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Old CPR Bridge. Looking south from the northern end of the Burrard street bridge looking south at two tugs pushing a Seaspan barge to the Ocean Cement plant at Granville Island - Photographed February 18, 1981.

Still intact is the old CPR Bridge (built in 1889) that stretched from the north to southern sides of False Creek allowing train traffic from the old CPR Repair depot under Burrard street Bridge (on the south side) to the Roundhouse CPR repair shop (on the north side). Both the bridge and repair site were torn out in 1982 to 1983. Note the old Paddlewheeler boat at the bottom right of the frame - this used to be part of the Kettle of Fish Restaurant.

False Creek in the 1920s was the sawmilling hub of British Columbia's south coast, but the first tenants of Granville Island tended toward newer secondary industries serving the forest, mining, construction, and shipping sectors. The very first tenant, B.C. Equipment Ltd., set the standard by building a wood-framed machine shop, clad on all sides in corrugated tin, at the Island's west end. (Today the same structure houses part of the Granville Island Public Market.) By 1923 virtually every lot on the Island was occupied, mostly by similar corrugated-tin factories. The Island's factories made shingles, chain, barrels, wire rope, nails, saws, paint, cement, rivets, boilers, and all manner of industrial machinery.

At its height in 1930, 1,200 workers were employed on the Island. Most of the workers arrived at work by streetcar. There was a special stop in the middle of the Granville Street Bridge from whence they descended several flights of stairs to the Island below. The only other access to the Island was a pair of road and rail bridges leading to the Creek's south shore. The boom ended with the onset of the Great Depression. Several of the sawmills around False Creek shut down, and a shantytown grew up along the channel opposite the Island on the Creek's south shore. (Living on floats and piles, the squatters remained until the 1950s, when a typhoid scare and a grisly murder prompted the city to evict them.) During the depression, hundreds of families lived on Granville Island, then known as "Mud Island". The shantytown settlement was called "Bennettville" after the former Prime Minister of Canada, Richard B. Bennett. Families on the island operated small boats or sold salmon or buckets of smelt door to door to survive. They were basically self-sufficient and were left alone by city officials until 1949 when seven hundred people were given eviction notices. Most families eventually moved off the island by the late 1950's.
Bridges Cafe opened as part of the industrial reclamation project in 1971 to 1972. Developers Mitch Taylor and Bill Harvey began revitalization with an abandoned Monsanto Chemical Warehouse, keeping the same corrugated tin siding and roof, setting the tone for future conversions. These two folks started the Granville Island Brewery which was the first new industry to be working this area in decades. The Public Market at Granville Island (at the top left side of the frame) was rehabilitized by Norman Hotson in 1979-80.

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False Creek
by Catherine Gourley

In less than a century, False Creek has been transformed from the sleepy fishing grounds of the Squamish nation into a showcase of sophisticated urban living. Its metamorphosis is a drama that embraces some of the biggest land deals and most powerful players in British Columbia’s history. The Canadian Pacific Railway, Ottawa, local authorities and Hong Kong investors all took part in re-shaping the creek.

Before the Europeans arrived here False Creek was a shallow arm of the ocean, teeming with fish and wildlife, and about five times the size it is today. The Squamish traditionally wintered on the creek’s south shore, placing nets and weirs on the great sandbar where Granville Island now stands.

But this idyllic life changed in 1859 when Captain George Richards nosed his ship into the huge tidal basin. Richards was conducting a hydrographic survey of the northwest coast shoreline for the Royal Navy. On entering the creek he expected to discover a water link to coal deposits he had noticed in Burrard Inlet. When he met a dead end he gave the basin the mundane name of False Creek. Captain Richards did not know then that forestry, not coal, would be the dominant industry of the new colony. Nor that the inlet that disappointed him so much would play a crucial role in the province’s economy.

Captain Edward Stamp, Sewell Moody, Jeremiah Rogers and others erected mills and used False Creek for easy access to the immense Douglas fir stands in Shaughnessy, and for their vast booming grounds. Shipping prime B.C. lumber throughout the world, they prospered mightily. But the village that would be Vancouver remained a two-bit, hard-drinking, one-road town surrounded by bog and blackberry brambles.

Three events that would affect False Creek forever then happened in quick succession. First, the mighty Canadian Pacific Railway unexpectedly announced it would not stop at port Moody but would extend to the open waters of English Bay. That decision gained it more than 2,400 hectares of land in the pioneer town. Then squatters who fled the Great Fire of 1886 chose to remain on False Creek’s south shore and settle it rather than return to the town’s devastated peninsula. The CPR was soon razing the trees on the slope and offering lots for sale.

And finally in 1889, a bridge spanning the creek’s two shores was built, the first of three Granville Street bridges.

These developments turned the focus of the new town south to False Creek. Businesses gravitated to it. Soon its banks were lined with sawmills and plants, transforming the tidal basin into the industrial heart of town. William Van Horne, head of the CPR and the most powerful figure in town, built extensive railway yards on False Creeks north shore, enticed by the offer of 20 tax-free years. This district became known as “Yaletown” after the CPR workers who settled there. They had worked at Yale, on the railway’s line.

During World War I two railways, the Great Northern and the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway, contracted to have the east end of False Creek (from Main Street to Clark Drive) filled in to provide space for their yards and terminals. The CNPR’s station--still there and known today as Pacific Central Station--went in in 1915, the Great Northern’s was there from 1917 to 1965. By the 1890s False Creek was criss-crossed with bridges. Its waters were clogged with log booms, raw sewage, industrial waste, barges. Its banks were littered with smoke-belching sawmills, greasy wharves, rats and finally, in the Depression, with squatters. With fire such a hazard, the businesses commissioned the J.H. Carlisle, a fireboat, for exclusive False Creek service.

World War II was a boom time for the creek. But by the time it ended False Creek had become a seedy eyesore. The dream of its becoming Vancouver’s secondary harbor was fading; large ships could not enter it, navigation was bad and the large industries were moving out. By 1950 many thought it should be filled-in, a suggestion Van Horne had made 60 years earlier. False Creek was a “filthy ditch” good for nothing but a sewage line down the centre. Those sentiments continued until consultants came up with a cost for draining the creek: an impossible $50 million.

“What To Do With False Creek” remained a favorite civic debate. By the 1960s, however, there was a change in public thinking and a group of local politicians began pushing for a clean-up of the creek. Accomplishing that required the cooperation of the Canadian Pacific Railway which, since Van Horne’s day, had effective control of two-thirds of the creek land. The CPR had been leasing it to marginal customers who used its rail lines. Urban planner Walter Hardwick was given the job of approaching the CPR and the provincial government; their talks resulted in the biggest land swap in the city’s history. The CPR, the province and the city basically threw their individual land holdings into a pot and re-arranged their ownership. The CPR returned control of 35 hectares on the creek’s south side to the province which promptly flipped it to the city for $400,000 and a city-owned site in Burnaby that the province wanted for Simon Fraser University.

Now that it was in possession of False Creek’s south shore the city began to act on its renewal plans. It announced that 1970 would be the common expiry date for leases along the creek’s south shore, ending the decades-long tenure of many industries. The debate now was over what the next generation of False Creek tenants would be like. The controversy boiled into a furious public debate that split city council into two camps: the old school seeing secondary industry as the creek’s only salvation and others like Hardwick who saw a future beyond industry. The pro- change group won the day and in 1972, led by Art Phillips, they swept to power at city hall.

Granville Island, as the centre of the city’s industrial basin, inevitably was at the core of the entire creek’s revitalization plan. Consultants working on the city-ordered False Creek study were asked by the federal government to include the island in their thinking. They recommended that False Creek become an urban mix of housing and public space and that Granville Island become an “urban park.” City hall adopted this daring plan and set about cleaning up the industrial sludge along the creek, gouging out bays, lining the shore with a seawall and dividing the land among dozens of groups for residential development. With strict density and car limits, False Creek South blossomed into a remarkable mix of people and housing with a large, waterside park and a school in the middle. It remains one of the city’s most popular districts.

An even more drastic change was destined for the CPR’s former railyards on the creek’s north side. The province took it as the future site of Expo 86. Despite immense opposition from the media, continuous labour disputes and last-minute haggling among countries, Expo 86 under the stewardship of Jim Pattison turned out to be one of the most successful world’s fairs ever.

At first, the provincial government, under Premier Bill Bennett, expected a crown corporation would develop this spectacular site, using False Creek’s south shore as a model. But Bennett’s successor, William Vander Zalm had other thoughts. He offered the entire 84-hectare site as one package to private developers. In spring, 1988, it was announced that Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka-shing, one of the richest men in the world, was the top bidder, paying $320 million over 15 years. The local outcry was immediate. Vancouverites felt the deal of the century had been made too cheaply, too quickly and under great secrecy. “Mystery Unanswered, Questions Remain,” a newspaper headline read more than a year after the deal closed.

Amid this storm of controversy Li Ka-shing’s company, Concord Pacific, began drawing up blueprints for the huge area, in consultation with city officials. When finally presented, the official development plan revealed the largest development scheme in North America, an ambitious $3 billion re-designing of the entire shore. It shows a series of neighborhoods strung along the waterfront with 40 high rise towers, four parks, schools, marinas and a three-kilometre seawall. And as a salute to the area’s industrial past, the CPR’s Roundhouse has been preserved and is slated for use as a community centre. By 2010, when the last building is finished and sold, Concord Pacific should be home to 15,000 people and the north shore of False Creek at last open to all the residents of Vancouver.