page_title: History of Vancouver
section_title: Property/neighbourhood development
hierarchical_section_title: History of Vancouver / 1900 to 1940 / Property/neighbourhood development
caption_attribution_description: English: This was the home of Tim Cummings, the last person to live at Brockton Point, which had once been home to a community of mixed Aboriginal-European settlers. (The creator of this image died on July 27, 1960, and his fonds donated to the City of Vancouver Archives by Mrs. Doris Crookall in 1979.)
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: The first act of City Council at its first meeting in 1886 was to request that the 1,000-acre (4.0 km²) military reserve be handed over for use as a park. Historians have pointed out that this may seem a strange priority for the nascent city as there was an abundance of green space at the time. The West End, however, was designated to be an upscale neighbourhood by speculators with connections to the CPR., They did not want the scattered settlements on this property to grow into another industrial, working-class neighbourhood. This act also signaled the beginning of the process that would see the remaining inhabitants of various origins evicted as squatters in the 1920s for the creation of a seemingly pristine park. It has been suggested that perhaps the new Stanley Park would over time be purged of any trace of native occupation. However over time the Parks Board has begun to refill it with Native artifacts.
  In 1877, only six years after British Columbia joined Canada, Superintendent of Education John Jessop submitted a proposal for the formation of a provincial university. An Act Respecting the University of British Columbia was passed by the provincial legislature in 1890, but disagreements arose over whether to build the university on Vancouver Island or the mainland. A provincial university was formally called into being by the British Columbia University Act of 1908, although its location was not yet specified.  Originally titled McGill University College of British Columbia (associated with McGill University in Montreal), it was selected in 1910 to be constructed at a site at Point Grey, though the outbreak of the First World War delayed construction. The now-independent University of British Columbia began operations in 1915.
  In 1911, Vancouver expanded with the amalgamation of Hastings Townsite (originally called New Brighton). The former municipality's name continues on in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood, which covers the same territory.
  By the interwar years, other neighbourhoods had grown that were working class, but not especially impoverished or racially exclusive, such as Mount Pleasant, the suburb of South Vancouver, and Grandview-Woodland. Even the West End was becoming less exclusive. CPR developers once again established a new enclave for the city's white and wealthy elite that would pull them from the West End and be the destination for the "coming smart set." Point Grey was incorporated in 1908 for this purpose, and Shaughnessy Heights would be developed exclusively for the "richest and most prominent citizens," who were required to spend a minimum of $6, 000 on the construction of new homes, which were to conform to specific style requirements. These patterns of economic segregation were apparently secured by 1929 when Point Grey and South Vancouver were amalgamated with Vancouver. Point Grey included the current neighbourhoods of Arbutus Ridge, Dunbar-Southlands, Kerrisdale and Marpole, Oakridge, Shaughnessy and South Cambie, and South Vancouver included the current neighbourhoods of Cedar Cottage, Collingwood, Killarney, Riley Park-Little Mountain, Sunset, and Victoria-Fraserview. William Harold Malkin was the first mayor of the new city, having defeated incumbent Louis Denison Taylor, the champion of amalgamation, in the 1928 civic election.
caption: Photo of Tim Cummings' home, the last person to reside in Stanley Park. He resided there until his death (1958), even after the city evicted most of the other Park inhabitants in 1931.
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