page_title: History of Vancouver
section_title: Vice and politics
hierarchical_section_title: History of Vancouver / 1900 to 1940 / Vice and politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Malahat (ship) Built 1917. 1,550 Gross tons. Columbia. 245.7X43.8X21. (Description supplied with photograph).
context_page_description: The history of Vancouver is one that extends back thousands of years, with its first inhabitants arriving in the area following the Last Glacial Period. Vancouver is situated in British Columbia, Canada; with its location near the mouth of the Fraser River and on the waterways of the Strait of Georgia, Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet, and their tributaries. Vancouver has, for thousands of years, been a place of meeting, trade, and settlement.
  The presence of people in what is now called the Lower Mainland of British Columbia dates from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the glaciers of the last ice age began to disappear. The area, known to the First Nations as S'ólh Téméxw, shows archeological evidence of a seasonal encampment near the mouth of the Fraser River that dates from that time.
  The first Europeans to explore the area were Spanish Captain José María Narváez in 1791, and British naval Captain George Vancouver in 1792. The area was not settled by Europeans until almost a century later, in 1862. The city grew rapidly following completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway transcontinental line from Eastern Canada, allowing for continuous rail service in the late 1880s.
context_section_description: Vancouver, home port of the 246 ft. Malahat, a five-masted schooner known as the "Queen of Rum Row," maintained an active liquor trade throughout the Prohibition Era of the neighboring United States, despite efforts to bring Prohibition to Canada.
  Vancouver's longest serving and most often elected mayor, L. D. Taylor, followed an "open town" policy prior to his final defeat in 1934 to Gerry McGeer. Essentially, the policy was that vice crimes such as prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging would be managed, rather than eliminated, so that police resources could be directed towards major crime.
  
  A consequence of this, in addition to assumptions that Taylor was colluding with the criminal underworld, was the maintenance of red light districts in racialized neighbourhoods, such as Chinatown, Japantown, and Hogan's Alley, which perpetuated the association of non-whites with immorality and vice crime. Taylor suffered the biggest electoral defeat the city had seen in 1934, largely on this issue. McGeer ran on a law and order platform, resulting in a crackdown on vice crimes, which, after years of Taylor's "open town," sought to clean up crime. Unfortunately, policing non-white communities was key to successfully executing the plan. Even the East End (today's Strathcona) had by WWI been largely vacated by English, Scottish, and Irish residents who moved to the wealthier (and whiter) new developments of the West End and Shaughnessy. The East End, the original residential district that grew up around Hasting's Mill, was left to successive waves of new immigrants, and became associated with poverty and vice, (as the Downtown Eastside remains today).
caption: The Malahat was a rum-rummer that used Vancouver as its home port during the Prohibition Era of the neighbouring United States.
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