land market as owners of r e a l estate and development companies. 2 One shareholder, David Oppenheimer, was the largest private landowner i n the c i t y . About three quarters of Oppenheimer 1s land holdings were on the c i t y ' s east side, with the heaviest concentration south of False Creek TABLE 2:1. Vancouver's Largest Property Owners by Assessed Value, 1886 C.P.R. $ 1,000,000 Hastings Sawmill 250,000 David Oppenheimer 125,000 Brighouse & Hailstone 100,000 I.W. Powell 75,000 C.T. Dupont 75,000 J. Morton 60,000 M.V. Edmonds 50,000 J.W. Home 40,000 Source: M. Picken, City of Vancouver, Terminus of the C.P.R., 1887. 16 in an area l a t e r to become the blue c o l l a r suburb of Mount Pleasant. I.W. Powell and C.T. Dupont were the other major east side landowners of this period. In the 1870s and early 1880s both men amassed vast land holdings east and south east of the Granville Townsite. Unlike Oppenheimer, Powell and Dupont continued to l i v e in V i c t o r i a while maintaining th e i r Vancouver property interests. F i f t h in importance among east side landowners was H.V. Edmonds, a New Westminster merchant who, in 1869-70, had pre-empted approximately 600 acres of land l y i n g immediately south of False Creek, along the West-minster Road which linked Vancouver and New Westminster. Thus four men along with a dozen or so m i l l shareholders controlled east side property whose value was assessed at some 55% of that ascribed to the C.P.R.'s vast holdings. This marked concentration of land ownership in the c i t y led to a rapid i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z a t i o n of Vancouver's s o c i a l (and commercial) geography. With the p o l i t i c a l and f i n a n c i a l support of the C.P.R., prominent east side landowners brought water, gas and e l e c t r i c i t y to the c i t y ' s r e s i d e n t i a l areas, and through the promotion and location of street railway tracks, determined settlement patterns. Table 2:2 (p. 17) shows the major east side landowners on the 1889 assessment r o l l s , while Table 2.3,(p. 18) shows the connections between these taxpayers and the c i t y ' s transportation and u t i l i t y companies. Through positions in Vancouver's leading r e a l estate firms -- Oppenheimer Bros., Rand Bros., Innis and Tatlow, Robertson and Co., Edmonds and Webster -- and their TABLE 2:2. Major* Landowners on Vancouver's East Side, 1889 City area: East End North End Grandview Mt.Pleasant H i l l Crest Cedar Cottage D i s t r i c t l o t s : 196,181-82 183-84 264A 302,200A 301 195 C. P.R. Hastings M i l l s Van. Improve-ment Co. D. Oppenheimer I.W. Powell C. T. Dupont R.G. Tatlow D. R. Harris G. A. Keefer Innis & Tatlow I.Robertson H. V. Edmonds CD. Rand Re i l l e y & Prevost *\"Major' Sources: / ./ / / (/) landowners were those owning four or more blocks of land within one d i s t r i c t l ot, City of Vancouver, Assessment Rolls, 1889. The ownership of land in some eastside suburban areas is documented i n Robertson & Co., Real Estate L i s t i n g s , 1890, Add. Mss. 19, CVPA. 18 TABLE 2:3. Major. East Side Landowners in Vancouver Transportation a n d ~ U t i l i t i e s , 18?9 Vancouver Water Works, 1886 Vancouver Gas, Co., 1887 Vancouver E l e c t r i c Illuminating, Co., 1887 Vancouver E l e c t r i c Railway and Light Co., 1889 G.A. Keefer, Director D.R. Harris, Chairman CD. Rand, Secretary G.A. Keefer, Chairman D. Oppenheimer, Director CD. Rand, Trustee Westminster and Vancouver Tramway, Co., 1890 H.V. Edmonds, Director D. Oppenheimer, Pro-moter Source: M. Picken, compiler, City of Vancouver, Terminus of the Canadian P a c i f i c Railway, Vancouver, 1887. directorships in Vancouver's major development company, The Vancouver Improvement Co., 3 these large land holders were able to shape the evolving r e s i d e n t i a l landscape of the c i t y (Map 2:2, p. 19). Furthermore the major land promoters and r e a l -tors in the c i t y maintained close l i n k s with the c i t y ' s f i n a n c i a l i n s t i t u t i o n s . The Vancouver agent for The B.C. Land and Investment Agency, the province's largest r e a l estate firm and a major landowner in South Vancouver,1* R.G. Tatlow, also served as Vice-president of Vancouver Loan, Trust, Sav-ings and Guarantee, Co. and acted as agent for Oppenheimer Bros. F i n a l l y , David Oppenheimer's p o l i t i c a l influence as alderman (1887-88) and major (1888-91) and J.W. Home's par-t i c i p a t i o n i n both c i v i c and p r o v i n c i a l p o l i t i c s , f a c i l i t a t e d VANCOUVER - 1900 B l u e C o l l a r R e s i d e n t i a l A r e a s C e d a r C o t t a g e C o l l i n g w o o d MUNICIPALITY OF SOUTH VANCOUVER MAP 2:2 20 the hegemony of this land owning e l i t e . Many contemporary observers were c r i t i c a l of the c i t y ' s large landowners and protested the power they held. In 1885 the Port Moody Gazette deplored the actions of Oppenheimer and his 'Coal Harbour Syndicate' in gaining control of Hastings Sawmill property. 5 The Vancouver News Advertiser l a t e r con-demned Oppenheimer and his p o l i t i c a l friends as the \"specula-tive and jobbing element\" who promote unstable growth for personal advantage. 6 Oppenheimer was c r i t i c i z e d for his dual role as mayor and president of the Westminster and Vancouver Tramway Co.. Partly in response to t h i s c r i t i c i s m , the c i t y ' s leading r e a l estate promoters Home, Rand and Oppenheimer formed The Daily Telegram to express th e i r point of view. One h i s t o r i a n of 19th' century Vancouver, R.J.M. McDonald, has described the years between 1886 and 1892 as an era of exaggerated expectations; 7 for the c i t y ' s business e l i t e , much of this expectation was r e f l e c t e d i n heavy investment in urban land, and between at least 1887 and 1889, considerable turn- -over among the c i t y ' s prominent landowners. 8 Property l i s t i n g s for small r e s i d e n t i a l l o t s in the c i t y ' s East End indicate the rapidly r i s i n g prices between 1886 and 1890 and suggest the presence of speculation i n undeveloped land (Table 2:4, p. 21). Among the undeveloped l o t s for which comparative l i s t i n g s are available, prices of the cheapest l o t s showed the greatest rate of increase. Developed l o t s increased i n price far less than undeveloped l o t s as the cost of housing rose only f r a c t i o n a l l y i n comparison to the cost of land. 21 TABLE 2: 4. Prices of East Side Lots, 1886 and 1890 D East End Vancouver T - 1 0 1 r \\c\\r Improvement Co. .L. 181 & 196 r 1886 Robertson & Co. 1890 % increa B l . 49, 1. 39 $ 160.00 $ 650.00 406 B l . 50, 1. 36 37 38 325.00 325.00 325.00 1,000.00 1,000.00 1,000.00 308 308 308 Bl . 56, 1. 6 625.00 1,000.00 160 1. 7 625.00 1,000.00 160 Bl . 75, 1. 20 300.00 425.00 142 1. 21 300.00 425.00 142 Bl . 72, 1. 19 300.00 . 650.00 217 B l . 79, 1. 3 100.00 420.00 420 1. 4 100.00 420.00 420 1. 5 100.00 420.00 420 B l . 42, 1.6 (house) 2,000.00 3,000.00 150 Bl . 68, 1.26 1 (house 1,325.00 1,700.00 128 B l . 60, 1.32, 33 (house) 2,900.00 4,200.00 145 Bl . 40, 1.19,20,21 (2 houses) 3,500.00 6,500.00 186 Although the price of r e s i d e n t i a l property near the downtown core rose most markedly in the late 1880s, suburban lo t s were not cheap. Fueled by the rhetoric of promoters who predicted a population of 200,000 for Vancouver by 1900, and the relocation of the province's l e g i s l a t i v e buildings to the slopes of Mount Pleasant, 9 a l l r e a l estate values soared. As early as 1892 The Vancouver News Advertiser alleged that the \"high cost\" of property in the c i t y was \"discouraging the i n d u s t r i a l and middle classes who wished to buy homes for 22 themselves.\" 1 0 Prices for uncleared l o t s in the Grandview area, subdivided in 1888, were, indeed, r e l a t i v e l y high i n 1890. When a labourer might have earned as much as $450.00 a year i f he had f u l l , well paying' employment, 1 1 25' l o t s on Graveley St. and 1st Avenue, one mile south of the street-car terminus at Clarke and Keefer, were priced at $200.00 each, while nearly a mile further east, a pair of l o t s were available for $125.00 each. In the south east corner of the d i s t r i c t , two miles from public transporation, two l o t s were l i s t e d at $90.00 each. 1 2 Moreover these l i s t i n g s were excep-t i o n a l in that the majority of Grandview l o t s handled by the rea l estate firm of Robertson and Co. were sold in blocks or, less frequently, parcels of 4-8 l o t s . That th i s practice favoured speculative investment i s perhaps r e f l e c t e d in the common response to v i s i t o r s who remarked on the large amount of unsettled land in Vancouver: \"oh, i t i s t i e d up by specula-t o r s . \" 1 3 The Depression and the Land Market Economic depression in 1893 c u r t a i l e d r i s i n g land prices, but did not end land speculation. In that year J.W. Home, C. Rand and H.T. Ceperley, promoters of the Vancouver E l e c t r i c Railway and Light Co.,11* extended t h e i r streetcar l i n e along Ve^'ables and down Park, opening up the forested Grandview area for settlement. Despite the economic downturn 23 (see chap. I l l ) l o t s in this area maintained t h e i r e a r l i e r prices, ranging between $175.00-$300.00 each, in the summer of 1894. 1 5 There were very few buyers. One prominent r e a l estate firm, unable to at t r a c t buyers, admitted that i t s prices for half a dozen l o t s i n the north east corner of Grandview were i n f l a t e d , 'noting, \"These are our old prices and perhaps i f s p l i t in half would be more l i k e r i g h t p r i c e s . \" 1 6 A l l six l o t s were subsequently sold to one buyer, presumably at a reduced pr i c e . By the end of the year, i t was clear that a small number of buyers were acquiring a diverse c o l l e c -tion of suburban l o t s at bargain p r i c e s . 1 7 Revealingly the largest buyer at a tax sale of Mount Pleasant and Grandview property was the c i t y ' s leading landowner, J.W. Home, who purchased almost 40% of the 284 l o t s offered for sale. A dozen other bidders purchased v i r t u a l l y a l l of the remaining property. Apart from Oppenheimer, none of them had been large land holders during the boom years. The press labeled the sale \"a poor man's sale\" because of the very low s e l l i n g prices (many l o t s were priced under $25.00), but judging by the extent of ind i v i d u a l purchases, there were no \"poor men\" taking advantage of these price s . Rather the land f e l l into the hands of petty c a p i t a l i s t s such as E. Odium and J. Banfield, a l o c a l r e a l t o r : both men owned many small parcels of land scattered in the Grandview and Mount Pleasant areas of the c i t y . During the municipal sale, Banfield purchased another 38 l o t s , and Odium, at least two dozen l o t s . 24 Through 1895-96, the land market remained stagnant but bargain prices were rare except in tax sales. Property changed hands between speculators. David Oppenheimer, for example, purchased 9.4 acres in the Cedar Cottage area from one of the c i t y ' s leading r e a l t o r s for $3,000.00. 1 8 In the daily press, a few advertisements offered acreage in the municipality of South Vancouver at low prices for those in the f i n a n c i a l p osition to take advantage. 1 9 At the end of 1895, The Monetary Times cautioned potential investors in Vancouver r e a l estate, There i s ... far too large an aggregate of indiv-idual indebtedness i n ... unproductive, mainly unimproved r e a l property. ... in pure speculation, either in the form of wild land or vacant town l o t s . 2 0 The depression may have reduced the number of those who could afford to enter the land market, but i t had evidently not ended land speculation. As the c i t y emerged from the depression, land prices rose very s l i g h t l y . By the end of the decade commercial land in the center of the c i t y and r e s i d e n t i a l property in the adjacent West and East Ends were offered at prices similar to or higher than those asked on equivalent properties In 1890. The property l i s t of Oppenheimer Bros., 1899 (Fig. 2:1, pp. 25-27) indicates t h i s trend while showing some drop in land prices on the outskirts of the c i t y . In the East End, two adjacent corner l o t s were offered for $75.00 and $100.00 in 1891; 2 1 one block south, two similar corner l o t s (182j) were l i s t e d at $185.00 and $235.00 by Oppenheimer 25 17 7A Fig- 2:1 February, 1S99. Block i 5 16 4 i 53 54 55 57 58 59 60 Block I Price List of Property of Oppenheimer Bros. Limited Liability. Tliis Price List is Subject to Change Without Notice. F o r terms and fur ther pa r t i cu la rs a p p l y t o — M A H O N M c F A R L A N D & M A H O N , LTD. LTY., 541 H a s t i n g s Street , or R. (3. T A T L O W , B a n k of B . C. B u i l d i n g , General Agents. Lot 12 13 I 2 8 15 5 5 6 .24 25 33 35 2S 2 2+ 1 24 2 26 27 28 Lot I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 0 10 11 12 13 ( T h : Subdivision 185. Street S e a t o n P e n d e r \" N o r t h e r l y x4 of \" '. \" Yi of B e a c h A v e n u e ~/i o f . • ..yi o f . . G e o r g i a . . . j N . W . 60 ft. of. ) W a t e r f ront j . N . W . 32 ft. of I \" • . . . . ; . . s . E . 46 ft. o f f A l b e r n i .66 ft. of j \" .. . . N . W . 49J4 ft. of j R o b s o n \" cor. B i d w e l l B a r c l a y , cor. C a r d e r o N e l s o n . C o m o x . . P e n d r e l l Subdivision 196. Street A l e x a n d e r Price $ 4 , 0 0 0 1,500 6 0 O 500 2,500 2, OOO 2, IOO 2 , 0 0 0 800 1 , 0 0 0 900 750 75° 1 , 0 0 0 75° 750 2,400 Price y $ 75,000 is p r o p e r t y h a s 3 2 5 feet f r o n t a g e o n the h a r b o r a n d for s a m e d i s t a n c e o n the m a i n l i n e o f the C . P . R . , b o u n d e d b y A l e x a n d e r S t . o n the s o u t h s ide a n d C a r r a l l S t . o n t h e west s i d e , a n d is t o be s o l d en b l o c . ) Block 6 11 15 11 15 21 25 Lot 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 40 4 1 42 24 25 26 27 28 29 38 39 18 19 34 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 14 Subdivision 196—continued. Street Price P o w e l l R e s e r v ' d \" Rese rv 'd \" '. 2,20O \" 2,200 \" 2,7.00 \" 2,2O0 \" 2,200 Oppenhe imer . . H a s t i n g s E a s t . P r i n c e s s K e e f e r ' ' B a r n a r d . P r i o r . . .. 7,000 1.2,500 1,100 1,100 1,100 7,000 700 700 750 450 6,600 W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . 525 1,600 1,600 1,600 Block 23 24 Ulock 2 3 4 6 10 3 ' 4 43 5 9 10 12 19 26 33 35 Fig. 2:1 Con f d . .Subdivision 1 9 0 — c o n t i n u e d . Street W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . Lot - Price 24 25 26 27 28 29 3° 3 i 32 33 34 35 36 ( T o be »old en b l o c , but m a y be s o l d s e p a r a t e l y i f s o l d f r o m the n o r t h e n d o n l y , at $ 7 5 per f ront f t . ) J- $ 20,000 Lot 4 12 13 H 28 . 3 1 3 4 5 1 2 9 1 2 24 25 9 12 19 20 I 3 13 15 16 2 3 7 J 4 15 16 12 13 H 15 23 24 1 3 W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . i, 100 1,100 Subdivis ion 2()0;i. Street Price F r o n t $ C o r . W e s t m i n s t e r A v e . ) F r o n t . W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e [ Du f fe r i n L o m e . L a n s d o w n e . 5th A v e n u e . 6th A v e n u e . 575 1,500 365 265 1,000 315 315 250 1,000 625 2,500 365 425 425 265 235 2 3 5 365 275 275 275 325 275 275 275 • 275 275 3?5 800 525 375 325 Block 26 30 31 36 48 26 17 Q O A S u b d i v i s i o n U O O J I — c o n t i n u e d . Block Lot Street Trice 35 15 7th A v e n u e S ~ 300 16 *' 350 46 15 8th A v e n u e 325 if> \" 3''5 48 6 f * \" 3«o j 1 * \" 300 s i * \" 300 17 [ * 9th A v e n u e 350 ( • S e l l en b lurts , i f p o s s i b l e . ) Lot I 2 3 4 5 6 7 S 9 10 11 i 2 ' 3 ' 4 I s 16 I 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 S 9 10 11 ] 2 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 J 4 J 5 16 ( C l e Subdivision ,'f(.)2. Street 9th A v e n u e l o t h A v e n u e ( F u l l b l o c k . C l e a r e d . ) W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . . 11 .tli A v e n u e . 12th A v e n u e . 13th A v e n u e . W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . 14th A v e n u e 7,500 475 425 425 425 425 475 2,800 110 5,000 a m i , g r u b b e d u n d g r a d e d . S t r e a m o f l i v i n g w a t e r . ) Block 49 L o t I Fig. 2:1 Cont'd. S u b d i v i s i o n J J O - — c o n t i n n e d . Struct W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . 1 27 53 6 i 6 3 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5 9 11 12 16 17 1 14th A v e n u e . 15th A v e n u e ( - P r e f e r t u s e l l e n b l o c . ) 17th A v e n u e W e s t m i n s t e r A v e n u e . i S t h A v e n u e . 15th A v e n u e . S 1,000 160 160 160 160 160 210 210 105 i ° 5 105 105 105 105 160 105 160 Subdivis ion 1\\)2. A n U n d i v i d e d 33^3 A c r e s Subdivision 26-ia. Block 92 Price 31 acres $ ' ( R e n t e d for 10 y e a r s at $ 1 0 0 a y e a r . ) 1 1 0 I 7 4 E 58 68 154 A 4-J- acres. 16011 4 I acres. 1601; 4-J- acres. 167^ 4-A- acres. 1 66 A 1661; Clock \"2 s L o t 17 3 6 Subdivision lS23c. Street 7,000 i»75° 2,000 250 ,800 ,800 ,800 ,800 900 475 475 Price $ 800 350 350 Block L o t 313 20 3 H r 7 Block Lot I I 1 12 17 \" J I S Block L o t 24 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 S 9 10 11 12 31 11 12 Subdivision 52(i. Street S u b d i v i s i o n ISod. Street Subdivision l S 2 j . Street Subdivision 3.1)5. I'rue $ 450 450 Price S 1,200 300 2 3 5 n f Q 160 625 Pricti - 5 1,300 105 235 ^5TVd!V acres § 17,500 P a r t of B l o c k 36, T o w n s h i p I T , N e w W e s t m i n s t e r D i s t r i c t ( L a n g l e y P r a i r i e ) , k n o w n as the O p p e n -he imer F a r m , and c o n t a i n i n g 172 acres, w i t h a l l bu i l d i ngs and i m p r o v e m e n t s the reon . $65 per ac. L o t 834, G r o u p 1, N e w W e s t m i n s t e r D i s t r i c t ( L y n n C r e e k ) , con ta in ing 58 acres, water power . $ 1,000 Mission City. B l o c k 153, L o t 1 $. \\ 28 Bros, in 1899. In northern Grandview, C.G. Major l i s t e d his l o t s i n : the f i v e blocks between Power and Harris, at $150.00-$300.00, in 1891 2 2 while Oppenheimer Bros, were asking $160.00-$315.00 (183d) in the same area, eight years l a t e r . As i n 1890, suburban property in the southeastern periphery of the c i t y was s t i l l being sold in blocks. Prices were s t i l l de-pressed: Oppenheimer had purchased land i n suburban Cedar Cottage (195) for $325/acre i n 1895; his 1899 s e l l i n g price was $205/acre. In Grandview, land located one-half mile from a proposed streetcar l i n e , and one and a hal f miles from the exi s t i n g l i n e sold for $500/acre in 1890, but $400/acre in 1899. By the turn of the century, the price of individual l o t s in working class suburbs had returned to former boom time l e v e l s , while the cheapest land s t i l l remained undivided and therefore, beyond the price range of many wage earners. The collapse of the land boom in the early 1890s pre-c i p i t a t e d a breakdown i n the concentration of land ownership in the c i t y . Powell and Dupont had sold off much of th e i r Vancouver property before 1890. In 1890, Edmonds put up for sale most of his property (half of D.L. 200A and a l l of D.L. 301) i n the Mount Pleasant area of the c i t y . Among the dozen largest east side land owners i n 1889, only four: Oppenheimer, Rand, Tatlow and Innis reappeared among the c i t y ' s 16 \"impor-tant\" r e a l estate promoters for 1890-93. 2 3 Over the next decade Innis became increasingly involved with the promotion of r e a l estate in the i n t e r i o r of the province and Tatlow widened his business interests to include manufacturing and 29 wholesale trade. By 1904 only Rand remained among the dominant names i n Vancouver r e a l estate. 2 1* Many speculators who had over extended themselves during the land boom were forced to s e l l o f f th e i r land at the municipal auctions i n order to offset losses from property sold on worthless agreements. 2 5 Other speculators — Banfield, McFarland, Ceperley, Rand and Oppenheimer attended and l a t e r p r o f i t e d from the same sales. For instance, Oppenheimer Bros, l i s t e d l o t s in Mount Pleasant (200A) for $275.00 in February 1899; municipal tax sale records show that Oppenheimer paid $16.20 for a couple of these l o t s four years e a r l i e r . 2 6 Oppen-heimer died in 1899, but the others gained prominence in the l o c a l r e a l estate market afte r the turn of the century. None of these men however would own Vancouver land on the scale of t h e i r predecessors, or, more important, exercise the same control of the c i t y ' s r e s i d e n t i a l development. Throughout the depression however, David Oppenheimer maintained an active role buying and s e l l i n g property through his r e a l estate firm, Oppenheimer B r o s . 2 7 In 1897, the r e a l estate assets of Oppenheimer Bros, t o t a l l e d $335,000.00, nearly three times the value of their assets ten years e a r l i e r (Table 2:1, p. 15). Approximately one t h i r d of this land was east side r e s i d e n t i a l land. With the recovery of the urban economy, Oppenheimer managed to s e l l approximately one-t h i r d of his land holdings by October, 1899. At least some of t h i s property was sold to pay o f f debts incurred during his long term accumulation of Vancouver r e a l estate. Using 30 land with highly i n f l a t e d assessments, Oppenheimer had financed many of his 1890 land purchases by borrowing from among others, the wife of Charles Dupont, the c i t y ' s leading wholesaler, Henry B e l l Irving, and the ever accommodating Bank of B.C. 2 8 After David Oppenheimer's death, his brother began to re b u i l d the property assets of Oppenheimer Bros, but was obliged once again to s e l l off more land and h i s shares i n the Vancouver Improvement Co., in order to pay taxes and mortgage interest on the remaining land. By 1905 the Vancouver land holdings of Oppenheimer Bros, at one-quarter t h e i r 1899 size, comprised 52 urban l o t s and three blocks of suburban land. The promi-nence of the Oppenheimer name in the c i t y ' s tax r o l l s had lasted just two decades. Economic depression ended the f i r s t land boom but did not end speculation. Attendance at government auctions and tax sales was lower than during the 1880s 2 9 but l o t s were s t i l l being purchased by those who could afford to hold t h e i r property and wait. The most prominent buyer at these auctions was J.W. Home, whose property holdings for 1894 were valued at $1,500,000, equal to those of the giant C.P.R.30 As promoter and director of the c i t y ' s f i r s t indige-nous f i n a n c i a l organization, The Vancouver Loan Trust Savings and Guarantee Co.,, director and/or president of the Vancouver City Foundar.y and Machine Works, B.C. Building Association and Vancouver E l e c t r i c Railway and Light Co among others, and MLA (1891-95), Home's power was unsurpassed by any other in d i v i d u a l i n the c i t y . A r r i v i n g in the c i t y i n the late 31 1880s with large c a p i t a l derived from previous r e a l estate investments on the p r a i r i e s and in central Canada, he was an astute businessman whose land investments were made for the long term gain which would accompany the c i t y ' s inevitable growth. Although his development interests were concentrated in the c i t y ' s commercial centre, Home acquired a vast amount of suburban property on the c i t y ' s east side. In suburban H i l l Crest, for instance, he held as much as 16 blocks for 17 or 18 years before s e l l i n g out in 1908. 3 1 Home influenced the l i v e s of many wage earners as employer, developer, finan-c i e r and promoter of public transportation, but there i s no doubt that his greatest impact on the growth of working class r e s i d e n t i a l suburbs derived from the large tracts of land which he took out of c i r c u l a t i o n for nearly a generation. Most Vancouver speculators sought a faster gain than J.W. Home. Their pursuit of p r o f i t was supported by the Bank of B.C., Vancouver's largest, whose London directors gave manager J.C. Keith a free hand to make loans secured by r e a l e s t a t e . 3 2 The directors however, were soon alarmed by the size of the bank's loans and the highly i n f l a t e d prices of l o c a l land and repeatedly demanded that Keith c a l l in his loans. Keith, who had a large personal interest in several of the most speculative concerns, ignored the commands and was dismissed from the bank i n 1893. Remaining active in the c i t y ' s land market, he l a t e r became promoter and director of the East Vancouver Land Co., the North Vancouver Land and Improvement Co./' and. president of the building company, 3 2 Vancouver Estates. In those f i r s t years, 1886-1891, speculation in urban land attracted men of large and small means--wealthy, highly leveraged land buyers such as David Oppenheimer, dozens of small time speculators and very small investors. After the land market collapsed in the mid-nineties, many of these land-oweners l o s t t h e i r property. Addressing a meeting of share-holders, in 1896, a Bank of B.C. director explained the Van-couver branch's losses: Many of our customers ... are now unable to pay the advances made them, and though we hold security ( i . e . land) at one time considered ample, i t has now so depreciated that we fear a contingent loss of a considerable sum ... 3 3 In Hastings Townsite, about one^-quarter of the l o t s l i s t e d on the assessment r o l l s , 1897-1904, were marked \"sold for taxes.\" 3 1* There were no well known names in t h i s group; many of those whose properties were sold were absentee owners, residing outside Vancouver. In contrast, few l o t s i n H i l l Crest (D.L. 301), a suburban area south of Mount Pleasant were sold for taxes during t h i s same period. There were com-paratively few small investors i n t h i s area; most of the land was owned by large investors such as J.W. Home, or f i n a n c i a l i n s t i t u t i o n s such as the Bank of B.C. (see Chap. IV). Among the business e l i t e of the 1890s, Oppenheimer 1s concentration on urban r e a l estate was exceptional; contemporaries l i k e Home, Tatlow and Rand, d i v e r s i f i e d t h e i r f i n a n c i a l interests, and thus escaped the repercussions of overspeculation in Vancouver land. 33 Although land prices f e l l during the late 1890s, there is l i t t l e evidence that wage earners bought r e s i d e n t i a l l o t s at bargain p r i c e s . Purchases at tax sales and auction were monopolized by a few entrepreneurs, and much of the cheapest suburban land was sold i n large parcels priced beyond the means of the wage earner seeking one or two l o t s . The r e s i -dential land market remained quiet u n t i l 1904-05. The contin-uation of tax s a l e s , 3 5 the low turnover i n suburban l o t s , and the f i n a n c i a l d i f f i c u l t i e s of established r e a l estate firms l i k e Oppenheimer Bros, were evidence that land was not s e l l i n g . Prices were s t i l l high for many wage earners, and investors who were not forced to s e l l their, land, were not lowering their prices but waiting for the expected r i s e in land values that most believed inevitable. Early Building Companies Early r e a l estate boosters tended to confine their a c t i v i t i e s in the land market to the buying and s e l l i n g of unimproved land in a few heavily promoted subdivisions which had been cleared and sometimes graded before being placed on the market. The provision of housing was l e f t to the small contractor or the buyer himself. Some working men waited years to occupy a completed home. A sawmill foreman and his family who purchased a l o t in Grandview in the early 1890s, for example, occupied a two room cabin for several years 3:4 before they could afford to add a front room, and l a t e r s t i l l , two bedrooms. Similarly a young English carpenter borrowed money from an older brother to purchase a small East End l o t , where he l i v e d for f i v e years in a tiny cabin while he b u i l t and subsequently rented, the house he waited to occupy. 3 6 The prevalence of cabins at the rear of r e s i d e n t i a l l o t s in working class neighbourhoods indicates that the experiences of ttese men were not unique. 3 7 Few building companies existed to provide houses f o r wage earners. Thomas Dunn and W. Ralph incorporated the Terminal Building society in 1888 to develop their land hold-ings adjacent to the subdivision of Collingwood, 3 8 while H.A. Jones and H.T. Ceperley, owners of the subdivision, formed their own development company, the B.C. Building Association in 1890. 3 9 Both companies were of secondary interest to their owners, whose primary occupation was the s e l l i n g and financing of r e a l estate. In a c i t y f u l l of carpenters and s e l f - s t y l e d contractors, small building companies were superfluous. The r e l a t i v e importance of r e s i d e n t i a l construction to so-called development companies was r e f l e c t e d in the opera-tions of the c i t y ' s largest building company, The Vancouver Improvement Company. The said company was incorporated in 1886 by a group of V i c t o r i a businessmen to assemble and deve-lop the property in D.L. 181 and the eastern 130 acres of D.L. 196 (together comprising Vancouver's East End). 1 1 0 (Map 2:3) The mainstay of company p r o f i t s however, became the marketing and not the development of i t s property. Immediately VANCOUVER IMPROVEMENT CO* LOTS FOR SALE - 1886~ i il *i _ j l l o Z D L j T 1 11' n u n MAP 2:3 DEVELOPED LOTS - 1889 MAP 2:4 36 after r e g i s t r a t i o n , The Vancouver Improvement Company offered 800 l o t s for sale in the East End (Fig. 2:2, p. 37); 50% re-bates were offered on the price of most r e s i d e n t i a l l o t s for buyers who agreed to buy a company b u i l t home within six months of l o t purchase. Relatively few buyers took advantage of thi s o f f e r : the f i r e insurance atlas shows most (about 85%) of the l o t s offered for sale by the company i n 1886, had no dwellings on them in 1889. 4 1 Land sales however, had been brisk: only four out of the o r i g i n a l 42 blocks in which l o t s had been offered were s t i l l in the company name on the 1889 assessment r o l l s . 1 * 2 Investment in urban l o t s was a popular a c t i v i t y as Vancouver's f i r s t land boom neared i t s peak. By 1891, the c i t y ' s population was over 13,000 and the demand for housing had r i s e n . The Vancouver Improvement Company was now active in construction of new homes, p a r t i c -u l a r l y modest cottages i n the area bounded by Gore, Hastings, Heatley and Prior. 1* 3 The company employed a st r i n g of small contractors to produce i t s housing: in the month of A p r i l , 1891, a t o t a l of 21 contractors were responsible for building 27 homes under The Vancouver Improvement Company name; in one block alone, ten contractors were at work on ten separate l o t s . In Vancouver where newly arrived carpenters were obliged to buy their f i r s t jobs1*1* s k i l l e d labour was not in short supply, a situ a t i o n which worked to the advantage of the c i t y ' s construction companies. The p l e n t i f u l supply of labour however, also made companies who b u i l t standard housing redundant, as many chose to act as t h e i r own/contractor.-Fig- 2:2 a n c o u v e r Improvement Coym.Property LOTS 181 & S96 B L O C K ao | BLOCK 63 I / u 1 llOix) ( Lot 1 B L O C K 37 Lots 11. 12, 13, w c h . . BLOCK 30 L o u 3, G, A*cli SLOCK , ear l i . 300 I ;,U % r » l « l c mi O I IP lot for I I . .UM( . | L . i u 2, 12, 13, 14, 1ft. citch «J 'X> H I . . . . .91000 700 . . . K O U . . . W.<0 . . . 1000 . . . ? .Vol i c h . . B L O C K 42 Condit ion, f 1300 lioitae OI I 2 or :t Jot*. ! BLOCK 64. | i , o i « » , ir. f i . w •• I O . i i . i a . u . i s i « o CO % rebate on f .'i00 liouwa er«cte<] in 0 month M from Hale, on certain Iota. BLOCK 66 L o u 1, 20. « * c h ! 3 330 2, . i , 4. 3. (1, 7, 8. 'J. 10, 11. 12. 13 1-1, 1'.. Hi, 17, lft, 19, each 200 Comiil iom;: 120O0 1K.II BLOCK 70 L o t * 1. 0, * * c h If/I 2. II. 4, 5. 0, 7. * ~ : b IttO M) % r c b » t r on oertaio 1<>IH for liouw.i uf ELOCX 80 Ixjts I. t*. oai-li ISO L o t ]3 «, 300 \\ InH in 0 months from < U t « of purchase. . . . \" 9 4tJ0 B L O C K 43 L o t 20 8 L 0 0 X *A L o i s Vi. 13, 14, * B L O C K -48 L o i s 4. Il, t>m:li •* U . 12. i t . I.\".. •* ir. 30 n'ii.iio o:i iT i lu iu loin foj llOUHt f. B L O C K 49 I..Uh w. in . n . 12. i:t. 14, 13. H IT, I K . i:t. , . , „ • ! , so.\" : n , ' s 2 . 3 3 , t-n.h ' B L O C K 51 L o u ;,. . ; . 7. S. 9. li>, ce.th « •• 11. 12, i:t. 14. curl, 23\",, r -L . t . . for ShnM lioiit..-* « w t « ' : l i month* (n'tll C I H U ' of [IUTI'IIIIM 1. l , o u 2-'.. 21'.. 27. 2s, 29. 31, 32, 33, r .u; , h-1m,l- o.i cci-uin i-'.H for : * H ' lei S L O C K 52 L m « \"-'tt. 21. 22. 23. 21. 23, 20. 27. 2-. 29. c:u'li S SO ' i , n-Wu- for ;lO0<) houses. B L O C K 65 1,-u 14. i : . . 10. 17. 2:1. »Ki'li £ B L O C K 53 L o t * 11. 12, »'iich « B L O C K 57 L » t * 14. i : . , we l l Lota 21, 40.t'Hch !275 • ' 22, 23, 21. 23, 20, 27, 2H, 29. 30. .st, 32. 33, 34. :t\">, :ir., 37, ;ix, 39. e 22S . l ^ i n h a l e on oerluin litis for *10\\|o hou*-a B L O C K CO Ijota 0, 7. . 10, 11. 12, 13. 14, 1\". « U t f of ] i i ivcl in«e. 21. 4il 22, 2:i. 24, 21, : t r 32, 33. :14, 1 \" , , riilnilo on ' vnMv-A Hi < . 27, 2 * . 2:i. 30, • rU . i i lot- f ' » inontha from BLOCK 68 L o u 10 •• 7. K , : i , 10. 11, 12. 13, 14, 13 C o n d i t i o n * ; *2S. a>i>* r t l i i n : on wi-Ltin l o u for ihnni h-!i months from .h i l cnf ]•< Jrt>tc (22. 2;t,l •• t i . : . 2;,] Ormflkion tlmt f2o*.Kiln Ii tiniiit!!* from il«U- of )n U L O C K L O Lot * . 10 llKMl f ' ^ ' - l r-ikj I J n f4l1i \" (17. \\ » , 1!J.) C - > : n ; j ; i o » tlmt £2*>{H\"i lion-.-l>e t-i.rt'Ml io f. nu'lilli-j from i\\»W of |.\".ircli«-<:. B L O C K 60 LotM S. 0. 7, K. >>, 10, 11. 12, Kl, 14, 1',. Hi. 17, l*,T-H•,!. -til, H I . -Ill, SI. ;i<',, ;t7, C M ( ; l , 5 ;V> \" 40 HiVl Cin. ' lt i i . .n tluit 82.Uii lif. • a loi • iiiontliH from t\\t\\U: of pu.-':)uise. B L O C K Oi L o u .•>. f.. 7, e, ! ' . IP. i l . 12. VA, 14, 1*., 10. 17. If», rtich 9 :>l) r.-lihtu on rc.rtp.in Ir.jta f^.r isyO Ik.iim-s. L o u -jo. 'j?. 24, off. no, a i , :(2. K:t, H I . :i, r.. :vi. :-*7. au, » - « d i . . .s 21x1 KiW.*; hour..; ur.urlitio.-in! on cith-r 2 or 3 of t!o*,e Iota. Lot (0 MiO BLOCK 73 L o U I. \".. 0. 7. M. !! . 10. 11. 12. I'l. 11.. 54IO 2l»V. rt'liuU* on <.vi!niii U\\\\* (or t l -Vm I I O U M • •* 20, 27. 2M, 2'.». 3i». :i1 5:too •• :i2 :t**i 2V: , I'uoatc for f-lOOi' ln>in«m. BLOCK 7P, I ^ . I H 3. 4. 3. 0, 7, ! i , h i . 11, 12. 13, 14. 1.\"., CK . - l i f32.i • • l»i 4'W •• 111, 20, 21. 22, 23. 21. 2*., 20. 27. •J^. 21.', HO, 31. .'ti.ih Si ul i,<\\»„ irl.uto on ccit.n'n !•><» f..r S H » f l troi ' lt . l in <> montliH Ii 0111 ilutu of |>urriiKM> CLOCK 78 Loin 1. 20. tw:h t4t'.'l 2. H. 4. C, 7, H. ! l . 10, 11, 13 14. 1.*., 1(1. 17. IH. Ill, «KV1I *32\". • ' 21, 4(1. t-*i:lt 37.\"-•• 22, 23. 24. 2.\"i. 20, 27. 2M, 211. 31, .H_», H;t, 34, .l.'i. 30, 37. 3H, 30. . W .r.O % rrlint') on 1'crtnin lots f«'r 8KH.K1 iioin-v\", B i O C K 78 Lots 1. 20, pud) ?27o - 2, 3, 4, .1. 0. 7. H,y. 10, 11, 12. 13, 14, 15. 10. 17, IH, V.t, *-at'h 22\", •' 21, 40, each a.\"^ ) • ' 22. 23. 24, 25. 20, 27. 2-», 20, : * \\ 31, » 2 . 33, 34, {f*.;;ili, 37. 3>>. 3.1. 20 i:»rtititi lots for f.M*U BLOCK 8G Lot- I . 10. t * H i ?373 \" 2. 3, 4, S, 11, 7. H. it. 10, 11, 12. 13. I I. IS. .-mil mi • 17. 32. <-«nli 32S \" 1M, 19. 20, i ' l . 2 2 . 23. 21. 2S, '.!•;, 27. 2 M . 20, 30. 31. e-rli 27S .'•'>•,'„ rolmti: for ?1IMXI 1IOUM-K on & : rtnii i Of l l i 'M- lots HbullOM'. BLOCK 86 I .^t!- 1. P i . .rich \" 2, 3, 4. S. 0, 7, 1 13, 14. IS, uiw;)i.. 19. 20. 21. 22, 27. 2S. vii, 30. 1M it; for I JOUM'M ?37; . 10, 11, 12, J HM.H} • ench 27.-, for S l (KK) RLOCK 08 Jyit- 12 \" 3. 4. S. II, 7. H. 10, II. SO ' ; 0 rchfitc on t tr l / i in loi a h o n s ^ . T,oth 13 '32S - 14. IS. Hi . 17. I K 19. 20. 21 . . 2S0 SO rt'batc H\"t IIIK^VO for f NKi houwrt. BLOCKS 90 St 01 1. I'l S32i '• 2. 3, 4. S, ii. 7. 0, 10, 11. 12, 13. 14, IS 27S \" 17. H2. titrh 300 • i s . 19. 20. 2: . 22. 23. 24. 23, 20, 27. 2*. 29, SO. M . \" n r ; l i 2S0 r'lmto on w r u i i i l o U for ?N00 I K M I M BLOCKS 93 & Q4 Lota 1, 20. fftch E2\"0 \" 2. 3. 4, 3. 0. 7. H. 10. H , 12, 13, 14. IS. 10, 17. JH, 19, fa^h 20(1 • ' 21. 40 22S *• 32. 33, 34, 33, hf;, ;'7. n*, 39 . . ]7S SO irbiitt; A D ft hew.-, f'i'l') Iinu?(*4. BLOCK 96 i^ots 1ft. H 8 ir.0 \" 11. 12, 13. 14. IS. HI, 17 100 SO % ri-1 ntt* hi nljnv.i f.n J>;%fk> liouat'n. BLOC KS tOO & 101 Corner lot*, -noli Insi.Io l o U . f K r h SO % n-lMti- f.,r SO. * loir. . . . f ?•>-. . . . 173 r certain BLOCK 103 L o i s 1, 1 0 . . . . 300. T e r m s : 5 % J l i s c u u n t for C i i s l i , or ± C a s l i , J U t e n c o i n -1, H, a n d 12 M o n t h s , 8% I n t e i e s t . 0. 7. r!. fr, 10. 11, 12, JS. II. 15 if.VI \" 17. 32 WX) \" i s . 3 9 . 20. 21. 2 2 , 23, 24, 23, Vfi, 27. 2W. 211, 30. 31 2 S « SO % rthf lo or, oe'Ui 'n lots f.,r *000 ho l i e s er.-cl.-ti in 0 ni,.iitbM from rUti; of ourchtine. BLOCKS 100. 106. MO. Ill & 114 (Jon.^r lot-, .-(.f.). JtyO I i n . M « l n 1 . . . rar l i 2.'«0 •\\*'hfiv ii rt_\\t\\l>: \\s allowed for >i house it ia u i i ' l « r « to *x l thtit it ii. to Ix; erectvl 1 tn; d * t « of I'Urc.hfcM;. O r - T A T L O W C O . AQEKTS FOE TEE COliPANT, CCEBOVA 5T.. VAKC0UVE3, B.C. C I T Y A R C H I V E O Crr* MALL 38 Thus, there i s no evidence from the company records or news-paper reports, that The Vancouver Improvement Company was engaged in construction a c t i v i t y for more than the f i v e years preceding 1892. The impact of The Vancouver Improvement Company on the development of Vancouver's East End i s d i f f i c u l t to assess. Company balance sheets suggest that the large p r o f i t s of 1886-1893 did not derive from constructing homes. After the f i r s t year of operation the company quadrupled i t s stock c a p i t a l ; and most of the o r i g i n a l shareholders sold their interest in the company, while Oppenheimer and two others, together maintained less than 15% of the shares. In 1887, 70% of the company's shareholders, s t i l l l i v e d outside the Vancouver area: another 25% of the stock was.owned by two B r i t i s h registered companies -- Vancouver Land and Securities Co. and Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities Co. The Vancouver Improvement Company continued to thrive u n t i l at least 1893, when a surplus of $825,000 was recorded, and the value of shares stood at $100.00. During the depression of the mid 1890s, the value of the company's assets dropped by over a h a l f ; by 1898 the size of i t s landholdings (1,200 lots) toge-ther with the amount of i t s l i a b i l i t i e s (almost $200,000) suggest that the company had purchased additional land during the depression and/or that previous holdings sold on now worth-less agreements, had reverted back to the company.1*5 In 1898 The Vancouver Improvement Company was purchased, by the newly registered Vancouver Land and Improvement Co., 39 which remained active i n the Vancouver land market for just ten years. 4 6 (At the end of that period, Yorkshire Guarantee and Se-c u r i t i e s owned 40% of the company's stock, while Campbell Sweeny, manager of the Bank-of Montreal, and W. Murray, manager of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, together owned another 45%.) There i s no evidence that the company was involved i n housing construction, rather i t s operation was focussed on s e l l i n g land in the East End and Mount Pleasant. By the end of 1905, over three-quarters of the Vancouver Land and Improvement Company's 1200 lots had been sold; almost half of these sales occured during 1905. Clearly p r o f i t s t i l l lay in marketing rather than developing r e s i d e n t i a l land. Although many residents were build-, ing t h e i r own homes, the demand for undeveloped home si t e s was related to the large number of investors/speculators i n the c i t y . Building companies were in a sense, redundant, and the i r role in assembling, subdividing and s e l l i n g land contributed to producing i n f l a t i o n a r y land prices in the c i t y . The \"Blue C o l l a r \" Land Market After 1904 Vancouver added only 10,000 to i t s population i n the dozen years preceding 1904, then gained another 10,000 be-tween 1904 and 1906. This sudden acceleration of growth drove up land prices in 1905. The c i t y ' s leading r e a l t o r s , many of them prominent entrepreneurs from the 1890s, were joined by hundreds of new agents--small 40 businessmen with \"shoestring operations,\" 4 7 eager to p r o f i t from new urban growth. By the end of 1905, the c i t y ' s leading r e a l estate firms were reporting heavy investment i n the East End and frequent turnover of f u l l blocks. 1* 8 Increasingly, t i t l e to undeveloped r e s i d e n t i a l land s h i f t e d from the hands of a few large private owners representing the e l i t e of the nineteenth century c i t y , to a myriad of small entrepreneurs cum speculators. 1* 9 The dominant landowners in the c i t y ' s east side how-ever, were probably the B r i t i s h based finance companies--Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities Corporation, B.C. Land and Investment Agency and the Vancouver Land and Securities Corporation. Among the three companies, Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities was by far the largest investor in the suburban areas of Hastings Townsite and H i l l Crest (D.L. 301), with 2.5 times as much land as the next largest landowner, B.C. Land and Investment Agency, i n 1906. 5 0 Former managers of } a l l three companies--W.E. F a r r e l l , E.B. Morgan and R.K. Houl-gate, were directors of The Vancouver Land and Improvement Company during this period, providing valuable connections among the four largest landowners i n the c i t y ' s blue c o l l a r neighbourhoods. The implications of corporate rather than private ownership of r e s i d e n t i a l land are a paradox. On the one hand, mortgage funds would have been more r e a d i l y a v a i l -able for company owned land, encouring home ownership, while on the other hand, large corporations had the f i n a n c i a l lever-age to speculate more successfully, thus driving up land 41 prices for the wage earner. The players had changed but :the speculation game was the same. By 1907, the demand for rental accommodation and small houses was h i g h , 5 1 but a c t i v i t y in the r e a l estate mar-ket centered on the buying and s e l l i n g of suburban acreage among dealers. Land bordering the eastern c i t y l i m i t s was e s p e c i a l l y popular with investors who were awaiting the ex-pected a r r i v a l of a new streetcar extension proposed for the following y e a r . 5 2 U n t i l 1909, most l o t s in working class areas of the c i t y were advertised for sale in blocks or por-tions of blocks. In 1901, for instance, a block of land in Grandview was offered for $1,500.00 and the promise that \"a quick p r o f i t of $2,000.00\" awaiting the buyer who subdivided th i s land into 24 l o t s . 5 3 As land prices grew so did the inventiveness of the copywriter. An advertisement for Grand-view property i n a 1909 paper ran, \"Grandview money makers! 4 50' l o t s $6,000.00. We w i l l show you how to make a nice turnover on this property.\" 5 \"* In a similar manner, before 1909 much of land i n the Municipality of South Vancouver was sold as acreage to a mixture of speculators and s e t t l e r s with the desire and the means for r u r a l l i v i n g . As the c i t y ' s second great land boom got underway, the demand for South Vancouver land escalated and increasing numbers of \"outside i n v e s t o r s \" 5 5 were buying both undivided acreage and parcels of l o t s i n the municipality. Large landowners promoted th e i r holdings as sure-fire investments. In 1909 a 20 acre land parcel (D.L. 336), located i n the southeastern corner of the 42 municipality was offered for $20,000.00 . 5 6 Upon subdivision such a land parcel could y i e l d 124 33' l o t s . The potential p r o f i t to the subdivider was clear from the paper's succeeding advertisement for a subdivision c a l l e d \" V i c t o r i a Road Heights,\" located immediately south of D.L. 336, and containing 33' lots priced between $250.00-$325.00 each. 5 7 The expected a r r i v a l of streetcar service connecting Eburne and New West-minster undoubtedly helped to push up the price of these and other South Vancouver subdivisions in 1909. Speculators, small investors and new home buyers com-peted for r e s i d e n t i a l land in the c i t y and i t s suburbs. Lots in South Vancouver were reported to be turning over r a p i d l y 5 8 and prices were r i s i n g accordingly. By 1910 the Labour Gazette reported that the bulk of sales i n the c i t y and suburbs were being made \"by speculators to sp e c u l a t o r s . \" 5 9 A year l a t e r the Labour Gazette reported that r e s i d e n t i a l s i t e s , p a r t i c u l a r -ly those i n working class areas of the c i t y were not s e l l i n g , implying that land prices were beyond the wage earner's means. 6 0 In 1912, even the l o c a l booster publications were reporting that small suburban l o t s were beyond the price range of many working men. 6 1 As urban land prices soared over the 1909-12 period Vancouver was flooded with dozens of new companies eager to promote or finance r e a l estate. Along with the established banks, about two dozen ' s i g n i f i c a n t ' loan and trust companies, 6 2 the majority newly incorporated, were active in the l o c a l r e a l estate market. Among the 35 major companies promoting A3 Vancouver land, only f i v e firms had assets exceeping $1,000,000.00 while another ten had assets i n the range of hal f a m i l l i o n d o l l a r s . 6 3 Three l o c a l companies who promoted east side land were Bungalow Finance and Building Co. Ltd., East Vancouver Land Co. and Vancouver Estates Ltd. with assets of approximately $300,000.00 each. 6 4 These firms were just three out of approximately 120 companies registered to promote or finance l o c a l r e a l estate during 1909-12; another 40-50 companies registered p r i o r to 1909, were s t i l l active in the re a l estate market. 6 5 This s t r i k i n g growth of interest in urban land r e f l e c t e d and stimulated.soaring land costs i n Vancouver. Many of these companies existed on the edge of bankruptcy and few would survive the recession and war years l y i n g ahead. The i n s t a b i l i t y inherent in most land booms would soon be r e f l e c t e d i n the fate of these companies--from the spectacular collapse of Vancouver's largest indigenous f i n a n c i a l organization, Dominion Trust, in 1915, to the mun-dane f a i l u r e s of dozens of very small companies l i k e West Coast Land Co., or B r i t i s h P a c i f i c Trust. Down the c i t y ' s s o c i a l strata, men jumped on the boom time bandwagon. Middle class \"investors\" organized small trust and loan companies; members of the lower middle class formed co-operatives and lodge-sponsored organizations l i k e the Mount Pleasant Phythian Loan Co. and the Vancouver Knights of Columbus Building Association, to finance \"homes for the wage earner.\" A plethora of loan companies offered everyman a change to buy a home, while o f f e r i n g every small investor a chance to lose his money! Building Companies and the Real Estate Boom, 1909-1912 As the c a p i t a l costs of speculating in undeveloped land became too high, many small entrepreneurs turned to deve-lopment and construction for speculative p r o f i t . About 90.0% of the c i t y ' s construction companies i n 1912, were registered aft e r 1909, a proportion even higher than land promotion com-n panies (80.0%) or finance companies (84.0%) registered during the boom years. The large majority of these companies were very small, fewer than 10.0% had assets over $100,000.00.66 In the c i t y ' s f r a n t i c land market, schemes abounded to a t t r a c t the dollar of the potential home buyer. The Home Loan and Contract Co., for instance, offered loans at p r e f e r e n t i a l interest rates to wage earners who bought shares i n the com-pany--a scheme which attracted two dozen buyers i n the company' year and a half of o p e r a t i o n . 6 7 Another building company whose authorized c a p i t a l of $1,000,000,00 r e f l e c t e d i t s grandi ose expectations, was Vancouver Freehomes. 6 8 The company planned to b u i l d homes i n Grandview and Mount Pleasant using the money of i t s blue c o l l a r shareholders as operating c a p i t a l As with the Home Loan and Contract Co., shareholders were given p r e f e r e n t i a l a l b e i t complicated financing. The compa-ny's f i r s t directors, an accountant, a Main street hardware merchant, two clergymen and a widow, resigned af t e r three 45 months, their replacements departed in similar fashion, shortly-a f t e r . The turnover i n shareholders, less than a t h i r d of whom were actually blue c o l l a r workers, was likewise b r i s k . The company's rapid demise, inevitable i n the face of urban land costs was undoubtedly hastened by the co-operative plan so e n t h u s i a s t i c a l l y touted in i t s prospectus. In the years before government assisted housing programs, schemes to house the worker based on speculative p r o f i t , were dommed to f a i l u r e . Most Vancouver homes were the product of small con-tractors or sub-contractors. In a sample of 140 applications for building permits during June 1911, over three-quarters of the applications for new house construction l i s t e d the owner as builder, and almost as many (70.0%) l i s t e d the owner as a r c h i t e c t . 6 9 A t o t a l of 53 applicants received permits for 61 new houses; of the 49 applicants who took out a permit for one house, there i s no way of knowing what proportion were building for themselves, but the large numbers who de-scribed themselves as \"builder\" and \"a r c h i t e c t \" suggests that some at least, were building \"on spec.\" Many who described themselves as \"builder\" however, may have contracted the work out to a small builder; among those applications where a separate \"builder\" i s designated, the same name rar e l y appears more than once, suggesting once again that the c i t y was well supplied with carpenters and construction workers who could c a l l themselves 'builder.' One large builder in Vancouver's east side was Frank Killam, who was alleged to have b u i l t 184 houses in 1911. 7 0 4 6 His Bungalow Finance and Building Co. had assets of over $250,000.00; l i k e the Home Loan and Contract Co. and others which escaped an early demise, Killam's company d i v e r s i f i e d i t s interests outside the Vancouver r e a l estate market. 7 1 Nevertheless, his f i n a n c i a l success as an east side r e s i d e n t i a l builder marks him an exception among the hundreds of builders in pre-war Vancouver. Conclusion Vancouver's f i r s t quarter century was marked by two short but extravagant land booms. While the C.P.R. orches-trated the development and expansion of the downtown core and the c i t y ' s e l i t e r e s i d e n t i a l area to the west, a handful of prominent land developers controlled the supply of r e s i -dential property in the East End and suburbs to the south. Municipal government backed by the C.P.R. endorsed the promo-tion of urban r e a l estate, when the c i t y ' s p o l i t i c i a n s and largest landowners were one and the same. The collapse of the six year land boom in 1893 marked the end of the concentration of land ownership and control in the c i t y . Speculative a c t i v i t y was only temporarily checked and resumed again as a few old and many new participants took advantage of tax sales and the l i k e to buy up urban land at bargain price s . The control of the Vancouver land market however,- was no longer concentrated in the hands of a few 47 prominent businessmen and p o l i t i c i a n s , but was increasingly-drawn from the middle ranks of business, which had much less power over urban development than th e i r predecessors. At the end of the 1890s, the recovery of the urban economy marked the beginning of wider p a r t i c i p a t i o n in the c i t y ' s r e a l estate market. Much of this p a r t i c i p a t i o n took the form of investment i n suburban land which t y p i c a l l y , was offered i n parcels of one to several blocks. The price of Vancouver r e a l estate rose rapidly with i t s popularity, culminating i n the second boom of 1909-1912. During this period the a r r i v a l of building co-operatives, shoestring f i -nance companies and various schemes to house the worker signalled the strong need for affordable housing in the c i t y . 4 8 NOTES Chapter II •\"•The C.P.R. 's impact upon the development of Vancouver is discussed in P a t r i c i a Roy, \"Railways, P o l i t i c i a n s and the Development of the City of Vancouver as a Metropolitan Centre 1886-1929,\" M.A. Thesis, Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, 1963. The implications of the railway company's hegemony are also discussed in Galois, \"Social Structure in Space;\" McDonald, \"Business Leaders;\" and Robertson, \"Power, P r o f i t and Privacy.\" 2See Robertson, 0p_. c i t . . p. 231 for a l i s t of m i l l shareholders. Large Vancouver landholders Oppenheimer and Dupont (Fig. 2:1) and Keefer and H a r r i s ( F i g . 2:2) together owned 3790 of the m i l l ' s shares; another 990 of the shares were owned by B.C. businessmen whose interests i n the Vancou-ver land market are not known. 30ppenheimer, Dupont, Keefer and Powell were a l l directors of the Vancouver Improvement Co. in 188 7. [M. Picken, comp., City of Vancouver, Terminus of the Canadian P a c i f i c Railway, (Vancouver, 1887).] Harris' name appears in brackets after the Vancouver Improvement Company name on c i t y assessment r o l l s , 1889. Tatlow's r e a l estate company, R.G. Tatlow and Co., and Charles Rand's Rand Bros, both served as agents for the Vancouver Improvement Co., Property, 1886, l i s t PACV. \"The Vancouver Sun, Sept. 12, 1973, p. 75. 5The Port Moody Gazette, May 16, 1885, p. 3. 6Vancouver News Advertiser, January 13, 1895, p. 4. 7R.A.J. McDonald, \"City Building in the Canadian West: A Case Study of Economic Growth in Early Vancouver, 1886-93,\" B.C. Studies, No. 43, Autumn, 1979. City of Vancouver, Assessment Rolls, 1887-1889. 4 9 9The Vancouver World, March 19, 1890, p. 5. 10VNA, Sept. 1, 1892. 1 •'•Rents for room and board were very high during this period and workers with families to support could probably . not save more than $50.00-$75.00 a year. In any case, th i s period may represent one of the best times for the wage earner to buy land i n Vancouver. 1 2Robertson and Co. L i s t i n g s , D.L. 264A, Add. Mss. 19, PACV. 1 3Reported in the VNA, August 12, 1889. 1 \"*As integrated land promoters Ceperley and Home were also directors of the B.C. Building Association and the Vancouver, Loan, Trust, Savings, and Guarantee Co.. 1 5Robertson & Co., L i s t i n g s , D.L. 264A and D.L. 184. 1 6 L o c . c i t . 17VNA,i.'Nov. 30, p. 6; Dec. 4, p. 3 and Dec. 5, p. 3, 1984. 1 8Robertson and Co., L i s t i n g s , D.L. 195, June 1895. 1 9 I n one l i s t i n g , 39-3/4 acres were offered for $650.00. VNA, Dec. 3, 1896, p. 4. 2\"Monetary Times, Nov. 15, 1895, p. 628 (cited i n Galois, \"Social Structure in Space.\"). 2 1Robertson and Co. L i s t i n g s , D.L. 182j. 220p.. c i t . , D.L. 183d. 2 3See McDonald, \"Business Leaders,\" Appendix A. 2 \"* Among the eight largest r e a l estate firms l i s t e d in the 1904 director, \"Rand Bros.\" i s the only name dating back to the early boom years. 25VNA, Nov. 30, 1894,vp• 5. 2 6 L o c . c i t . 2 7The information i n this paragraph.is taken from \"Oppenheimers,\" unpub. ms., Add. mss 108, Vol. 13, PACV. 2 8See Chapter IV for further discussion of Bank of B.C.'s a c t i v i t i e s i n Vancouver. 50 2 9Robertson and Co., L i s t i n g s , p. 273. 3\"Vancouver World, May 12, 1894. 3 1Vancouver Suburban Lands, Assessment Roll s , 1896-1909. 3 2 V i c t o r Ross, \"The Bank of B.C.\" A History of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Vol. 1, Toronto, 1920 (also c i t e d in McDonald, \"City Building\"). 3 3Ross, \"The Bank of B.C.,\" p. 345. 3\"Vancouver Suburban Lands, Assessment Roll s , 1896-1904. 3 Vancouver City Council, Minutes, 1895-97, PACV. 3 6\"Leonard Sankey,\" Add. Mss 54, PACV; William's B.C. Directory, 1892-1898. 3 7Goad's F i r e Insurance Atlas, City of Vancouver, (San Francisco, 1889). 3 8Robertson, \"Power, P r o f i t and Privacy,\" pp. 197 and 207. 3 9McDonald, \"Business Leaders,\" Appendix A. \"°Company Records 1862 #86, PAPBC. hlA sample of six blocks, owned, subdivided and advertised by the Vancouver Improvement Co. in 1886 was checked with the f i r e insurance atlas for 1889 to obtain this figure. See F i g . 2:2 and Map 2:3. \" 2 C i t y of Vancouver, Assessment Roll s , 1889. \"3VNA, A p r i l 14, 1891. \"\"Diary of E.G. Barnes, 1889, pr.iv. ms. Job \"buying\" in Vancouver, afte r 1900, i s discussed in George Hardy, Those Stormy Years, (London: Lawrence and Wishout, 1956), p. 27. ^Oppenheimer, Add. mss, 108, Vol. 13, sec. 7, PACV. \" 6C R 1897, #78, PABC. \" 7Mcdonald, \"Business Leaders,\" p. 102. 4 8The Province, Nov. 18, 1905, p. 1. \" 9Loc. c i t . , the transfer of the Bodwell Estate (14.2 acres i n D.L. 182) in 1905 to an out-of-town investor, G. Shopland, i l l u s t r a t e s t h i s trend. 51 5\"Vancouver Suburban Lands, Assessment Roll s , 1906, Index to taxpayers. 5 1The Province, August 24, 1907, p. 20. 5 20p_. ext., Oct. 12, 1907, p. 5. 5 3The Vancouver World, May 1901. 5\"The Vancouver World, A p r i l 15, 1909. 5 5The Province, A p r i l 10, 1909, p. 17. 5 6The Vancouver World, Sept. 2, 1909, p. 21. 5 70p_. c i t . , p. 26. 5 8The Province, A p r i l 10, 1909, p. 17. 5 9The Labour Gazette, Vol. IX, pp. 589 and 1074. 6\"L.G., Vol. XII, p. 245. 6 1Reported by R.J. McDougall in \"Vancouver Real Estate for 25 years,\" B.C. Magazine, Vol. 7, December 1911, p. 607. 6 2McDonald, \"Business Leaders,\" Appendix B. 6 3Loc. c i t . 6 1*Assets ranged between $277,000 . 00-$327, 000 . 00 . 6 5B.C. Sessional Papers, 1913, section J. 6 6Loc. c i t . e 7C.R. 1910, #263. The company withdrew from the Vancouver housing market i n 1912, but renamed, continued on as a general finance company with national interests. 6 8B.C. Sessional Papers, 1913, Sec. J. 6 9 C i t y of Vancouver, Building Permits, June 1911. The designation of \" s e l f \" as architect did not preclude the use of mass produced housing plans. 7 0\"Vancouver, a City of Beautiful Homes,\" B.C. Maga-zine, no. 7, 1911, pp. 1313-1315. 71C.R. 1910, PAPBC. 52 I I I . THE WAGE EARNER AND THE URBAN ECONOMY OF EARLY VANCOUVER Introduction: The Composition of the Labour Market, 1891-1911 Before 1900, Vancouver was a modest commercial and transportation centre whose economic growth depended as much on expectation as on the presence of hinterland resources. 1 In 1891, almost 60% of the work force was employed in service and transportation, while another 17% worked i n construction (Table 3:1, p. 53). Less than 25% of the work force was em-ployed i n manufacturing and most of this group worked i n saw-m i l l s to produce products for l o c a l demand. Many workers prospered during Vancouver's f i r s t few years of hectic growth but most faced severe wage cuts or unemployment when popula-tion growth slowed and investment dried up during the de-pression of the 1890s. By the end of the century Vancouver's employment mar-ket had begun to grow once again, as external demand for lumber and new investment c a p i t a l from central Canada foster-ed economic growth. The C.P.R. expanded downtown waterfront development and extended branch lines across False Creek to serve the burgeoning industry of lumber and shingle m i l l s , machinery depots and gravel and cement plans. Nevertheless, TABLE 3:1. Di s t r i b u t i o n of the Labour Force - Vancouver, 1891, 1901, 1911 1891 1901 1911 Manufacturing (total) 1,084 23.7 2,151 9,063 17.9 Lumber products 586 5,879 Other 498 3,184 Construction 750 16.4 8,906 17.6 Tran s p o r t a t i o n / U t i l i t i e s 960 21.0 5,298 10.5 Service (total 1,669 36.7 21,385 42.2 Commerce 862 11,034 Government N/A 3,680 Other N/A 6,671 Professional 97 2.2 3,971 7.8 Other N/A 2,005 4.0 TOTAL 4,560 100.0 50,628 100.0 Source: Manufacturing s t a t i s t i c s for 1891 and 1901 are from Canada Census, 1901, Vol. I l l , Table III. A l l other figures for 1891 are derived from The Vancouver World, Souvenir Edition, A p r i l 1891. (Using the manufacturing s t a t i s t i c s from the census as a guide, these figures were lowered propor-tionately to f a c i l i t a t e accurate comparison with census figures.) Canada Census 1911, Vol. I l l , Table IX, and Vol. V, Table VI. 54 by 1911 the proportion of the work force i n manufacturing i n general and sawmilling in p a r t i c u l a r , 2 had decreased from e a r l i e r l e v e l s , and the proportion of workers i n transporta-tion was h a l f the 1891 rate. The construction industry recov-ered, then expanded with the accelerating urban growth which took place after 1900. Employing just under 18% • of the l a -bour force in 1911, i t s share of the employment market, how-ever, was l i t t l e d i f f e r e n t from that of 1891. In general then, the proportion of the market for blue c o l l a r workers was shrinking. The professional sector and service sectors, which employed a large proportion of women and offered the lowest wages to ' blue c o l l a r males, were the areas of the urban economy showing the greatest expansion. The Labour Surplus By 1900, Vancouver had replaced V i c t o r i a as the metro-po l i t a n centre of the province, but much internal and most external investment continued to flow heavily into r e a l estate or the promotion of hinterland resources, rather than into the development of labour intensive secondary industry. For the wage earner the most sal i e n t feature of the urban economy was the regular surplus of labour. This surplus arose from three sources: a large pool of transient workers, a large enclave of Asian workers l i v i n g in the c i t y , and, e s p e c i a l l y after 1905, the heavy increase in migration to Vancouver. 55 Migrant workers on their way to and from railway gangs, logging camps or mining centres regularly gravitated to the c i t y in search of temporary employment, and the seasonal nature of primary resource industries contributed to the constant body of unemployed in the c i t y each winter. 3 Many of those resource workers, from personal choice or economic necessity, remained in the c i t y . For example, widespread closure of logging camps and sawmills in the P a c i f i c Northwest during the spring and summer of 1904 and 1905 pre c i p i t a t e d an in f l u x of men searching for work i n the city; 1* t h i s had a dampening effe c t on wages as the newcomers competed for jobs with the u n s k i l l e d and semi-skilled members of the permanent popula-tion. Enlarging the c i t y ' s labour pool s t i l l further, were the body of s k i l l e d tradesmen regularly l a i d o f f each winter. Vancouver's Asian community, a population of over 5,000 in 1911, was a second source of u n s k i l l e d labour which kept down wages in sawmills and other u n s k i l l e d work in the service sector and construction. As early as 1887, unemployed workers banded together to protest the use of cheap o r i e n t a l labour for clearing the West End f o r e s t , 5 but Chinese continued to arrive in the c i t y before the War, and most found work in semi-skilled and u n s k i l l e d occupations for approximately two-thirds of the \"white\" wage. In 1906, for example, semi-s k i l l e d labour received $2.00-$2.50 a day while orientals doing the same work, received $1.35-$l.75. 6 In 1911 Japanese labourers received .20 an hour in the c i t y ' s sawmills while the going rate for white u n s k i l l e d labour was .35 an hour. 7 56 Moreover the Chinese tended to take the place of working class women as domestics, launderers and cooks. The t h i r d , and af t e r 1905, most important contribution to Vancouver's labour surplus, came from the surge of immigrants seeking permanent residence in the c i t y . Even during the c i t y ' s booms of 1886-91 and 1909-12, the number of job seekers could outstrip demand and some newcomers, s k i l l e d and u n s k i l l e d a l i k e , were obliged to buy their f i r s t jobs i n the c i t y . 8 As early as 1891, a young Scottish) wage earner sent warning home: So you think you might try Vancouver! Well without c a p i t a l or with (sic) a si t u a t i o n secured before hand, I think you are better at home. We get so many young fellows dumped out here from England that ... a number are going around i d l e . 9 Emigration from B r i t a i n declined during the 1890s but resumed at an accelerating rate i n the early 1900s. At a time of housing shortages and uncertain job prospects there was much animosity towards new immigrants, and employers in many Canadian c i t i e s advised that \"no Englishmen need apply\" for the jobs they had a v a i l a b l e . 1 0 In Vancouver, anti-English f e e l i n g may not have been as strong as elsewhere, but ce r t a i n -ly the newcomer's \"English\" status was no asset i n his search for employment. One d i s i l l u s i o n e d immigrant wrote to The Province: Is there an Englishman in a l l B r i t i s h Columbia who could t e l l another where he could get work? Machinist, millwright or would accept what i s offered ... cannot get a job in Vancouver. 1 1 After months of searching, another Englishman, a s k i l l e d cabi-net maker, obtained work by passing himself o f f as a S c o t . 1 2 5 7 One unfortunate young man, whose upper middle class family had sent him to Canada \"to make a man of him\" drowned himself in Burrard Inlet a f t e r weeks of semi starvation and nights spent sleeping on the C.P.R. wharves. His unemployed compa-t r i o t r a i l e d against the absence of workhouses in B r i t i s h Columbia. 1 3 The c i t y ' s labour papers advocated r e s t r i c t i o n s on immigration: the Federal government was accused of misrepre-senting employment opportunities and the Pr o v i n c i a l government of fostering unemployment through i t s support of the Salvation Army's recruitment schemes.11* Whether j u s t i f i e d or not, these allegations r e f l e c t e d the opinions of labour spokesmen and received the endorsement of workers competing in a tight job market. Wage earners were soon backed up by officialdom. In 1909 Premier McBride announced that his government would discourage indiscriminate immigration to the province: ... the classes we desire to secure being s k i l l e d a g r i c u l t u r a l i s t s , farm labourers, women domestics and persons possessed of s u f f i c i e n t means to estab l i s h themselves as f r u i t growers, dairy men, poultry breeders and market gardeners. 1 5 Three years l a t e r the editor of B.C. Magazine echoed the former Premier: We want men with a f a i r amount of c a p i t a l , say from four to ten thousand d o l l a r s , and experience in mixed farming ... 1 6 Clearly B.C.'s largest c i t i e s such as Vancouver, did not need urban workers and the province's e l i t e did not need the poten-t i a l turmoil a r i s i n g from continued lev e l s of high unemploy-ment . 58 Employment Conditions Although Vancouver expanded rapidly between 1886 and 1914, periods of economic recession, high unemployment and depression were almost as c h a r a c t e r i s t i c as boom times during these years. During the widespread depression of the 1890s contracts from central Canada and B r i t a i n were cancelled forcing l o c a l m i l l s and canneries in Vancouver to reduce s t a f f and lower wages. American workers returned home and many small merchants went bankrupt. Some of the unemployed had been independent \"small operators\" in the lumber business, who had l o s t t h e i r c a p i t a l 1 7 and competed for scarce jobs with the larger firms. In 1894 c i t y council established a \" r e l i e f committee\" as l o c a l churches opened soup kitchaas and hundreds' Q f unemployed men sought shelter in the public l i b r a r y . 1 8 By the end of the 1890s the economy had recovered but cycles of mild to moderately high unemployment marked the next decade. The worst of these cycles was the recession of 1907-08 when construction i n the c i t y reached a s t a n d s t i l l and wages dropped by half. Once again the municipal govern-ment provided r e l i e f work, cheap shelter and meal ti c k e t s for the unemployed. At least h a l f of the estimated 5,000 men out of work were reputed to be s k i l l e d a r t i s a n s . 1 9 During the winter months of 190 7, as many as three-quarters of the c i t y ' s carpenters and e l e c t r i c i a n s , and two-thirds of i t s 59 bricklayers were j o b l e s s . 2 0 The following year the si t u a t i o n was worse. Swelled by the i n f l u x of transients, the number of unemployed had increased. The l o c a l correspondent for the Labour Gazette estimated that 65% of the unemployed were permanent residents of the c i t y . 2 1 The Labour Gazette con-tinued to record s i g n i f i c a n t unemployment in early 1909, and despite a well established upturn in the urban economy by 1910, high l e v e l s of unemployment were again reported in 1911. 2 2 By the end of 1912 unemployment rates were equal to those during the winters of 1907-08 and 1908-09. 2 3 Accord-ing to one observer, the shortage of jobs was so acute that Chinese labour was being displaced by English labourers accept-ing even lower wages.21* Job security and the prospects of a steady income were threatened by more than the broad swings of the province 1s economy. Hiring trends, p a r t i c u l a r l y in the construction industry, trade disputes among organized labour and i n d u s t r i a l productivity a l l contributed in some measure to r e s t r i c t i n g income leve l s in the c i t y . Many i f not most contractors hired construction workers, including the s k i l l e d , on a short term basis. During the c i t y ' s f i r s t construction boom, the diary of one carpenter l i s t e d thirteen employers during one eight month period. 2 5 More evidence of the temporary nature ,of employment in the construction industry can be found in wage books: only two of the 28 men employed in 1898 by one con-tractor, worked f u l l time, the remaining men worked for periods ranging from a few days to six weeks. Galois found that fewer 60 than 1590 of the artisans l i s t e d i n the c i t y directory of 1901 named a workplace or i d e n t i f i e d themselves as self-employed. 2 6 Most jobs i n construction were to be found with small builders who could offe r their employees only temporary positions. The scarcity of steady employment for tradesmen in the c i t y was frequently' remarked upon by the l o c a l correspondent for the Labour Gazette. During the winter months, s k i l l e d artisans in Vancouver averaged as few as twelve days of work. 2 7 S k i l l e d construction workers averaged no more than 20 days of work with one firm at any time of the year; c e r t a i n l y construction workers in Vancouver (with the exception of masons) worked a shorter year than those i n Toronto. 2 8 In 1905 the Department of Labour began to compare employment conditions i n Canadian c i t i e s . For almost a l l blue c o l l a r occupations, a c t i v i t y in the Vancouver labour market consistently ranked below that in Winnipeg or Toronto when measured on a f i v e point scale which rated employment conditions from \"very d u l l \" (1) to \"very busy\"(5). Three occupational groupings--manufacturing, building trades and u n s k i l l e d labour were examined every four months between 1905 and 1913. In over half the t o t a l observations, employment a c t i v i t y in Vancouver was rated below that of both Winnipeg and Toronto; for an additional quarter of the observations, Vancouver ranked below at least one of those two c i t i e s . On only four occasions did employment conditions equal those of both the other c i t i e s , and only once (May 1912) were condi-tions (for building trades only) better than those in both 61 Winnipeg and Toronto. (Table 3:2). Toronto's overwhelming advantage in terms of size and proximity to large markets does not e n t i r e l y explain Vancouver's r e l a t i v e l y poor ratings--Winnipeg with less than half the population of Toronto general-l y had higher ratings than Toronto throughout the period. Job opportunities in Vancouver however, were frequently i n f e -r i o r to those in either c i t y between 1905 and 1913. TABLE 3:2. Employment Conditions in Vancouver, 1905-13: A Comparison of Rankings with Winnipeg and Toronto. Equal Ranking Total Occupation Ranks at Ranks Ranks to one Observa-bottom 2nd 1st or both tions Manufacturing 7 3 0 2 12 Building Trades 17 2 2 4 25 Unskilled Labour 10. 10 0 3 23 A l l Occupations 34 15 2 9 60 Source: Monthly tables, \"Employment i n Canada,\" The Labour Gazette, Volumes VI to XII. The Department of Labour's tabulation of employment conditions was based upon the reports of l o c a l correspondents and did not take into account trade disputes or s t r i k e a c t i v -i t y . Between 1901-1911, the Department of Labour recorded 46 trade disputes in Vancouver with peaks in 1903, 1907 and 1911. 2 9 Approximately 1800 men were on stri k e in 1903 attempt-ing to gain union recognition and shorter working hours. Among those, 1000 transportation workers were on s t r i k e for 62 almost four months. In 1907, 1340 wage earners went on st r i k e in reaction to the wage cuts and extension of the working day implemented that year. In 1911, approximately 7500 work-ers (15% of the c i t y ' s work force) were on s t r i k e , and 5500 of that t o t a l were o f f work for two months or longer. A l l were in search of higher wages but many made no gains and others made only small ones. Among the 39 settlements record-ed by the Department of Labour, 36%!' were unconditionally in favour of the employer and 44% ended in compromise. Overall, strikes in Vancouver did not involve exceptionally large numbers of workers but Department of Labour s t a t i s t i c s do not t e l l the f u l l story. The l o c a l labour papers reported more unrest than o f f i c i a l figures suggest. More s i g n i f i c a n t , the m u l t i p l i e r e f f e c t of trade disputes produced wage and job losses in occupational groups related to those actually on s t r i k e . In a sense, recorded s t r i k e a c t i v i t y represented only the t i p of the iceberg: many wage earners were in no pos i t i o n to organize, l e t alone to st r i k e for higher wages. 3 0 The number of trade disputes in the c i t y may actually have r i s e n i f conditions i n the labour market had been more favour-able . 63 Wages U n t i l the depression of the mid 1890s, Vancouver wage rates for s k i l l e d labour were reputed to be high i n comparison with those i n central and eastern Canada. The majority of blue c o l l a r workers however, were semi-skilled or u n s k i l l e d - -m i l l hands, builders' labourers or employees in the lower paying transportation and service sectors of the urban economy (Table 3:1, p. 53), and with the exception of longshoremen, the i r wages held down by Asian competition were not much higher than those of labourers in say Toronto or Winnipeg. As a r e s u l t the wage d i f f e r e n t i a l between s k i l l e d and u n s k i l l e d labour was greater during t h i s period than in succeeding years (Table 3:3, p. 65), Nevertheless, employment leve l s were high in the 1880s and early 1890s, and the 54 hour work week offered p o t e n t i a l l y high income in those few occupations where labour was in demand. After seven years of r e l a t i v e prosperity Vancouver wage earners were strongly affected by the depression of the 1890s. Wage cuts were imposed on construction workers i n 1892, millworkers and s a i l o r s i n 1893, labourers and painters in 1894, and on municipal workers and longshoremen i n 1895. 3 1 As the economy recovered at the end of the decade, wages rose s l i g h t l y but remained below their former l e v e l s . Not u n t i l 1900 and 1902, respectively did m i l l workers and construction workers regain the hourly wage rates of 1891; by then however, 6 4 the work week was ten hours shorter, r e s u l t i n g in lower take-home pay for many. The millhand who received $10.26 a week in 1891, could earn $11.00 a week in 1901; the machinist earning $14.40 a week in 1901 s t i l l compared poorly to the machinist who brought home $22.68 a week in 1891. While builders labourers' wages in 1903, at $15.40 a week surpassed wages of $11.34 in 1891, carpenters, at $17.60 a week were s t i l l earning less than they had twelve years previously when wages averaged $18.90 a week. In short, the u n s k i l l e d or semi-skilled worker was catching up to the s k i l l e d wage earner. In absolute terms however, some wage earners were making l i t t l e progress. The longshoreman, for example, waited approximately twenty years before receiving wages equal to those of 1891 (Table 3:3, p. 65). The r i s e i n wages between 1900 and 1912 was not steady. In 1905 a general labour surplus in the c i t y reduced wages in several occupations to 1903 l e v e l s . 3 2 During the recession of 1906-07 wages in construction dropped, on average, from $5.00-$2.00 a day. 3 3 Competition from o r i e n t a l workers con-tinued to depress wages. M i l l employers paid Asian workers $1.35 to $1.75 a day for the same work that cost them $2.00-$2.50 a day for white semi-skilled labour. 3\" The largest wage gains since the 1880s were made between 1909 and 1912. Carpenters' wages rose by 14% i n 1909, lumberers by 25% i n 1910, and longshoremen, by 27% in 1912; transportation workers made two gains of 15% in 1908 and 9% in 1911. 3 5 While these increases may look substantial, they were \"catch up\" gains, 65 which, when averaged over the preceding 20 years, f e l l well short of the r i s e i n the cost of l i v i n g for the same period The Department of Labour indices show that B r i t i s h Columbia as a whole, experienced the lowest average rate of increase in wages among the nine provinces, 1900-1913. 3 6 TABLE 3:3. Vancouver Hourly Wage Rates, 1891-1911 1891 1901 1903 1907 1911 Longshoreman .40 .25 .25 .30 .38 Labourer .19 .25 .35 .35 .40 Machinist .42 .30 .36 .40 .40 Plumber N/A .33 .50 .50 .62 Carpenter .35 .33 .40 .44 .50 Motorman N/A .20 .25 .31 .35* ^Maximum rate af t e r 5 years experience. Source: 1891: Vancouver Daily World, \"Souvenir E d i t i o n , \" A p r i l 1891. 1901-1911: The Report of the Board of Inquiry Into the Cost of Li v i n g , 1915, Vol. II, pp. 484-485 and Wages and Hours of Labour i n Canada, 1901-1920, Report no. 1 (March, 1921). Reports of hourly or even dai l y wage rates may provide a deceptively high assessment of wage earners' incomes. Gene-r a l l y average weekly wages were far lower than the estimate derived by multiplying hourly wages by the normal hours of l a b o u r . 3 7 On average, scaffolders, bricklayers and builders labourers i n Vancouver worked eight months a year, while in 66 in Toronto, these same occupational groups averaged a s l i g h t l y longer work period of eight and a h a l f months a y e a r . 3 8 More-over Department of Labour wage data were based on the union rate although not a l l workers were paid union wages. In Van-couver, many s k i l l e d woodworkers including millwrights and cabinet makers received less than the union wage. 3 9 Certainly estimates of earnings based on Department of Labour data were higher than the o v e r a l l actual earnings i n Toronto's building trades during this period. 1* 0 Average annual wages compiled from census data may provide the best indication of r e a l wages.\"1 In occupations a t t r a c t i n g transient workers (construction, dock workers, etc.) average wages w i l l be deceptively low, however compari-sons of average annual wages i n c i t i e s of similar size and/or labour conditions are revealing. Table 3:4 (p. 67) shows the average annual wage for workers i n manufacturing industries in Canada's ten largest c i t i e s . Vancouver's p o s i t i o n second from the bottom places the c i t y ' s labour market in national perspective. The p a r t i c i p a t i o n of Asians (under 10% of the work force in manufacturing) does not explain the c i t y ' s low standing given the heavier p a r t i c i p a t i o n of low paid women workers in manufacturing in most other c i t i e s . 1 * 2 Comparative average annual wages in such industries as construction are not available. Vancouver construction workers generally made a higher hourly wage than such workers in most other Canadian c i t i e s , however annual wages may not have r e f l e c t e d t h i s advan-tage given the r e l a t i v e l y high unemployment le v e l s and v o l a t i l e 67 nature of the construction industry in the c i t y . TABLE 3:4. Annual Wages in Manufactur ing i n Canadian C i t i e s , 1911 Employees in Average City Manufac tur ing Annual Wage Calgary 2,248 $ 656.35 Winnipeg 10,255 586.17 Toronto 53,157 495.02 Hamilton 18,865 491.03 Montreal 33,922 568.51 Ottawa 8,329 447.64 London 7,288 444.99 Vancouver 9,207 418.05 Halifax 5,175 331.46 St. John 5,356 377.88 Source: Canada Census, 1911, Vol. I l l , p. 214. Living Costs in Vancouver, 1900-1912 By comparison with other Canadian c i t i e s , turn of the century Vancouver was regarded as an expensive place to l i v e . Woodworkers claimed they would be better o f f employed at .20/hour in the east than .30/hour in B.C. \"where the cost of l i v i n g more than made up the d i f f erence. 3 The Vancouver 68 Postal Employees Union petitioned t h e i r Federal employers for a \"regional wage increase,\" c i t i n g , \"the high price of every a r t i c l e of consumption and the excessive high costs which p r e v a i l here.\"'*'' Price indices confirm these complaints: among Canada's eight largest c i t i e s (Montreal excepted), Van-couver was rated as the most expensive for the period 1900-1912, according to the Department of Labour index representing a weekly family budget for food, f u e l and l i g h t i n g (Table 3:5). As the c i t y ' s population grew over the decade, the gap in costs between Vancouver and most of the c i t i e s l i s t e d widened even further. The discussion of housing costs which follows, suggests that had the cost of housing (rental or purchased) been included i n those calculations, differences in ratings may have been s t i l l wider. Indeed Vancouver's consistent p o s i t i o n at the top of the budget index i s remark-able given the appreciably lower f u e l expenditures necessary on the west coast. Figure 3:1 shows r i s i n g r e t a i l prices in major urban centres by province for the 1900-12 period. Again the wide gap between B r i t i s h Columbia and Manitoba and Ontario i s e v i -dent. Moreover, the large differences among the 1900 price indices suggest that Vancouver (along with V i c t o r i a and New Westminster) had always been an expensive place by comparison with p r a i r i e c i t i e s and espec i a l l y , c i t i e s of central Canada. Commodity prices in many Canadian c i t i e s were docu-mented at intervals by the Labour Gazette after 1900. While not everyone accepted that Vancouver's prices were being 69 TABLE 3:5. The Weekly Family Budget Index f o r Canadian C i t i e s : 1900, 1905 and 1912 City 1900 Index 1905 Index 1912 Index Vancouver 6.41 6.90 8.74 Winnipeg 5.83 5.96 8.32 London 4.58 5.69 7.37 Hamilton 4.88 5.15 7.03 Toronto 5.03 5.54 7.19 Ottawa 5.10 5.68 7.25 St. John 5.22 6.01 7.92 Halifax 5.41 6.13 7.56 Source: Board of Inquiry into Cost of L i v i n g , Report, Vol. I. accurately represented by the Labour Gazette--the l o c a l corre spondent was denounced as a p o l i t i c a l f a v o r i t e who quoted u n r e a l i s t i c a l l y low prices for food i and housin the trends expressed by i t s reports were clear . With the exception of f u e l , the costs of goods, services and u t i l i t i e s were higher in Vancouver than in any other large Canadian c i t y . Table 3:6 (p. 71) compares Vancouver and Toronto for 1910 and 1912. By the end of the decade, food prices averaged approximately 50% higher than those in Toronto, r e f l e c t i n g in part, the effects of expensive transportation costs and the high demand from lumber camps and construction crews in the c i t y ' s hinter-land.\" 6 The price of coal o i l , and such services as water, e l e c t r i c i t y and gas ranged from double to more than t r i p l e Average R e t a i l Prices in Major C i t i e s of B.C., Manitoba and Ontario 1900 - 1912 (Average Prices, Canada: 1900 = 100) 180 . 1900 04 08 12 Source: Board of Inquiry into the Cost of Living, Report, 1914, Vol. I, p. 141. FiR- 3:1 71 those in Toronto (Tables 3:5, p. 69, and 3:6, below). E l e c t r i c -i t y rates, calculated on a s l i d i n g scale peculiar to each c i t y , are d i f f i c u l t to compare; nevertheless Vancouver's rates as tabled by the Department of Labour appear to be the highest urban rates i n Canada. 4 7 Residents of Mount Pleasant were pay-ing almost three times as much for their e l e c t r i c i t y as r e s i -dents of comparable neighbourhoods in Winnipeg and Toronto. TABLE 3:6. Prices of Staple Commodities, Vancouver and Toronto - 1900, 1905 and 1910 1900 1905 1910 Vancouver Toronto Vancouver Toronto Vancouver Toronto Beef .12 .10 .15 .14 .15 .08 Eggs .35 .22 .35 .26 .65 .55 Cheese .22 .14 .22 .15 .20 .17 Milk .08 N/A .10 .08 .11 .10 Bread .04 .03 .04 .03 .06 .03 Coal o i l .29 .15 .29 .15 .35 .18 Fuel-' 6 .50 4.50 6.50 5.50 7.50 5.50 Rent** 13 .30 9.50 20.00 14.00 25.00 16.00 * 1 ton of soft coal. (In Vancouver, soft wood was available at $2.50-$3.50 a cord). **6 room dwelling. Source: The Labour Gazette, Vol. X, pp. 916-17; Vol. XII, pp. 808-09; and Report of the Board of Inquiry (1915), Vol. I, pp. 182, 215, and 474. Gas rates likewise, were the highest in Canada.1*8 In addition, Vancouver homeowners faced higher taxes and financing costs than t h e i r counterparts in Toronto. Mortgage interest rates 72 ranged from half a percentage point higher in 1901 to as much as three percentage points higher than Toronto interest rates in the 1909-13 period. 1* 9 The Vancouver m i l l rate remained consistently higher also: i n 1910 i t stood at 20 m i l l s , in comparison to 17.5 for Toronto and 10.8 for Winnipeg. The cost of housing however, produced the widest difference in the cost of l i v i n g for the c i t y ' s wage earners. TABLE 3:7. A Comparison of Water Rates i n Three Canadian C i t i e s , 1900 - 1909 Water rates: Vancouver South Vancouver 1900 1905 1 family house $6.00 Bath add 3.00 W.C. \" 4.00 1909 1 family house $10.00 Bath add 3.60 W.C. \" 4.20 se 2.00 .50 1.25 1.50 Toronto 4 rm house $1.50 4 rm hou Add. rm .25 Add. rm Bath 1.25 Bath W.C. 1.25 W.C. Source: Board of Inquiry into Cost of L i v i n g Report, Vol. I, pp. 389-397. 73 Housing Costs After 1900, housing, the largest component of l i v i n g costs, showed the greatest rate of increase. Although Vancou-ver has been described as a c i t y of homes, a s i g n i f i c a n t pro-portion of the population rented rather than owned the i r homes. In the East End and Grandview the proportion of tenants on the voters' l i s t nearly doubled from 20.7% i n 1904 to 38.0% in 1911. In Mount Pleasant, the proportion increased from 15.0 to 25.5%, and i n the West End the number of tenants at 48.0% of a l l voters may have surpassed the number of home owners i n 1911 (absent land owners were included on the l i s t s ) . 5 0 In the c i t y as a whole, 25.0% of a l l registered voters were not property owners. The proportion of renters to home owners was probably much higher. Temporary residents and newcomers to the c i t y were excluded from the voters' l i s t by a rent q u a l i f i c a t i o n , 5 1 and an unknown number of wage earners, doubled up in single family homes or occupying cabins behind them, were l e f t o f f voters' l i s t s . 5 2 During the 1880s and early 1890s rents in Vancouver were h i g h ; 5 3 they f e l l back during the depression of the mid 1890s. After 1900 however, rents ranged between 30-50% higher in Vancouver than Toronto; furthermore a Department of Labour housing survey of 1903 reveals that artisans i n Toronto ex-pected a higher standard of housing for the i r rental dollar than did workers in Vancouver. 5 4 Toronto workers expected 74 to f i n d a \"6-7 room house near the street car or workplace\" while the Vancouver workers surveyed, r e p l i e d that they expect-ed to rent a \"4-5 room cottage\" where available. In both c i t i e s the demand for re n t a l housing exceeded supply, a condition which apparently grew worse as the decade progressed. Rising rents were of course, the product of rapid-l y r i s i n g land costs, and in 1905, Vancouver rents began to r i s e more rapidl y than those i n other Canadian c i t i e s (Fig. 3:2, p. 76). As early as 1902 the c i t y b u i l d i n g inspector was a l e r t i n g the mayor to the housing shortage in Vancouver. 5 5 The demand for re n t a l accommodation increased along with the r i s e i n rents as the cost of home ownership climbed. By 1907 l o c a l papers and trade journals were remarking upon the big demand for rental properties i n the c i t y . 5 6 In 1910, the Labour Gazette reported that \"a large number of ... work-ingmen sublet part of th e i r house to roomers in order to keep up with their r e n t . \" 5 7 In a similar vein, immigrant families in the East End and Grandview d i s t r i c t s of the c i t y crowded th e i r recently purchased homes with as many as ten boarders, or rented out \"cabins\" squeezed on the back of 33' and 25' l o t s . 5 8 In 1911 the c i t y ' s medical health o f f i c e r reported on the \"urgent need of accommodation for the working classes.\" 5 9 The shortage of re n t a l housing in Vancouver was acute and r e f l e c t e d the very high cost of r e s i d e n t i a l land in the c i t y . For wage workers, the purchase of a home became i n -creasingly d i f f i c u l t as land prices soared aft e r 1905. Between 1905 and 1910, the price of a 33' l o t in the c i t y increased by 75 as much as 100%; in the sparsely populated suburbs outside the c i t y l i m i t s , land prices increased at least f i v e f o l d (Table 3:8). Meanwhile wage raises averaged 15% over the decade 1901-1911 (Fig. 3:3, p. 78). The r i s i n g cost of land was r e f l e c t e d in new house construction which by 1905, was proceeding more rapidly in the middle class suburbs than in working class areas of the c i t y . 6 0 The construction of blue c o l l a r homes suffered a further.setback in the recession of 1907-08.61 A large supply of undeveloped r e s i d e n t i a l land (see Chap. IV) and l o c a l l y manufactured building supplies did l i t t l e to keep housing costs down. At the onset of the 1909-12 r e a l estate boom, most r e s i d e n t i a l land sales were being made to speculators rather than potential home owners. 6 2 By 1911, house prices in Vancouver ranged from 60-70% higher than prices in Winnipeg, and 120-150% higher than those i n Toronto (Table 3:6, p. 71). In the f a l l of 1911, r e s i d e n t i a l l o t s in working class areas of the c i t y were not even s e l l i n g to speculators. 6 3 Prices shown in Table 3:8 were obtained from the week-end editions of The Vancouver World for May-June and September-October. In each case, prices quoted were the lowest found for that p a r t i c u l a r l o c a l i t y . (South Vancouver prices w i l l therefore r e f l e c t the price of land in the southeast corner of the municipality.) 76 Rental Costs in Toronto and Vancouver: 1900 - 1912 Cost 35 30 25 20 15 10 Vancouver Toronto 1900 04 08 12 Source: Board of Inquiry into Cost of Li v i n g , Report, 1914, Vol. I, p. 474 and Labour Gazette XI, p. 887; and XII, p. 809. Vol. X, p. 917; Fig- 3:2 77 TABLE 3:8. Prices of 33' Lots in Working Class Areas of Vancouver, 1903-1911 1903 1905 1907 1909 1911 Mt. Pleasant $ 75.00 150.00 300.00 500.00 1,500.00 Grandview 50.00 100.00 325.00 625.00 1,200.00 H i l l c r e s t (D.L. 301) 60.00 300.00 Cedar Cottage 300.00 350.00 South Vancouver 100.00 250.00 500.00 Hastings Townsite 175.00 250.00 900.00 TABLE 3:9. Price Ranges for Workingmen 's Houses in Vancouver and Suburbs, 1901-1911 5 Rooms 6 Rooms 1901 $ 550.00 • 850.00 950.00 1903 550.00 • - 1,200 .00 1,000.00 - 2,250.00 1905 825.00 • - 1,200 .00 1,400.00 - 2,600.00 1907 1,850.00 • - 2,650 .00 2,200.00 - 3,300.00 1909 2,200.00 • - 3,000 .00 2,500.00 - 3,500.00 1911 3,000.00 • - 4,000 .00 3,500.00 - 5,000.00 Source: Prices were obtained from the weekend editions of The Vancouver World for May-June and September-October. Evidence from newspaper ads has a number of l i m i t a -tions. F i r s t , very few ads for workingmen's homes appeared in the e a r l i e s t years of the decade; more appeared l a t e r , but these s t i l l represented a small fraction of the r e a l estate House Prices i n Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto: 1901 - 11 House Prices $ 4,000 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 Vancouver Winnipeg Toronto 1900 02 04 06 08 10 12 Source: Table 3:10, p. 79. Fig- 3:3 79 market. Secondly, prices quoted were asking prices and may not necessarily have r e f l e c t e d s e l l i n g p r i c e s . Most ads con-tained l i t t l e information about the houses offered for sale; r a r e l y was the street address or l o t frontage i d e n t i f i e d . Houses in the East End, Mount Pleasant and Grandview f e l l into the same broad price range; however by the end of the decade Grandview prices were a l i t t l e higher than those i n other areas, while South Vancouver prices were a l i t t l e lower. In Grandview these higher prices r e f l e c t e d r e l a t i v e l y higher land costs and the tendency of developers to b u i l d more sub-s t a n t i a l homes in this area. TABLE 3:10 Prices for Workingmen1 s Home s in Three : Canadian C i t i e s , 1901-1911 Toronto Winhipi eg Vancouver 1901 $ 600 - 900 750 - 900 500 - 950 1903 750 - 1,000 1,000 - 1,500 550 - 1,200 1905 900 - 1,500 1,200 - 1,800 800 - 1,800 1907 1,000 - 1,600 1,500 - 2,000 1,800 - 2,500 1909 1,200 - 1,800 1,200 - 2,000 2,000 - 3,000 1911 1,200 - 1,800 1,750 - 2,500 3,000 - 4,000 Source: Real estate ads, May and October for the years l i s t e d , appearing i n : The Vancouver Daily World, The Manitoba Free Press and The Daily Mail. The price ranges in Table 3:9 apply to houses that were i d e n t i f i e d as being for the wage earner and/or, located in a working class suburb. 80 Vancouver and Winnipeg houses had 5-6 rooms and were detached dwellings. In Toronto, houses were brick, attached, or brick front cottages, semi-detached and detached-- 6-7 rooms were common. In a l l c i t i e s , houses of 4 rooms or less, \"cabins'' or \"shanties\" were not included in the Tables. In t h i s category of housing, prices ranged from a low of $750.00 in Toronto to $2,500.00 in Vancouver i n 1911 however their appearance on the r e a l estate pages was most infrequent. F i g . 3:3 (p. 78) compares the rate of r i s i n g house prices i n the three c i t i e s . Conclusion Vancouver's newness, i t s large tracts of unsettled suburban land, and i t s future pot e n t i a l suggested by i t s r i s e in population from tenth to fourth place among Canadian c i t i e s between 1901 and 1911, signalled, on the surface, a place of special opportunity for the ordinary man. A v a i l a b i l i t y of land however, was not necessarily the same as a c c e s s i b i l i t y , and the economic r e a l i t i e s which confronted workers who arrived in Vancouver c l e a r l y defined and confined their opportunities for acquiring property. A surplus of u n s k i l l e d labour and, in construction, semi-skilled and s k i l l e d labour, the scarcity of secondary industry in the c i t y , and the v o l a t i l e nature of the lumber industry contributed to frequently high lev e l s of unemployment. The advantage of comparatively high wages Wages for Motorman and Carpenter, Vancouver: 1901 - 11 Hourly Wages 1.00 .80 .60 .40 .20 .00 carpenter motorman 1903 07 11 Source: See Table 3:8, p. 77. Lot Prices i n Vancouver 1903 . 07 11 Source: See Table 3:3, p. 65. Fig- 3:5 82 was o f f s e t by the high cost of l i v i n g and es p e c i a l l y the cost of housing in the c i t y (Figs. 3:4 and 3:5, p. 81). In 1915, remarking on Canadian c i t i e s i n general, the Department of Labour noted that houses occupied by wage earners and artisans showed the greatest rate of increase of a l l urban property, and that suburban land, \"cornered by r e a l estate agents and speculators\" had been a r t i f i c i a l l y increased in value beyond the workingman's means.61* Over the decade 1901-1911, house prices had doubled in Toronto and r i s e n approximately two and a half times in Winnipeg; in the largest jump of a l l how-ever, prices had increased from 400-600% in Vancouver (Tables 3:9 and 3:10, pp. 77, 79). Moreover, the e f f e c t s of land speculation in Vancouver were exacerbated by poorer job oppor-t u n i t i e s and higher l i v i n g costs than those found in c i t i e s such as Winnipeg and Toronto. If opportunities i n Vancouver were not as favourable as some migrants may have hoped for or l a t e r observers supposed, nevertheless many wage earners were s e t t l i n g in the c i t y and moving to i t s suburbs. The next chapter w i l l look at two suburbs i n some d e t a i l to discover how economic conditions for workers in Vancouver were r e f l e c t e d i n the rate and kind of suburban settlement and also, more broadly, to reveal the dynamics of urban growth in areas of the c i t y commonly over-looked in studies of urban development. 83 NOTES Chapter III •'•Vancouver's early economy i s discussed i n some d e t a i l by L.D. McCann, \"Urban Growth in a Staple Economy: The Emergence of Vancouver as a Regional Metropolis, 1886-1914,\" in L.J. Evenden, ed., Vancouver: Western Metropolis, ( V i c t o r i a : Univ. of V i c t o r i a , 1978) and R.A.J. McDonald, \"City Building in the Canadian West,\" B.C. Studies, No. 43, Autumn 1979, pp. 3-28. 2Demand from the expanding lumber market was apparent-l y not consistent, and one large establishment, Hastings M i l l , closed down in 1904 because of \"unfavourable market conditions.\" Labour Gazette, Vol. IV, p. 1120. 3See for Example, Labour Gazette, Vol. IX, p. 1207 or Vol. XIII, p. 846. l a b o u r Gazette, Vol. IV, pp. 1120 and 1225; Vol. V, pp. 255, 602, and 832; Vol. VI, p. 54. 5Their employer, the C.P.R., apparently learned i t s lesson, subsequently substituting \"cheap\" white labour from Quebec for construction of the Opera House, an extension to t h e f t t e l Vancouver and the Post O f f i c e . Galois, \"Social Structure i n Space,\" Ph.D. diss., S.F.U., Burnaby, 1979, p. 373. 6Labour Gazette, Vol. VII, p. 531. 7Vancouver Social Survey of the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, (Vancouver, 1912). 8Diary of E.G. Baynes, 1889, p r i v . ms. and George Hardy, Those Stormy Years, (London: Laurence and Wishout, 1956), p. 27. 9Excerpt from a l e t t e r written by F.M. Black, a 21 year old Scotsman l i v i n g i n Vancouver, 1891. William Black, TS, PABC. 8 4 1 0 1 . Abella and D. M i l l a r , The Canadian Worker i n the Twentieth Century, (Toronto: Oxford U. Press, 1978), Intro-duction . 1 1The Province, Oct. 15, 1907. 1 2\"Memoirs of Dorothy Blakey Smith,\" Vancouver Histor-i c a l Society, Newsletter, November, 1973. 1 3Terence McGovern, It Paid to be Tough, (London: J. Long, 1939), p. 96. 1\"Robert Galois discusses organized labour's h o s t i l i t y towards national immigration po l i c y . Galois, \"Social Struc-ture in Space,\" ch. IV. See also The Trades Unionist, February 1908 and The Vancouver World, \"A Page for the Wage Worker,\" December 26, 1908. 1 Premier's Papers, Sec. 20, F i l e 520, Dec. 27, 1909, PAPBC. 1 6 B.C. Magazine, October, 1912, p. 726. \"Vancouver News Advertiser, June 25, 1892 (cited in Galois \"Social Structure in Space,\" p. 422). 18VNA, February 6, 1894. 1 9Labour Gazette, Vol. VIII, p. 788. One monthly t a l l y showed 75% of the c i t y ' s carpenters were i d l e . 2 0 I b i d . , Vol. VIII, p. 922. 2 1 I b i d . , Vol. IX, p. 589. 2 2 I b i d . , Vol. XI, p. 1369; Vol. XII, p. 538. 2 3 I b i d . , Vol. XIII, pp. 846 and 1071; Vol. XIV, pp. 36 and 785. 2\"H.J. Boam, B r i t i s h Columbia, (London: S e l l s , 1912) p. 268. The significance of this report l i e s i n i t s appear-ance i n a prestigious volume of the province's his t o r y . 2 5 D i a r y of E.G. Baynes, 1889, pr i v . ms. 2 6 G a l o i s , \"Social Structure in Space,\" p. 354. 2 7Labour Gazette, Vol. I l l , p. 517. 2 8The average carpenter, plumber or e l e c t r i c i a n was reported to calculate his annual income on the basis of eight months employment. Labour Gazette, Vol. I, pp. 572-577. 85 2 9Accounts of s t r i k e a c t i v i t y are found i n monthly reports of the Labour Gazette, 1901-05 and The Department of Labour, Annual Reports, 1906-11. 3\"Newcomers were l i k e l y to accept their working condi-tions since to strike was not only to r i s k economic hardship in the short run, but threats of dismissal or possibly arrest and deportation. Many wage earners did not have the exper-ience and consequently the confidence to push for th e i r de-mands. One dock worker r e c a l l e d his early years in Vancouver, c. 1905-08, \"oh, i t was hard to f i n d employment ... wages were very low.\" Charles Mattison, B.C. oral h i s t o r y tran-s c r i p t 115, tape 1, track 1. 3 1\"Charles Burns,\" Add. Mss. 54, PACV; B.C. Sessional Papers 1894-95, p. 594 (also c i t e d in Galois, \"Social Struc-ture i n Space,\" p. 456). 3 2Labour Gazette, Vol. IV, p. 771. 3 3 Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 788. 3 4 Ibid., Vol. VII, p.531. 3 5Board of Inquiry into Cost of Liv i n g , Report, Vol. II, 1915, pp. 445-557. Calculations are my own. 3 6Op. c i t . , Vol. I, Appendix 7. 3 7 P i v a made this finding for Toronto in the same period. M. Piva, The Working Class in Toronto, p. 47. 3 8Labour Gazette, Vol. I, pp. 572-577. 3 9The Independent, August 24, 1901, p. 1. \"\"Piva, Op. c i t , p. 47. 1* 1Piva argues that the best method for uncovering r e a l wages i s to divide t o t a l annual wages by the number of employees. Piva, The Working Class in Toronto, p. 30. **2Vancouver had l i t t l e or no industry in such areas as t e x t i l e s , clothing, and food which employed large numbers of women workers i n c i t i e s such as Winnipeg and Toronto. 1 , 3The Independent, Aug. 24, 1901. ** ^ Op. c i t . , September 7, 1901. The region in question is not spe c i f i e d and may refer to the B r i t i s h Columbia Lower Mainland, or the province as a whole. **5 The Vancouver World, \"A Page for the Wage Worker,\" December 26, 1908. 86 \" 6Labour Gazette, Vol. X, p. 1125. Milk prices were about the same i n both cities--however Toronto's milk supply was regulated by the Board of Health while Vancouver's was not. \" 7Board of Inquiry, Report, Vol. II, pp. 400-417. \" 8 I b i d . , pp. 324-326 and pp. 331-332. * 9 l b i d . , pp. 721-722. 5 0Vancouver Voters L i s t s , 1904 and 1911. 5 1The Western Wage Earner, June 1909. 5 2Labour Gazette, Vol. IX, p. 691. Reports c i t i n g the severe shortage of rent a l accommodation appear as far back as 1904 in the Labour Gazette. 5 3Robinson and Co., L i s t i n g s . A 6 room house rented for $20.00 a month i n 1890; no p a r t i c u l a r area of the c i t y i s i d e n t i f i e d . 5\"Labour Gazette, Vol. V, pp. 367-380. 5 5 L e t t e r to Mayor and Aldermen, January 5, 1902, i n City Permits, Building Inspectors Report, PACV. 56Lumberman and Contractor 3, Dec. 1906, p. 11 and Labour Gazette, Vol. VII, p. 153. 5 7Labour Gazette, Vol. XI, p. 182. Home buyers were also renting out rooms in order to keep up with mortgage payments. 5 8D. Marshall and C. Itter,\"Opening Doors,\" Sound Heritage, Vol. VIII, no. 1 and 2, p. 33. 5 9Medical Health O f f i c e r ' s Report, City of Vancouver, 1911, p. IT. 6\"Labour Gazette, Vol. V, p. 832. \" I b i d , Vol. VIII, p. 1074. 6 2 I b i d . , Vol.IX, p. 952. 6 3 I b i d . , Vol. XII, p. 245. 6\"Board of Inquiry, Report, Vol. I, p. 21. 87 IV. THE GROWTH OF WORKINGMEN'S SUBURBS: HILLCREST AND GRANDVIEW Introduction Vancouver's suburbs began to at t r a c t a small number of residents by the end of the 1890s, but land costs i n the outlying areas of the c i t y remained r e l a t i v e l y low during the f i r s t years of the century. Settlement progressed more rapidly a f t e r 1904 when the population growth of Vancouver began to accelerate. The price of r e s i d e n t i a l land near the downtown core began to r i s e beyond the reach of the wage earner, and the expansion of Chinatown along with an in f l u x of European immigrants to the area east of Gore Avenue, altered the status of the East End, an area formerly dominated by s k i l l e d a r t i -sans of B r i t i s h descent. Workingmen increasingly sought homes in the sparsely se t t l e d suburbs to the east and south. In order to narrow the focus on the wage earners's experience in the c i t y , two blue c o l l a r suburbs, H i l l c r e s t and Grandview, were chosen for closer examination. A prime con-sideration in the choice of 'i'Halllcrest was the a v a i l a b i l i t y of assessment r o l l s , lacking for other areas of Vancouver (Hastings Townsite excepted). Furthermore, ..Hillcrest' s s i t e , on but outside the c i t y l i m i t s , i t s cheaper land, c e n t r a l l y 88 located and well serviced by public transportation, provided an almost i d e a l s i t u a t i o n for blue c o l l a r suburban growth. The choice of Grandview for the second study area r e f l e c t s several considerations. Settlement here, which began i n earnest i n 1904, was of long enough duration to reveal changes by the end of the boom years, yet unlike the longer s e t t l e d Mount Pleasant, Grandview did not experience the encroachment of industry with i t s complex ef f e c t s on nearby r e s i d e n t i a l use. Both areas contained some large and expensive homes, but their numbers were less s i g n i f i c a n t i n Grandview than i n Mount Pleasant. Finally,' directory entries for Grandview, located inside the c i t y l i m i t s are much more complete than are those for South Vancouver, a sprawling area of mixed blue c o l l a r and middle class settlement. H i l l c r e s t Before the 1909-12 boom, ' H i l l c r e s t was a semi-rural area with scattered clusters of workingmen's homes; the area stretched south from Mount Pleasant to approximately 33rd Avenue i n the municipality of South Vancouver (Map 4:1, p. 89). The northern hal f of H i l l c r e s t , D.L. 301, remained under p r o v i n c i a l j u r i s d i c t i o n u n t i l annexation to the c i t y i n 1911. In 1890, D.L. 301 had been subdivided by the owner, a wealthy New Westminster merchant, Henry Edmonds,1 to coincide with the incorporation of h i s Westminster and Vancouver Tramway Co. 90 whose interurban car l i n e would cross the d i s t r i c t a year l a t e r . I n i t i a l l y , Edmonds offered about 60% of the l o t s in the d i s t r i c t for sale, reserving the remaining land most of which lay adjacent to the Tramway l i n e or along the main road, Westminster Avenue (Main Street) for himself and a few business associates (Map 4:2. p. 91). The two block wide s t r i p of land which abutted Westminster Avenue occupied the highest ground in the d i s t r i c t , and with i t s sweeping mountain view, contained the area's prime r e s i d e n t i a l l a n d . 3 Through the 1890s land sales were slow, r e f l e c t i n g the current depression. At the end of 1896, approximately half the d i s t r i c t was owned by the English based Bank of B r i -t i s h Columbia. In the 1880s and early 1890s the bank had made many loans secured by l o c a l r e a l estate; during the ensu-ing depression, property such as that found in D.L. 301 was seized by the bank from customers who had defaulted on t h e i r loan repayment. The bank which had recorded no land assets on i t s 1891 balance sheet, recorded property assets of £70,000 in 1900, assets which did not include the bank branches them-selves, but represented the additional lands acquired i n the c i t i e s of Portland, Tacoma and Vancouver, where the bank operated. Edmonds retained about 15% of the d i s t r i c t ' s land in his own name and through h i s r e a l estate firm, Edmonds and Webster. 2 The remaining quarter of the d i s t r i c t was owned by a handful of s e t t l e r s and small investors who t y p i c a l l y owned between six l o t s to a f u l l block each; in the northwest corner of D.L. 301 however, 50-60 landowners held t i t l e to • D U B L I N P L A N O F • S U B D I V I S I O N O F -LOT 301, GROUP 1, NEW WESTMINSTER DISTRICT. C C O R C t Xa.f f * t f l «7w * * . J*V*~frc *~(m*mi(\" ft/**. _ ( V • X \" ««w 1^ f i r \" . Jin />u m*A *~S**fit. • • w « - — ' ? • | pi A N B 1 ! 1*7 i i V ! i 1 - ; r H r i i T ! ^ f r ; - - \" ; ' 1 J J | ^ ^ 5 ! • •THH .|. .. - yj. , ^ -i ~~ I ,:.r.i.i.i' k n T H u n • •\"! j i P ' 'I'll B2fl i l l ISJ ^viM i l ' i T B C c T 11 : i : : ; ' «4 t E T z. . j . . . - . . i . i < . J:;.j.;.i.i. ;-u:^.r.i.Ti.i i i I l LVI, L i I n . « & I T C O M o i m ) •iM3 EBMfflif ififfil KiiiS ii!S!tfl OiifiB EM3 iSHS WE EifflB EEDJ Sample a r e a MAP 4 : 2 92 one or two l o t s each. In 1901 Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities Corporation took over a l l Edmonds property, and two years l a t e r , acquired a large portion of the Bank of B r i t i s h Columbia land,\" bringing t h e i r holdings to more than one quarter of the D i s t r i c t ' s 127 blocks. The Corporation's property interest in the area coin-cided with i t s f i n a n c i a l backing of the tramway company, now under new ownership. 5 Another 40-45% of the land i n the d i s t r i c t was divided about equally between the B.C. Land and Investment Agency and two private investors, Home and James Adams, a Vancouver wholesaler. 6 Land holdings of both these men were spread throughout the d i s t r i c t . The remaining quarter of land in the d i s t r i c t was divided among small i n -vestors and a growing but s t i l l very small number of s e t t l e r s . In almost equal proportions, these blocks of land were divided among six or fewer property owners, 6-12 owners, and a dozen or more owners. Approximately 30%' of these ratepayers appear to have l i v e d on t h e i r land. 7 Residents of the d i s t r i c t were largely blue c o l l a r workers and, to a lesser extent, small farmers and market gardeners. Ownership patterns changed substantially between 1904 and the end of 1909. In 1910 James Adams remained the only large land owner with eight blocks; while in scattered parcels, a dozen others owned p a r t i a l or occasionally, f u l l blocks of land; most lo t s in the d i s t r i c t were now owned i n d i v i d u a l -l y and 40% of the ratepayers were now residents i n the area. The proportion of residents i n a g r i c u l t u r a l occupations had 93 declined, as the number of white c o l l a r workers and small businessmen had increased. About two-thirds of the t o t a l population remained blue c o l l a r workers. 8 In recognition of the d i s t r i c t ' s evolution to c i t y suburb, many were now agi-tating for annexation to Vancouver. The assessment r o l l s for the northern half of H i l l -crest (D.L. 301) provide information about settlement features and land owning patterns. Changes in land holding between 1897-1910 are shown for a 15 block sample area i n Maps 4:3-4:5 (p. 94). In 1897, major land.owners, in descending order, were: the Bank of B r i t i s h Columbia, Edmonds and Webster, finan-c i e r J.W. Home, and a teamster and a r e t i r e d logger from Mount Pleasant. The remaining 48 l o t s belonged to small i n -vestors l i v i n g i n the c i t y , and in a few cases outside the province. Only three property owners ac t u a l l y l i v e d in the area. By 1904 the Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities Corpora-tion replaced Edmonds and Webster as land owner, and the Bank of B r i t i s h Columbia had sold i t s holdings to f i v e c i t y busi- . nessmen. Following the new demand for suburban property, J.W. Home had sold o f f a block of his land. Settlement was s t i l l very sparse, building stood on less than 10% of the l o t s . 9 In 1910, investor James Adams was the sole large property holder i n the area. Most ratepayers owned one 33' or 25' l o t , a minority, held 2-3 l o t s , and a few shared t i t l e to a single l o t . Yet, into the second year of Vancouver's much touted boom, over two-thirds of this c e n t r a l l y located \"suburb\" remained undeveloped, and was r e c a l l e d by one 1910 4 : • • • • »• • • • • «« • • « 3 ... • • • • H MR TTT--Map 4:5 Maps 4:3 - 4:5 R e s i d e n t l a n d o w n e r s Bank of B.C. Edmunds & Webster J . W.Horn e Y o r k s h i r e G u a r a n t e e & Sec G .A.Owens E3 J . G . G r i f f i t h James Adams J . A . B a r r e t t O t h e r l a n d o w n e r s 3-3 l o t p a r c e l 1-2 33' l o t s 95 resident as \"a wild place very sparsely s e t t l e d up.\" 1 0 At the end of the decade .'Hillcrest roads were neither graded, nor, with the exception of the two main streets in the area, paved. In the centre of the d i s t r i c t , blocks were commonly divided into 25' l o t s , upon which stood two story' houses to the north, and smaller cottages to the south. The setback of houses appear to have been f a i r l y uniform but the front yards, expecially of the larger houses, were miniscule. The present day pattern of housing stock i n , H l l l c r e s t suggests that most r e s i d e n t i a l development occurred i n c l u s t e r s , or more accurately, short s t r i p s of 4-6 houses, interspersed with blocks or p a r t i a l blocks of uncleared l o t s . 1 1 Among the houses that survive today, common features include narrow, steep front steps, above ground basements, and, i n the larger homes., a t t i c s . Narrow wood siding and wood shingles were popular exterior cover, gingerbread trim was favoured by some owners, esp e c i a l l y on smaller homes and cottages. The assessment r o l l s provide two s i g n i f i c a n t measures of speculation i n suburban land: property turnover and non-resident ownership. U n t i l 1910, land turnover in D.L. 301 was only moderate. In the 14 years, 1897-1910, fewer than half the l o t s in a ten block sample changed ownership more than twice. 1 2 Turnover was highest (three to six occasions) for the l o t s o r i g i n a l l y held by land brokers.\"- Edmonds and Webster, Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities Corporation and J.W. Home (Map 4:6, p. 96). More conclusive evidence of land speculation in .Hillcrest i s found i n the large proportion of 96 HILLCREST Lots With Highest Turnover 1897 - 1910 r ? 1 L II 1 MAP 4:6 9 7 non-resident land owners. Reflecting a period of steady urban growth, the propor-tion of rate payers who l i v e d on t h e i r land rose from 12% in 1897 to 31% i n 1904 (Table 4:1). In the following six years, population growth in Vancouver accelerated, producing a r i s i n g demand for suburban l o t s which was r e f l e c t e d in the f o u r f o l d increase i n the number of property owners i n the Hillcrest'. sample. As the concentration of land ownership TABLE 4:1. Land Tenure i n H i l l c r e s t Sample--Main St. to Fraser between 16th and 19th Avenues Total property owners Resident owners Residents i n c i t y directory Resident owners in c i t y directory 1897 1904 1910 :. 35 48 164 3 15 36 1 21 86 1 12 28 broke down, new opportunities for land ownership opened up to those who could afford the r i s i n g land prices. The i n -creasing numbers who bought l o t s in H i l l c r e s t however, did not immediately become s e t t l e r s . In fact the minor proportion of ratepayers who actually l i v e d on t h e i r property declined from 31% i n 1905 to 22% in 1910. It is impossible to say what proportion of l o t s were purchased for future use and which for speculative investment. Certainly an increasing number of properties were being rented out; while over hal f of the residents l i s t e d for the H i l l c r e s t -! area in the 1904 98 TABLE 4:2. Occupation Status of Lots, D.L. 301, Vancouver, 1912 Resident owners 716 73 .47, Tenants 259 26 .6% Total residents 975 100 .0% Resident owners 716 56 .6% Absent owners 549 43 .4% Total owners 1,265 100 .0% Occupied l o t s 975 53 .0% Unoccupied l o t s 866 47 .0% Total l o t s 1,841 100 .0% Source: City of Vancouver, Voters' L i s t 1912. There i s some discrepancy between the number of lot s l i s t e d i n the assessment r o l l s and the number depicted on the Plan of Subdivision of Lot 301. The t o t a l here represents the lowest figure so the proportion of occupied l o t s might be s l i g h t l y lower. directory are l i s t e d on the assessment r o l l s , less than one-t h i r d of the names i n the 1910 directory could be i d e n t i f i e d as taxpayers. The l i n e between the small investor/speculator and the s e t t l e r was not a fix e d one, nevertheless the s i g n i f -icant number of rented properties i n the area indicates that a number of land owners were p r o f i t i n g as landlords. The discrepancy between the number of resident owners in the assessment r o l l s and those whose names reappear i n the c i t y d i r e c t o r i e s may be due to more than the l a x i t y of the direc-tory canvassers. The number of resident owners may be high 99 since names followed by a location such as. 'Hillcrest 1.' were given the benefit of the doubt and counted as residents. At least some of the residents appearing in the directory may have been purchasing their homes but have missed being placed on the assessment r o l l s . Property transfers were alleged to be very slow at the time. 1 3 As Vancouver's boom years drew to a close, H i l l c r e s t had become a recognized workingman's suburb with i t s annexa-tion to the c i t y . Just over hal f the l o t s in the d i s t r i c t were now occupied: over one quarter of these residents were not home owners, representing a proportion of tenant voters lower than existed in the East End and Grandview, but matching the rate for Mount Pleasant, to the north, and in the c i t y as a whole (See Chap. I I I ) . Absentee land owners now made up the minority of owners, although, at 43% of a l l ratepayers, t h e i r numbers were s t i l l s i g n i f i c a n t . There i s no clear way of distinguishing between land purchased for speculative investment and land purchased as a pot e n t i a l heme s i t e . Frequently both motives overlap; never-theless the high percentage of absent property owners (as high as 90% in the 1890s and dropping to hal f that proportion by 1912) in D.L. 301, suggests that suburban land i n blue c o l l a r d i s t r i c t s of Vancouver was a popular investment for residents from other areas of the c i t y . In 1904, absentee land owners made up 26% of a l l owners i n Grandview and 29% of the owners i n Mount Pleasant. (In contrast, the propor-t i o n of absentee land owners was 5% in the e l i t e r e s i d e n t i a l 100 area of the West End.) In the working class municipality of South Vancouver the proportion of absentee land owners was higher. Voters' l i s t s for 1912 show that 40 to 45% of a l l land owners l i v e d outside the municipality. 1 1* In the absence of assessment r o l l s however, the rate of absentee land owners gives only a general i n d i c a t i o n of the amount of land t i e d up by speculators/investors. Grandview Grandview was opened for settlement in 1891 when the Fairview b e l t l i n e extended streetcar service on a spur l i n e along Harris Street to Clarke Drive. Two years l a t e r hourly streetcars ran along Venables Street and down Park Drive to the c i t y l i m i t s , greatly expanding the area convenient for settlement. Another dozen years passed before the d i s t r i c t ' s population was s u f f i c i e n t to warrant inclusion in the c i t y directory. The f i r s t suburban homes were b u i l t on the skid-roads used by early loggers to snake out the i r trees, or on the banks of the creek beds. Few roads were b u i l t before the 1909-12 land boom; u n t i l then a network of footpaths offered the p r i n c i p a l method of communication between houses and streetcar stop. Contemporary wage earners described Grandview as, ... a l l trees and logs l y i n g on top of one another and buried--awful p l a c e . 1 5 101 A wilderness ... stumps, stones, humps and hollows were everywhere; only a few streets were opened; none were graded and macadamized. Sidewalks, where there were any, were of the 3 plank variety and at night a s o l i t a r y e l e c t r i c l i g h t at Venables and Park Dr. lighted the whole d i s t r i c t . 1 6 The growth of Grandview's population from approximate-ly 250 households i n 1904 to over 1700 in 1912, i s not remark-able. Vancouver's population more than t r i p l e d from 34,000 to about 110,000 during those years and the demand for work-ingmen's housing was very high. Given the area's proximity to work places on Burrard Inlet and False Creek, and the presence of two streetcar l i n e s , Grandview's development seems to have been only moderate. A close look at the street d i r e c t o r i e s reveals that r e s i d e n t i a l growth was not steady over time. A few blocks were almost f u l l y b u i l t by 190 7, while close by, other blocks remained empty u n t i l 1910. In general, population growth slowed down a l l over the d i s t r i c t i n the recession years 1907-08. The pattern of settlement i n Grandview suggests that, the wide a v a i l a b i l i t y of r e s i d e n t i a l land notwithstanding, the choice of a l o t was narrowly circumscribed by the deci-sions of l o c a l developers/speculators. By 1912, Grandview was less than h a l f s e t t l e d (Map 4:7). Fewer than 15% of i t s blocks were f u l l y or \"almost\" f u l l y developed. In over h a l f (57%) of the blocks, less than one-third of the land was b u i l t . Yet higher density land use i n the form of rooming houses and a few tenements in the north of Grandview and at least h a l f a dozen apartment houses to the south r e f l e c t e d the GRANDVIEW, DENSITY OF SETTLEMENT - 1911 102 3D ] * i ir • • O 0 Q 6 3 Q D 1—1 • Developed lots by block L_T empty Ik < 33% of lots developed 3 3 - 6 6 % of lots developed >66% of lo t s developed I Z O • • • • • j g g a n n ~3n public land n i . M i i M . u mi f * -At • rf n i i u . i . K i i i i MAP 4:7 103 growing need for inexpensive accommodation i n the c i t y . Scattered over the suburb, about 50 houses stood vacant; this rather high figure suggests that houses were not s e l l i n g very rapidly, surely a consequence of their price in a c i t y where the demand for housing was so high. In the western half of Grandview, small cottages stood on 25' l o t s , on rough d i r t roads that rose steeply and abruptly off the False Creek f l a t s . L i t t l e of th i s housing remains today. More of the o r i g i n a l housing stock can be found i n the area east of Vic-t o r i a Drive and north of Grant where blocks were commonly divided into 33' l o t s , and houses as far north as Venables.were often quite large and of a quality superior to those found in other working class areas of the c i t y . As prices for suburban property rose over the decade so did the socio-economic status of Grandview residents. A sample of 232 residents from an eight block area in the centre of the suburb was checked for occupation 1904-13 i n -c l u s i v e . 1 7 Prior to 1910, over 80% of the people l i v i n g in Grandview were blue c o l l a r workers; in the period 1910-13, the proportion of blue c o l l a r workers dropped to just over 60% of a l l residents while the proportion of white c o l l a r workers and entrepreneurs rose 2.5 times during the same period, from 14% in 1904-09 to 34% i n 1910-13. 1 8 In 1912 the centre of Grandview remained c u l t u r a l l y homogeneous, how-ever I t a l i a n and Chinese families had begun to move to the cheaper land on the western fringe and the more sparsely populated eastern fringe of the area. 104 Source: Vancouver Public Library. Figure 4:1 105 Unlike H i l l c r e s t , Grandview appears to have quickly-established i t s i d e n t i t y as a d i s t i n c t suburban d i s t r i c t . Residents shopped along a commercial ribbon which ran down Park Drive (Commercial) and supported two schools, four church-es (Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican and Roman Catholic) and a community h a l l . Among these i n s t i t u t i o n s , only the schools involved a large porportion of the people. 1 9 Grandview Methodist, the oldest and largest of the four churches record-ed 280 parishioners for 1912 only a f r a c t i o n of whom attended church on a regular b a s i s . 2 0 The church's importance l i k e l y lay i n i t s symbolic role as community anchor, and i n i t s function as a s o c i a l outlet for the wives of l o c a l wage earners. Si m i l a r l y , f r a t e r n a l organizations l i k e The Grandview Lodge of the Odd Fellows, had very small memberships. Among the 39 members l i s t e d for 1910, just over one-third a c t u a l l y l i v e d i n the Grandview area; the majority l i v e d several miles distant i n surrounding suburbs and i n some cases, downtown. The Grandview Ratepayers Association was organized by the area's leading residents to pressure c i t y h a l l for l o c a l improvements, but membership was not l a r g e . 2 1 The small number of residents involved in community organizations r e f l e c t e d both the recency and the temporary nature of much settlement i n Grandview as well as the importance attached to privacy by some residents. The family of Joseph Schell, a C.P.R. conduc-tor who moved to the c i t y from Ontario in 1910, expressed a common sentiment i n the i r distaste for \"too much f a m i l i a r -i t y with the neighbours.\" 2 2 106 Grandview was subdivided i n 1888, but i t s population grew very slowly u n t i l 1905. After two years of population surge, growth slowed u n t i l 1910-13. The majority of residents were Canadian b o r n 2 3 and had already l i v e d elsewhere i n the c i t y p r i o r to the i r move to the sample area bounded by Wood-land Drive, Grant, V i c t o r i a Drive and Gravely Street (Map 4:8, p. 107). Among the 228 families and individuals moving to t h i s area in the ten years 1904-13, 128 (56%) were located at another c i t y address p r i o r to their move. Table 4:3 shows the previous location of incoming residents. Another 5-10% of newcomers to the sample area had l i k e l y l i v e d i n the c i t y TABLE 4:3. Former Address of Grandview Residents, 1904-12 Downtown/Yaletown 27 East End 35 West End 18 Grandview 33 East side suburbs 12 West side suburbs 4 Total 129 for a year or longer but were missed by directory canvassers, while a similar proportion, l i v i n g with family or friends in the c i t y would have been excluded from the directory. Thus as few as one quarter of the residents had chosen Grandview for t h e i r f i r s t home i n the c i t y . Almost half (48.4%) the 108 newcomers to the sample area with a previous c i t y address, had come from the downtown core area or the c i t y ' s oldest r e s i d e n t i a l area in the East End. These areas were generally the f i r s t homes of migrants to Vancouver, p a r t i c u l a r l y blue c o l l a r workers. The rapid physical growth of the downtown area beginning after the turn of the century, the in f l u x of single men and non English speaking families seeking housing near the c i t y core, and the movement of Chinatown eastward following the r a c i a l disturbances of mid-decade, were a l l encouraging established wage earners to move out to the sub-urbs. As many as one quarter of residents however, were making a second or even t h i r d move from within the Grandview area; the large majority of these moves were three blocks or le s s . Whether through attachment to the new neighbourhood, economic consideration or a combination of the two, many residents had c l e a r l y put down roots in the suburb. The movements of one miner and surveyor, Roger Pratt, i l l u s t r a t e this form of attachment to place. Pratt arrived i n Vancouver i n the early years of the century, and rented a cabin i n the 1400 block Grant, just above the False Creek marsh. In 1907 he moved to property which he had purchased, two blocks east; a year l a t e r he made another pjrchase, moving one block further east, and, in 1910, he made his fourth move i n Grandview, this time three blocks south! Despite the propensity of Grandview residents to re-main i n the area as a whole, the turnover of residents in the in d i v i d u a l blocks was high. Among the 187 households 109 recorded for the sample area, 1904-12, two-thirds (66.8%) moved on to new homes by 1913. Approximately 40% of these 125 families and individuals l e f t the c i t y . 2 4 The remaining 74 households r e s e t t l e d elsewhere in the c i t y or i n the munici-p a l i t y of South Vancouver (Map 4:9, p. 110). Once again the tendency of people to remain close to th e i r old neighbourhood was strong. Over half of those who could be traced were found in Grandview or the adjacent blue c o l l a r area of Mount Pleasant. A substantial minority (24.6%) however, had moved into the downtown peninsula, evidence that the dynamics of urban popula-tions movement was not necessarily a simple one way process. The soon to be entrenched east-west s o c i a l d i v i s i o n of the c i t y i s r e f l e c t e d i n the r e l a t i v e l y few moves (under 10%) to suburbs on the west side of the c i t y . The equally small number of moves to the working class municipality of South Vancouver i s more d i f f i c u l t to explain. Possibly the advan-tages.of, such a move, either i n terms of cheaper land, access-i b i l i t y to the c i t y centre or the a v a i l a b i l i t y of re n t a l accommodation, were simply not s u f f i c i e n t to a t t r a c t many Grandview residents. Comparison of the occupations of the households who moved with those of the t o t a l sample, revealed few differences; for a l l occupational groups the r a t i o of movers to stayers remained about 2:1. Questions about intraurban mobility inevitably lead to questions concerning housing tenure. The names of the 218 residents who l i v e d i n the eight block sample area between 1904 and 1913 were checked against the c i t y voters' l i s t s I l l for at least two consecutive years during the period of r e s i -dency in Grandview. A f a i r l y large minority (31%) of residents' names never appeared on the voters' l i s t s ; t his is not surpris-ing given the newness of the community and the temporary nature of many people's settlement. Among the 150 names found on the l i s t s , almost h a l f (73) l i s t e d themselves as tenants, leaving the rate of home ownership at just over 51% of the population appearing on the voters' l i s t s . 2 5 On the reasonable assumption that non voters were more l i k e l y to be tenants than were voters, then well over h a l f the population i n the eight block sample area of Grandview did not own t h e i r own home; the proportion of tenants to owners was much lower i n the early years, r i s i n g rapidly a f t e r 1909. The high mobil-i t y rate for Grandview residents r e f l e c t e d the large numbers of renters who outnumbered home owners 2:1 among those who l e f t the sample area i n the 1905-1913 period. Conclusion Vancouver's large tracts of suburban land were not r a p i d l y covered with inexpensive, self-owned family homes. Before World War I, many wage earners rented t h e i r homes, while other residents purchased l o t s i n the suburbs as future homesites or speculative investments. These groups need not have been mutually exclusive, nevertheless the high numbers of renters, escalating land prices and v o l a t i l e employment 112 market together suggest that home ownership was not accessible to every worker who came to the c i t y . The study of H i l l c r e s t and Grandview demonstrates that the settlement of workingmen's suburbs was neither uniform over space nor constant through time, r e f l e c t i n g swings in the l o c a l economy, and the decisions of developers and investors as much as the demands of the c i t y ' s wage earners themselves. Despite the shortness of the i r settlement, areas l i k e Grandview and to a lesser extent, H i l l -crest, underwent subtle s o c i a l changes over the decade 1904-1914. At the beginning of the decade s e t t l e r s were almost ex-cl u s i v e l y blue c o l l a r ; increasingly they were joined by the lower middle class as land prices increased beyond the means of u n s k i l l e d or semi-skilled workers at the end of the decade. Over the same period, land use density increased s i g n i f i c a n t l y r e s u l t i n g in small apartment blocks and tracts of cottages on 25' l o t s standing i n counterpose to the empty blocks of tree stumps and forest that lay near by. The residents of H i l l c r e s t and Grandview r e f l e c t e d variable experiences i n the c i t y . Clearly some wage earners, p a r t i c u l a r l y those who purchased their land before 1909, were l i v i n g in quite a t t r a c t i v e homes on small l o t s , and a few were participants i n the boom of 1909-12, having f o r t u i t o u s l y purchased a second l o t e a r l i e r . Less fortunate wage earners rented their suburban homes, and after a short residence, some l e f t the c i t y to f i n d opportunity elsewhere. The major-i t y however, were buying or planning to buy, very modest frame 113 homes on narrow l o t s . But for the salubrious climate, l i f e for the working man i n Vancouver d i f f e r e d in no important respect from the l i v e s of workers in most Canadian c i t i e s . 114 NOTES Chapter IV •\"•Edmonds pre-empted D.L. 301 i n the 1870s, paying $1.00 an acre for the land in 1881. Henry Edmonds, Add. mss. 54, PACV. 2 V i c t o r Ross, A History of the Canadian Bank of Com-merce , Vol. 1. (Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1920), pp. 332-350. 3The e a r l i e s t date that ownership of the reserved land can be v e r i f i e d i s for 1896. Vancouver Suburban Lands, Assessment Roll s , 1897. \"The remainder of the Bank of B r i t i s h Columbia's property was sold to large investors such as J.W. Home, and in a few cases, reverted back to crown land. 5 P a t r i c i a Roy, \"The B.C. E l e c t r i c Railway Co. 1897-1928,\" Ph.D. diss., U.B.C., 1970, pp. 35-40. 6Yorkshire Guarantee and Securities Corporation was overwhelmingly the largest investor i n Vancouver Suburban Lands. The index to taxpayers for 1906 shows that i t s combined holdings i n D.L. 301, Hastings Townsite and unspecified \"Group I\" lands were almost t r i p l e (by value) of those of the second largest land owner, B.C. Land and Investment Agency. James Adams was t h i r d largest land owner, followed by another l o c a l f i n a n c i a l i n s t i t u t i o n , Vancouver Land and Securities Corpora-tio n . Vancouver Suburban Lands, Assessment Rolls, 1906. 7Rate payers whose given address coincided with the location of the i r property as well as those whose address was given as \" H i l l c r e s t \" were assumed to be l i v i n g on the i r land. Occupations were not stated on the assessment r o l l s but were taken from the c i t y directory. Suburban residents were under represented in the dir e c t o r i e s of this period, 115 therefore figures for occupational groups do not provide a f u l l y accurate representation of the si t u a t i o n : H i l l c r e s t sample area 1904 1910 Blue c o l l a r 12 50 Agriculture 4 4 Small business 0 7 White c o l l a r 2 14 Professional 0 1 Retired 2 11 9The 1904 Directory l i s t s 21 houses and one business in this area of 277 l o t s . 1 0 1 7 t h Avenue, Add. mss. 54, PACV. i : LThis pattern of r e s i d e n t i a l development i s consistent with early photos of other working class areas of the c i t y , notably Mount Pleasant and Grandview. 1 2Vancouver lots now turn over, on average, ores every seven years. Allowing a shorter time span for the c i t y ' s formative period, turnover can be gauged from the available assessment r o l l s . In the eleven block sample, 45% of the lot s (92/205) changed hands three or more times i n the 14 year period. 1 3The Province, Dec. 4, 1912, p. 32. 1\"South Vancouver, Voters' L i s t , 1912, PACVC 1 5Mrs. J.D. Cameron, an early resident i s quoted in Grandview, f i l e 181, Add. mss. 54, PACV. 1 6Mr. J. Bennett, i b i d . 1 7The sample area encompassed the 1500 -1800 block Grant and Gravely Streets • 1 Occupations of Residents of the 1500 -1800 block Gravely and Grant: 1907 1909 1912 Agriculture 1 2 9 Blue c o l l a r 17 31 27 Entrepreneurs 1 4 10 White c o l l a r 1 4 11 Professional 1 1 2 Total known occupations 21 42 59 116 1 9B.C. Annual Report of Schools, 1913, Government of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1913. .\": 0 2 \"Methodist parishioners represented about 5% of the t o t a l population i n the Grandview area. Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Church, Toronto, 1912. 2 1 E . Odium, a large property owner in Grandview since the mid 1890s i n i t i a t e d the association's formation i n 1909. 2 2 S c h e l l ' s daughter r e c a l l e d her mother's warning in an interview with the writer, December 1979. 2 3The Marriage Register of the Grandview Methodist Church, 1908-1913, provided a sample of 184: 52% were Canadian born, 36% B r i t i s h born, 9% U.S. born and 5.5% European born. 2 \"Directories for the succeeding three years were checked for subsequent moves within the c i t y . 2 5 A small number of these people may have been renting business premises in Grandview while l i v i n g in other wards of the c i t y , however every attempt was made to include only those names which could be i d e n t i f i e d as residents from the d i r e c t o r i e s . 117 V. CONCLUSION This thesis has explored facets of Vancouver's early r e s i d e n t i a l development from the stand point of wage earners' opportunities and experiences in the c i t y . It has focussed on the a v a i l a b i l i t y of land for housing, the economic con-stra i n t s to land purchase, and the kind and pace of settlement in two blue c o l l a r suburbs i n order to assess the impact of urban expansion on opportunities for the common man. Implicit i n this inquiry has been an assessment of early Vancouver as a place which offered superior opportunities of property mobility for wage earners. At i t s most fundamental l e v e l , property mobility represented the t r a n s i t i o n from tenant to home owner, a t r a n s i t i o n of p a r t i c u l a r significance for that 31% of the population (1911) born in B r i t a i n and Europe where opportunities for property ownership were severely r e s t r i c t e d for the urban wage earner. Furthermore Vancouver's abundance of undeveloped r e s i d e n t i a l land meant the poten t i a l for better housing and greater choice of home s i t e . For the wage earner however secure employment and good wages, fundamental to the acq u i s i t i o n of property, could not be taken for granted. Vancouver was not a c i t y of superior opportunity for everyone: several important factors i n the c i t y ' s development 118 reduced opportunities for the workingman. The c i t y ' s rapid growth as the terminus of the C.P.R. created a boom i n which a handful of B r i t i s h Columbia's most prominent businessmen quickly assembled urban land. There was l i t t l e room l e f t on the ground f l o o r of c i t y building for men without surplus c a p i t a l . Although the land boom collapsed in the depression of the 1890s, wage earners who faced severe wage cuts or no jobs at a l l were not generally the b e n e f i c i a r i e s of cheaper land prices. New investors quickly stepped i n to buy up the land of those who could no longer afford to hold i t . A grad-ual return to prosperity following the Klondike gold rush and mining discoveries i n B r i t i s h Columbia's i n t e r i o r at the end of the decade, brought a new and temporary s t a b i l i t y to Vancouver's land market. Between 1898 and 1905, land prices rose only s l i g h t l y and the largest land company operating on the c i t y ' s east side, The Vancouver Improvement Co., did a steady, i f unremarkable business, s e l l i n g small r e s i d e n t i a l l o t s . Nevertheless, in the blue c o l l a r suburbs, south and east of False Creek, most lo t s were s t i l l being sold to i n - . vestors i n parcels of one or several blocks. The rapid surge i n population growth beginning after 1904, coupled with a n t i c i p a t i o n of the benefits to come from the completion of the Panama Canal, created a tremendous land boom i n Vancouver, a t t r a c t i n g a myriad of promoters, dealers, and investors who drove land prices higher than those in Win-nipeg, Toronto and most other Canadian c i t i e s . Between 1905 119 and 1911, r e s i d e n t i a l lots within the c i t y l i m i t s m u l t i p l i e d ten to twelve times in value, while lots i n the outlying suburbs increased f i v e or six f o l d i n p r i c e . In 1905, house prices i n Vancouver's blue c o l l a r suburbs d i f f e r e d l i t t l e from those i n Winnipeg or Toronto, but, by 1911, house prices were almost double those i n Winnipeg and more than double those i n Toronto. In the boom of 1909-1912, the a r r i v a l of building co-operatives, shoe st r i n g finance companies and a host of \"get-rich-quick\" schemes to house the worker, signalled the high demand for. modestly priced housing. The f a i l u r e of most of these enterprises and the subsequent c o l - . lapse of the land market, ended Vancouver's second great land boom and a decade of r i s i n g land prices whose rate would be unmatched for another 70 years. When employment opportunities are examined in tandem with land and housing costs, Vancouver's reputation as the c i t y of opportunity must be modified. The high cost of l i v i n g and, for most, job insecurity o f f s e t some of the benefits of l i v i n g i n a young c i t y with plenty of land for r e s i d e n t i a l development. Urban employment was concentrated i n the vola-t i l e lumber and construction industries where seasonal lay-o f f s and c y c l i c a l slumps were the r u l e . Furthermore, a sur-plus of u n s k i l l e d , semi-skilled, and i n the case of construc-ti o n , even s k i l l e d labour, together with the absence of s i g n i f i c a n t secondary industry, limited economic and occupa-t i o n a l mobility amongst the work force, and ultimately 120 the settlement of blue c o l l a r suburbs. Michael Piva has argue that the structure of Toronto's economy, in the same period, benefitted workers r e l a t i v e to other i n d u s t r i a l c entres 1: as a port and service and commercial centre, Vancouver's economy cannot be interpreted i n the same b e n e f i c i a l l i g h t . After 1904 however, the pressure of population growth began to f i l l Vancouver's blue c o l l a r suburbs. Settlement was not uniform: some blocks f i l l e d up with workers' cottages, while adjacent blocks remained empty. Proximity to the street car l i n e did not always determine which blocks f i l l e d up f i r s t By 1910, small apartments and multifamily units associated with the pedestrian c i t y , surrounded the streetcar stops i n suburbs l i k e Grandview and H i l l c r e s t . Suburban settlement was new but the turnover of cottages i n Grandview r e f l e c t e d the increasing proportion of renters in the area as much as i t did the f l u i d suburban land market. Yet the dynamics of urban growth cannot be f u l l y understood by examining the structure of land and labour mar-kets. Turn of the century Vancouver was an urban f r o n t i e r . P a c i f i c port and terminus of a continental r a i l r o a d , separated from the rest of the nation by the b a r r i e r of a great mountain range, the c i t y was remote and unique, the epitome of the new urban order to be found i n the west. For the migrant wage earner as for the middle class entrepreneur, subjective perceptions about the c i t y ' s potential may have been more important than objective economic r e a l i t i e s i n shaping his experience in the c i t y . 121 If the c i t y of Vancouver stoked men's expectations, p r e v a i l i n g s o c i a l b e l i e f s guided t h e i r expression. The motor • of American individualism i s almost a c l i c h e , nevertheless the complex s o c i a l and psychological factors which motivated set-t l e r s and shaped t h e i r perceptions s t i l l need recognition. To a considerable extent, the wage earner's values centered upon the home as haven of security for the family and source of autonomy for the bread) cwinner. In this context, home owner-ship in the suburbs s a t i s f i e d the worker's aspirations for landed status i n an ideal i z e d (and newly popularized) \"garden\" setting which the advent of the streetcar had made possible by providing the v i t a l l i n k between work and distant home. The streetcar however, did not provide homes; only hard work, accepted with fatalism or practiced with fervour, 2 turned aspirations into the accomplishment of home ownership. The a c q u i s i t i o n of land and home however, was not easy. Even when they perceived opportunity i n the new c i t y and were endowed with what J.M.S. Careless has c a l l e d \"a spe-c i a l s t r a i n of individualism,\" 3 early s e t t l e r s worked hard, even struggled, to r e a l i z e their goals. In the 1880s and 1890s some wage earners worked 60 hour weeks, and accepted additional f i n a n c i a l help from r e l a t i v e s to make land owner-ship possible.\" For example, a young carpenter's apprentice from a farming v i l l a g e i n Essex bought his f i r s t house in 1899 with the aid of g i f t s of money from England after a f u l l decade of residence in the c i t y . A r r i v i n g i n Vancouver in the same year as the apprentice from Essex, aft e r a short 122 residence i n Ontario, a carpenter and his brother from Heckney Fi e l d s , London, purchased a small l o t i n the East End in 1890. The house they soon b u i l t was rented out for seven years, while the carpenter l i v e d i n a tiny cabin at the back of the property u n t i l he could afford to occupy his house. A m i l l worker, born in Ireland, spent seven years i n the Vancouver area before achieving a pos i t i o n as supervisor in a l o c a l m i l l i n 1893; he then purchased a 3-room cabin and lean-to on a narrow l o t o f f a skid road i n the s t i l l forested Grand-view area. The cabin burned to the ground and was painstaking-ly r e b u i l t , then enlarged, piecemeal, over many years. Recall-ing their experience s e t t l i n g i n Mount Pleasant in the 1890s, the wife of a s i l v e r guilder from Toronto concluded that her husband \"never worked a single day i n his l i f e \" by comparison with the struggle he had on the i r a r r i v a l i n Vancouver. In an uncertain environment where land prices rose rapidly, then dropped as pre c i p i t o u s l y and in which jobs were p l e n t i f u l one year and scarce the next, some wage earners l o s t hard earned properties or their jobs; others s l i d down the occupational ladder. Two Grandview home owners for example, l i s t e d as \"labourers\" i n the directories after 1900, had been a \"fireman\" and \" m i l l foreman\" when they acquired t h e i r pro-perties i n the 1890s. In Vancouver where rents were very high and the employment market e r r a t i c , property ownership was the key to economic survival for many wage earners. When one Grandview sawmiller's wages would spread no further, the large Canadian born family of one m i l l worker who had arrived 123 in Vancouver, 1889, moved to South Vancouver to clear and farm a small parcel of land; f a i l i n g to become s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t they sold t h e i r property at a loss and returned to the c i t y to be closer to employment for their 14 and 15 year old c h i l -dren. An unknown number of other wage earners were forced to send th e i r children out to work at an early age to maintain the family home in a manner reminiscent of families in Thernstrom's e a r l i e r Newburyport. 5 One senses that many of the ordinary f o l k of Vancouver spent l i t t l e time in celebra-tion of the c i t y ' s progress and advancement; rather, economic survival in an environment over which they had l i t t l e control, was probably closer to the surface of th e i r concerns. The experience of wage earners i n the early years of the c i t y was not, of course, a l l of a kind. For some, good timing and a keen sense of the land market's potential led to r e a l economic advancement. The a c t i v i t i e s of one teamster, Edward Warner may be no more t y p i c a l of wage earners' experiences than the fortunes of those considered above, but they do i l l u s t r a t e the p o s s i b i l i t i e s that were open to some individuals who arrived on the eve of the c i t y ' s incorpora-t i o n . In 1885 Warner purchased a l o t and cabin east of the Granville Townsite; in 1891 he traded 25' of his East End l o t for an acre of land on the North Arm of the Fraser, in the future Municipality of South Vancouver. During the de-pression he cleared his land with a span of mules, then traded both land and animals for a block i n H i l l c r e s t . In 1908 Warner sold the H i l l c r e s t property for $1,500 and r e t i r e d 124 to South Vancouver. Other early a r r i v a l s such as Walter Terryberry a driver who owned a tiny gingerbread cottage in the East End and pur-chased a second l o t i n Grandview 1909, and James Wilson a machinist who roomed in the West End before moving to Grand-view i n 1904, and purchasing a second l o t i n H i l l c r e s t i n 1906, r e a l i z e d in a small way, the property owning opportunities presented by the p a r t i c u l a r circumstances of Vancouver develop-ment. But both Terryberry and Warner were established in the c i t y before 1900, and made the i r land purchases during the inte r v a l s between recession and boom. Timing was a c r i -t i c a l factor i n defining the workingman's experience i n the c i t y , and in numerous other towns and c i t i e s of the west, a similar fortunate proportion of wage earners were l i k e l y repeating the same modest successes. In Vancouver, some artisans crossed the l i n e between landowner and land agent. In 1909-1912, the land boom mentality was so pervasive that a few s k i l l e d workers abandoned the i r c r a f t s to market sub-urban property. Among several dozen small r e a l estate agents in Grandview were a t a i l o r and a mechanic who moved from . th e i r downtown lodgings to set up business i n the suburbs. As the boom collapsed, both l e f t for South Vancouver, and each returned to his former occupation. This thesis has attempted to bridge the gap between rhetoric and r e a l i t y , questioning the claims of booster l i t e -rature that shaped both the contemporary v i s i o n of Vancouver and that of l a t e r interpreters. Pre war Vancouver was not 125 a c i t y of unique opportunity. As much or more than other Canadian c i t i e s , Vancouver suffered from rapid l y r i s i n g land costs and wages which f a i l e d to keep pace with the cost of l i v i n g . Furthermore, employment opportunities were frequently i n f e r i o r to those i n central Canada. Although r e s i d e n t i a l land was proportionately and to some degree, more accessible ~ to the c i t y ' s small population than i t was to the larger popula-tions of i n d u s t r i a l i z e d central Canadian c i t i e s , such d i f f e r -ences narrowed rapid l y as land prices climbed in the mid 1900s. By 1911, between one quarter to one t h i r d of the c i t y ' s sub-urban wage earners did not own th e i r homes. While Vancouver did not have slum housing on the scale of that found i n To-ronto or Montreal, between 10-15% of the c i t y ' s population l i v e d in crowded, frequently substandard housing in China-town and the immigrant quarter of the East End. 6 By 1912 Vancouver's distinctiveness lay i n i t s natural surroundings rather than i n the morphology of i t s streetscape. In the broad pattern of i t s urban form Vancouver resembled countless other c i t i e s of western North America where most urban growth had occurred after the a r r i v a l of the streetcar, and indeed, many older c i t i e s where modern improvements i n urban transportation had broken the bounds of the pedestrian c i t y . Wood frame cottages on tiny l o t s sat side by side--a v a r i a t i o n but hardly a drastic departure from workingmen's bungalows in Winnipeg or even the rows of brick front \"semi-detacheds\" on the long narrow lots of suburban Toronto. Build-ing materials, styles and facades d i f f e r e d to some degree, 126 but these were s u p e r f i c i a l variants on deeper st r u c t u r a l common-a l i t i e s . Rather departure lay i n the presence of the r a i n forest, the rough and quasi r u r a l setting of Vancouver's blue c o l l a r suburbs and, by comparison, the salubrious west coast climate. To view the greenness of Vancouver's working class suburbs as an expression of unique attachment to family and garden is to mistake the context of physical setting with subjective w i l l . 7 Suburban \"gardens\" took the form of stump strewn l o t s or tiny vegetable plots squeezed into the family's back yard. To move across a continent, to set t l e in a young c i t y remote from an older, f a m i l i a r urban order, to face uncertain employment conditions, i n short, to take a risk--these actions r e f l e c t e d the s p i r i t of individualism. Land and housing choices, i n i t i a l l y greater than those in older c i t i e s , because of the coincidental incorporation of the streetcar with the c i t y i t s e l f , were nevertheless constrained by the actions of investors and speculators attracted to Vancouver at the same period. Opportunities varied. The urban landscape l i k e the urban economy was evolving and changing: i n this state of flux lay both the chance for advancement and for f a i l u r e . The physical a v a i l a b i l i t y of land, alone, was i n s u f f i c i e n t to define a new urban order. The c a p i t a l i s t land market constricted the supply of land and the service based urban economy was not v e r s a t i l e enough to provide abundant job opportunities. 127 In the Vancouver suburbs of Grandview and H i l l c r e s t the breezes seemed fresher and the landscape, notwithstanding the stumps, was greener than i n the suburbs of Toronto or Winnipeg, but housing was hardly superior nor l o t sizes much less mean than those i n most other Canadian c i t i e s . The abundance of land did not r e s u l t in a new form of property d i s t r i b u t i o n any more than i t resulted, as J.M.S. Careless has noted, i n a greater manifestation of popular democracy.8 The abundance of land i n Vancouver, as in most c i t i e s of the North American west, continued to mean f i r s t and foremost an abundance for those with c a p i t a l and an understanding of where to invest i t . 9 128 NOTES Chapter V Mic h a e l J. Piva, The Condition of the Working Class in Toronto, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), p. 171. Piva argues that the concentration of high wage i n -dustries i n p r i n t i n g and publishing, and iron and steel manufacturing together with low seasonal employment, benefit-ted Toronto wage earners. Conservative clubs were the most popular p o l i t i c a l associations in \"blue c o l l a r \" South Vancouver. Vancouver s o c i a l i s t s comprised a very small (albeit noisy) minority of the population. See e d i t o r i a l s i n The Greater Vancouver Chinook, Library of the B.C. Pr o v i n c i a l Legislature, and A.H. Lewis, South Vancouver, Past and Present, (Vancouver: Western Publishing Bureau, 1920). 3J.M.S. Careless, \"Aspects of Urban L i f e i n the West, 1870-1914.\" In The Canadian City, eds. Gilbe r t Stelter and Alan A r t i b i s e . (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), p. 136. \"Very l i t t l e data on the experiences of early workers, p a r t i c u l a r l y that r e l a t i n g to housing a c q u i s i t i o n , i s a v a i l -able for early Vancouver. The experiences related here have ben taken from the transcripts of interviews between the c i t y a r c h i v i s t , Major Matthews, and c i t y pioneers, c. 1935, Add. mss. 54 PACV; and the Diary of E.G. Baynes, 1889, p r i v a t e l y owned. Information appearing i n Directories of Voters' L i s t s has been added where appropriate. 5S. Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press\" 1964), p. 137. 6Vancouwer, Social Survey of the Methodist and Presby-terian Churches, 1912. 7Anne TButtimer argues geographers must be wary of treating space (e.g. landscape) as an expression of human experience rather than simply as context. A. Buttimer \"Grasping the Dynamism of L i f e World\" AAAG, 1976, pp. 277-292. 129 8J.M.S. Careless, \"Urban L i f e in the West,\" p. 132. 9S.B.Warner, J r . , The Urban Wilderness, (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 19. 130 BIBLIOGRAPHY Books and Pamphlets General Abella, I. and D. M i l l a r . The Canadian Worker i n the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978. Briggs, Asa. V i c t o r i a n C i t i e s . London: Penguin, 1963. Brown, R.C. and R. Cook. Canada 1896-1921. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. Copp, Terry. The Anatomy of Poverty: Working Class Montreal, 1897-1929. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. Cross, Michael, ed. The Workingman i n the Nineteenth Century. Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974. Erickson, C. I n v i s i b l e Immigrants. London: Leicester Univ. Press, 191T. Fried, Marc. The World of the Urban Working Class. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973. Harrison, S. and C. Jardine. Reconstructing H i s t o r i c a l Commu-t i e s . Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978. Katz, Michael. The People of Hamilton, Canada West. Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975. Kealey, Gregory and Peter Warrian, eds. Essays i n Canadian Working Class History. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976. Kle i n , Maury and H.A. Kantor. Prisoners of Progress: American Industrial C i t i e s , 1850-1920. New York: McMillan, 1976. 131 Piva, Michael J. The Condition of the Working class i n Toronto, 1900-21. Ottawa: Univ. of Ottawa Press, 1979. Reynolds, Lloyd G. The B r i t i s h Immigrant: His Social and Economic Adjustment in Canada. Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1935\". Robin, Martin. The Company Province, Vol. I, The Rush for Spoils. Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 1972. Ross, Victor. A History of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. Vol. 1. Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1920. Thernstrom, Stephen. Poverty and Progress. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964. Thernstrom, S. and Richard Sennett, eds. Nineteenth Century C i t i e s . New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1969. Warner, Sam B. Streetcar Suburbs. New York: Atheneum Press, 1969. . , The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Weaver, John C. Shaping the Canadian City: Essays on Urban P o l i t i c s and KLicy, 1890-1920. Toronto: Institute of Pub. Administration of Canada, 1977. Weber, Adna. The Growth of C i t i e s in the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1899. Reprinted Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1963. Wiebe, Robert. The Search for Order 1877-1920. New York: H i l l and Wang, 1967. Wordsworth, J.S. My Neighbour. Toronto: Methodist Church, 1911. 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"@en ; edm:hasType "Thesis/Dissertation"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0095263"@en ; dcterms:language "eng"@en ; ns0:degreeDiscipline "Geography"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:rights "For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use."@en ; ns0:scholarLevel "Graduate"@en ; dcterms:title "Opportunity and the workingman : a study of land accessibility and the growth of blue collar suburbs in early Vancouver"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; ns0:identifierURI "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/23004"@en .