All year we will be celebrating Vancouver’s 125th Birthday through public events and celebrations. Since the city was incorporated on April 6, 1886 I thought it would be interesting to see what happened after City Council was formed and our little townsite of Granville became Vancouver.

September 1886 – Mayor, Council, City officials. Archives Item#LGN 1045. Photographer: Herry T Devine.

April 6, 1886
The City of Vancouver was incorporated as a group met for a small ceremony in Jonathan Miller’s house. About 1,000 people lived in Vancouver at the time.

May 12, 1886
The first meeting of Vancouver’s City Council took place. The first item on the docket was a petition to lease, from the Federal Government, a 1,000-acre military reserve to be used by the city as a park. This would become Stanley Park.

June 13, 1886
The Great Fire ripped through Vancouver. It took about 45 minutes to spread and destroyed almost 1,000 of the city’s wooden buildings. Businesses were rebuilt within days and Vancouver sprung back to life.

Day after the Great Fire. Archives# CVA 1477-416.

Businesses in Gastown rebuilt 1 month after the Great Fire, July 1886. Archives item #Str P7

July 4, 1886
The first sea-to-sea CPR transcontinental passenger train arrived in Port Moody after crossing Canada in 5 days and 19 hours.

July 13, 1886
City Council passed a by-law (No. 258) regulating the use of bicycles by imposing a speed limit of 8mph.

July 30, 1886
Vancouver’s first fire engine arrived at Port Moody and a four-horse team hauled it over miles of dusty roads via New Westminster to Vancouver. It arrived August 1st and as there were no horses available in Vancouver to haul it to fires, it was pulled by the firefighters themselves.

Also in 1886
Chuck Davis included a few more items on his site under 1886 such as the fact that the Vancouver Police Department’s first badges were made from America silver dollars that year and the city’s first graveyard at Brockton Point in Stanley Park was closed.

The timelines above are sourced from VancouverHistory.ca where you can read about these events in more detail. Please help Chuck Davis’ work live on by sponsoring a year that will be published in his book.

Video Games Live is coming to Vancouver for two performances next week presenting music from popular video games with choir performers, orchestras, exclusive video footage, and live action.

The world’s biggest video game concert (that set a Guinness World Record in 2008 for most video game performances in a single year) will be at the Centre for Performing Arts April 13th and 14th. This is the first stop on their Canadian tour and tickets are still available.

If you would like to attend, I have 3 pairs of tickets to give away to each of Wednesday and Thursday’s shows. Here’s how you can enter to win:

I will draw all 6 winners (3 for each date) at 12:00pm Monday, April 11th, 2011.

Update The winners are @bradpittlike, Stephen, Jon Jennings, Megan, Chris, Jessica Sarai (April 13th), and @brittriddell, @stv, Lyndsi (April 14th).

The Atlas Obscura, an online directory of bizarre, amusing, and curious attractions, once again presents Obscura Day this Saturday, April 9, 2011, around the world.

There are currently 103 cities participating with events from a meetup at the Owl House Museum in East Cape, South Africa, to Tinkertown tours in Sandia Park, Minnesota, and tours of Mary’s Gone Wild Folk Art and Baby Doll Museum in Supply, North Carolina.

On the map for Vancouver there are Vancouver Police Museum tours and Secrets of the Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Chinese Garden tours.

“A few weeks ago, we received a massive donation from a woman whose father was Vancouver’s first full-time forensic scientist,” Chris Mathieson, Executive Director of the Vancouver Police Museum, told me. “Detective Inspector Vance, often dubbed “Vancouver’s Sherlock Holmes”, was famous throughout North America for his exploits and innovations in scientific police work. He’s the reason our building (the original home to the VPD Bureau of Science) was built in 1932.”

The Police Museum will be participating in Obscura Day for the second time this year. “What makes these Obscura Day tours so special is that we’ll be opening some of those donated boxes for the first time; we’re not completely sure what’s in them, but there’s no doubt that it’ll be an exciting glimpse into the history of forensics in Vancouver.”

You can follow Atlas Obscura on Facebook or Twitter for information about unique attractions around the globe and their participating in Obscura Day 2011.

Last summer the City of Vancouver expanded its street food program to include over a dozen new mobile dining options. After a public survey and an application process, 19 new street food options (with a heavy lean on tacos) have been announced.

Cartel
Location: West side of 500 Dunsmuir
Type: Korean fusion; beef, pork, tofu Korean tacos.

Chawalla
Location: East side of 800 Howe
Type: Indian teas, sweet and savoury parantha

Didi’s Greek
Location: South side of 1700 Robson
Type: Meat and vegetable souvlaki, tzatsiki, spanakopita, Greek salad

Feastro the Rolling Bistro
Location: Thurlow at West Cordova
Type: Seafood taco, prawns, fish & chips, pork taco, chowder, bisque, yam/sweet potato fries Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

Over the last seven years I have published over 3,700 posts about our region, 229 of which have been specifically about Vancouver’s history and 22 so far for Vancouver125. As the City of Vancouver celebrates 125 years since incorporation today I’m almost at a loss for words so I figured a bit of a video tribute would be appropriate to start:

1946 – Advertisement for “Vancouver, City of Destiny” presented by Canadian Paramount News.
Archives Item#CVA 1184-2346. Photographer: Jack Lindsay

Old Vancouver Tourism Videos

1907 Streetcar Footage

1940s Parks Board (silent)

1962 “Since Yesterday” transportation film

1960’s “Vancouver Honeymoon” – hat tip to Darren Barefoot for this one

1986 – Expo86 Remembered