Vancouver reimagined: New book includes contributions of all races, classes to city’s history

It’s been said Vancouver is a place without a history and what history it does have it’s busy tearing down. However, to say that Vancouver exists outside of history completely is to erase the generations of people of all races, Indigenous and settler, who have help make the city what it is today. That is the argument author and historian Daniel Francis put forth in his latest book, Becoming Vancouver: A History, the first new history of the city written in decades.

“Really there hasn’t been a history like this, a narrative account meant for a general audience covering the story from the beginning of the city to the present, in several decades,” he explains. “So, the publisher and I thought it was time to remedy that situation.”

From mill town to global metropolis. Today on the #CityNewsBookshelf on @CityNewsVAN, a look at "Becoming Vancouver: A History" by Daniel Francis, the first new history of the city written in decades. @Harbour_Publish #ReadLocalBC pic.twitter.com/ECbJ1XyyqP

— John Ackermann ???? (@jackermann) December 12, 2021

He admits, much has changed since then, not just with the city, but with history itself. “We’re willing now to recognize the racism that was such a strong part of the history, especially before the Second World War, the treatment of Asian immigrants, for instance, and the treatment of Indigenous peoples, is now recognized to be a blight on our historical record and we’re now willing to talk about it in an open way.”

Francis takes up a task of expanding the lens through which we look at how Vancouver came to be the city it is today to include people of all races and classes. “Specifically, the Indigenous people, I think, most prominently have been written back into the story, but probably some of the less attractive bits of our history that were papered over in the past are also back in the story, and the history of different labour groups and labor-contentious groups are also back in the story. The story is a broader story now than it was 50 years ago.”

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He admits he was struck by some of the unrest that would come to line the pages of the book. “I guess I was a bit shocked how much of that went on and how much street violence associated with it went on. Vancouver is a very calm city now compared to what it was, let’s say in the `20s in the `30s.”

Francis notes the more things change the more things stay the same, pointing out Vancouver began as a huge land transaction when the CPR, the transcontinental railway, received a huge land grant to locate its terminus here.  “So, it’s gone from 1886 almost to the present, the ramifications of that real estate deal.”

A century after the railroad the city sold itself again, this time on global scale. “Expo [86] was envisaged from the beginning as what it turned out to be:  a way of kind of opening the city to the world and saying we were open for business. It succeeded probably beyond anybody’s wildest dreams.”

The downside, Francis says, is it invited an influx of foreign capital that has played a role in escalating land values from that point forward.

Ultimately, he hopes the reader comes away with a new appreciation of its history as it tends to be a place that likes to get by on its looks. “It’s a city that is renowned for its location but, too often, I feel we look outside of the city to its setting instead of looking inside to the city to its history.”

Becoming Vancouver: A History is available from Harbour Publishing.