This temperate and riotous porthole has become one of the affluent cities in Canada , but it still defend an undertone of weirdness . depend past the frequent cerement of low - hanging clouds and shiny skyscraper , and you ’ll find a city of specialness and strange chronicle .
1. THE CITY MEMORIALIZES A FAMOUSLY TALKATIVE SALOONKEEPER.
Royal BC Museum// Public Domain
Vancouver ’s oldest neighborhood , Gastown , earned its name from a colorful bar proprietor , Captain John ( Gassy Jack ) Deighton . Deighton was born in England in 1830 and spent his other maturity labour aboard sailing vessels . At some point in the 1850s , he headed off toward California to strike it rich during the Gold Rush . Like many prospector of the fourth dimension , he kept following the amber , and by 1865 he had hook up with a Native American woman , operated a pub on Vancouver Island , and captained a soft-shell clam .
But Deighton intrust his saloon to a managing director for a mo and it quickly fell into debt . Deciding to leave his trouble behind and seek new chance , he set off in a canoe with his category , hotdog , two volaille , two chair , a large barrel of whiskey , and six dollar bill . He arrived in the Burrard Inlet , on the shores of what is now downtown Vancouver , in an expanse called Luck Lucky ( from a native terminus meaning grove of hallowed Tree ) . Within 24 hour , he had convert some local milling machinery workers to help oneself him build a improvised hutch that would become his new gin mill . In return , the workers catch a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. ’s worth of John Barleycorn and a place to unwind after piece of work . The bar not only became the focal point of the country , but so did Captain Jack . Because he was a rattling and talkative fellow , always bubble over with story , he gained the sobriquet " Gassy , " an intimate word for a person who wish to blather on . The neighborhood revolved so much around Gassy Jack that it before long became known as Gastown .
Jack died at the vernal age of 44 , but today a bronze statue of him atop a whisky cask stands in Maple Tree Square , where the noted vaunter open up his historic public house .
2. EVERY NIGHT ENDS WITH A BANG.
v4voodooviaFlickr//CC BY - NC 2.0
The metropolis of Vancouver has a notable daily ritual that it has carry out like clockwork for more than 100 years : theNine O’Clock Gun . Every Nox , the serenity of Stanley Park is shattered by a thunderous explosion when an honest-to-goodness cannon is loaded with a pound and a half of ordnance powder and give the axe ( without a rocket ) . The tradition begin in 1898 for a practical reason — to set aside the worldwide populace to accurately prepare their clock and provide a way for nearby ship to graduate their chronometers ( time - measuring devices ) . The carom replace a nightly dynamite plosion , which was deemed ineffective .
Even as timepieces became more dependable over the years , Vancouver carried on the tradition . Many people who grew up in the city near Stanley Park said the blast dish out as their curfew warning — when the Nine O’Clock Gun blasted it was prison term to skitter home . The cannon was only quiet for an extended time period during World War II , when the city thought residents might misidentify it for the sounds of a Nipponese attempt . It also fell silent for a inadequate metre in February 1969 whenstudents from the University of British Columbiastole it and held it for ransom money until a contribution was made to the local child ’s infirmary . ( Local businessman call down a thousand dollar sign and the cannon was returned . ) The cannon also once caused some hurt : In May 1964 , some bad hat managed to thrash a rock into the barrel , and when the cannon went off , the stone hurtled out and bashed into a fuel post flatboat anchored offshore , giving it a pocket-size blemish .
Vancouver is not alone in this recitation of marking sentence with a cannon blast , by the agency — Cape Town ( South Africa ) , Zagreb ( Croatia ) , Hong Kong , and Edinburgh ( Scotland ) all maintain the tradition . And if you desperately necessitate to sync your watch to nine o’clock Vancouver time , thecannon is on Twitter .
3. THE CITY IS HOME TO A REPUTEDLY HAUNTED ISLAND.
Dead Man ’s Island in the early 20th century . Image credit : Vancouver Archives// Public land
Just to the south of picturesque Stanley Park , connected by a narrow causeway , liesDead Man ’s Island . The web site , which is close to the populace , maintains an eerie halo thanks to a long history linking it with death . Legend has it that the island was once the land site of a fierce struggle in which one radical of native becharm 200 woman , children , and seniors . These were exchange for 200 young warrior from the other group , who were perform at once .
Much by and by , when one of Vancouver ’s early white settler , John Morton , arrive there in 1862 , he was astonished by an unusual raft : Tied to the tree top were hundreds of red cedar tree casket - size boxes . The region ’s Squamish multitude often raised their bushed high above the ground , lashing them to Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree limb . Morton eventually memorize that this island was a " tree - burial " earth for the local natives .
About three decennary after Morton ’s find , a smallpox outbreak swept through Vancouver . During the epidemic , Dead Man ’s Island became a " pest house " ( a infirmary for citizenry suffering from infectious diseases ) . Many of those put into quarantine on the island were go away there to die . In addition to First Nations people and smallpox victims , a act of sailors , pioneers , squatters , and lumberman are buried there .
In 1942 the island became home to a naval station , and since that time many supernatural sightings and eery phenomena have been reported . Some title to have get wind unexplained clanging , hurried step , otherworldly sobs , and the sound of strand being dragged in the dead of night . A woman place on the island once felt a hired hand on her back , although she was completely alone . Others have witnessed an unearthly glow through the trees that eventually coalesces into a human form . For an island that has had so many troubled soul pass through it , it may come as no surprisal that many believe Dead Man ’s Island is still haunted .
4. MARGARINE WAS ONCE ILLEGAL THERE.
iStock
Margarine has been around longer than you might think . First think of by a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège - Mouriès in 1869 , it was being commercially produced as ahead of time as the 1870s as a less perishable and cheaper choice to butter . Although first made from beef fatty tissue and sometimes whale oil , veg oils eventually replaced those ingredients , and the product was thought to be healthy than butter .
Dairy sodbuster worry that this non - dairy alternative would write out into their butter business . The dairy farm manufacture successfully pushed to have margarine hold illegal across Canada in 1886 . The banning would persist ( with a brief gap during World War I ) until 1948 , when Canada ’s Supreme Court ruled that such bans were a provincial egress , not a Union issue . Despite an attempt to start making margarine in British Columbia , the region soon banned it . In 1949 the ban was lift and Vancouver becamethe first Modern placeto make margarine in Canada ( although while the ban was in station , margarine - hooked Canadians gotsmuggled ware from Newfoundland , which had yet to join the Canadian Confederation ) . In another law designed to help butter producer , Quebec maintained a ruling that margarine ( which was of course whitened ) could not be colour white-livered , in imitation of butter . When this limitation was lift in 2008 , butter - colored margarine spread throughout the intact Great White North .
5. FEET KEEP WASHING UP ON NEARBY SHORES.
As you take the air along some of the beaches near Vancouver , you may notice the gestate dust of shells , driftwood , and various cast away items , such as sneakers . commonly a run shoe rinse ashore would n’t be a big deal , butfor the past ten long time , a number of these footgear have hold feet . The first one ascertain , a human beings ’s correct foundation inside an Adidas canary , was discovered in August 2007 by a young daughter vacation on Jedidiah Island , about 40 miles from Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia . Six days later , another Isle of Man ’s veracious foundation was receive on Gabriola Island in the Strait . Over time , there were others , and in February 2016 , Charlotte Stevens and her husband encountered a severed foot along a beach in Vancouver Island . This find get the numeration ofdetached human feetfound along Northwest shores to 16 .
This relatively significant number of disconnected foot has caused alarm and speculation about whom they belong to : Theories include victims of murder , aeroplane crashes , or a tsunami far across the Pacific . While not all the possessor have been identified , forensic inquiry has discover that two of the feet were from a woman who committed self-annihilation by jumping off outstanding Vancouver ’s Pattullo Bridge . Some suspect that several other shoes were from hoi polloi who committed self-destruction in a similar way . Three other victims were suppose to have died from born cause . So why are feet , specifically , being found ? Some scientists say it has to do with the lifelike event that the sea would have on a clay : The push and wrench of the ocean water would stimulate metrical foot and hands to fall off first , and rubberized running play shoe dish as perfect flotation devices .
6. FIVE-PIN BOWLING REMAINS A UNIQUE PASTIME.
samviaFlickr//CC BY - NC - SA 2.0
Five - pin bowling is a distinct type of bowling that was excogitate in Canada around 1909 , and many Vancouverites fiddle it to this Clarence Day . Thomas F. Ryandevised the plot specifically for folks who find normal bowling too taxing ( mostly kids and the elderly ) . The biz features pins that are about 25 % smaller than normal pins and a small-scale clod that fits in the hired hand without any finger yap ( similar to a boccie ball ) . The alleyway are also narrower , and players get three balls per turn rather than the standard two . Two of the honest-to-goodness organisation that still offer the plot areCommodore Lanes and Billiards(838 Granville Street ) , which opened in 1930 , andGrandview Lanes(2195 Commercial Drive ) , which opened in 1947 . ( The game is also popular in other Canadian cities . )
7. IT’S HOME TO THE WORLD’S NARROWEST COMMERCIAL BUILDING.
The Sam Kee Building in 1937 . Image credit : City of Vancouver Archives// Public field
TheSam Kee Building(sometimes cry the Jack Chow Building ) on West Pender Street is renowned as the “ narrow commercial construction in the creation . ” Sam Kee ( whose birth name was Chang Toy ) had bribe the land some meter prior , but in 1912 the City of Vancouver determine to widen Pender Street , leaving Mr. Kee only a narrow strip of land . Rather than abandon the land or sell it , the determined Kee decided to construct a construction on what he had left . The building was quicken in 2010 to include animated storyteller shows featuring neon lights and music .
8. PARTS OF THE WINDOWS IN ONE LOCAL CHURCH ARE FAR OLDER THAN THE CITY.
Some of the stained - meth windowpane at St. John ’s Shaughnessy Anglican Church at Nanton Avenue and Granville Street in Vancouver are made from shattered fragment of 11th 100 varnished trash from England ’s Canterbury Cathedral . The duomo had been flunk during World War II .
9. THE AUTHORITIES HAVE REPEATEDLY CRACKED DOWN ON “INDECENCY.”
Wikimedia// Public knowledge domain
Vancouver seems like a fair liberal , subject - given spot to live . But since formally becoming a city in 1886 , the metropolitan hub has had instalment of cracking down on indecency , many of which seem tame by today ’s standards . In 1914 , the city manager of Vancouverbanned performancesby Marie Lloyd , a hugely popular English music - hall performing artist and comic . Why was she so scandalous ? At one breaker point in her show , she lifted her level - length gown two inches off the ground to give away a scout on her ankle — an act deemed far too scandalous for Vancouverites to handle . On June 9 , 1933 , Vancouver did appear to loosen up a bit , however . On that date , the city council vote to let men to go topless on metropolis beaches .
Still , the urban center remained ever vigilant when it came to decency . On January 16 , 1953 , law bust the Avon Theatre on Hastings Street , where Erskine Caldwell ’s playTobacco Roadwas being staged . The cast was arrested on charges of presenting an indecent public performance . The crime : skimpy outfits , sacrilege , and one of the cast members appeared to be piddle in a cornfield ! Bible were n’t beyond reproach either . In October 1961 , appendage of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raid Vancouver bookshop and the main public library and seized copies of a lewd piece of literature — Henry Miller ’s novelTropic of Cancer , which sport graphic sexual speech . ( To be bonnie , Tropic of Canceris among the most frequentlybanned or challengedbooks in history . )
