hi this is Matt Baker today I'm going to give you a quick overview of the history of Vancouver a city located on the west coast of Canada and the city that I happen to call home from one perspective Vancouver is a very new city this is because when the European settlers arrived in North America they settled the continent from east to west meaning that Vancouver was actually one of the last places to be reached for example when Vancouver was founded in 1886 the city of Boston on the other coast was already 256 years old however from a different perspective what we now call Vancouver is actually a very old city in fact the land that it sits on is one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in North America this is because when the indigenous peoples arrived they settled the continent in the opposite direction from west to east meaning that Vancouver was actually one of the first places to be reached for a long time it was thought that the Clovis people were the first humans to arrive in North America traveling over land via an ice-free Corridor around 13,000 years ago however it is now thought that the first humans to arrive actually did so by boat traveling along the coast this hypothesis was bolstered in 2017 when archaeologists found the remains of a coast Village a bit north of Vancouver dating to at least 14,000 years ago now at this point I want to introduce you to the three First Nations that were living in Vancouver long before the arrival of European settlers and who still live here today these are the musqueam the slaya tooth and the Squamish all of whom belong to a broader ethnic group known as The Coast Salish the musqueam lived primarily along what is now called the Fraser River whereas the the slaya tooth lived primarily along what is now called the barard inlet originally the Squamish lived primarily around what is now called House sound although they too ended up settling around the broad Inlet for reasons I'll get to in a bit but one thing I want to make clear is that indigenous Nations differ significantly from European nations in that they don't tend to have firm boundaries for example the traditional territories of the musum clat tooth and Squamish overlap quite a bit if we go back 10,000 years the water level was higher and therefore the coastline actually looked something like this which explains why the oldest musam settlement called sequen was located here where the mouth of the river would have been archaeological research at this site has indicated that the musim ancestors were living here as far back as 9,000 years ago and they were creating objects such as this one which was found at the site however over time as the coastline expanded the mosum moved their main village to tnam which is also referred to as the Maro miden but eventually by around 1500 years ago the main settlement was located at musam the Village from which the nation takes its name and which nowadays is the location of their main Reserve currently there are around 1,300 members of the musqueam Nation about half of whom live on the musqueam reserve one well-known member is the artist Susan Point whose work is prominently displayed at the Vancouver International Airport to the north of the musqueam live the slaya tooth who spoke the same language known as down river hakum originally their main settlement was at ton now known as belara although they also had many other Villages along the barard inlet they called the inlet slayt which is where the name slay tooth comes from nowadays they have around 600 members and their administrative offices are located here the most well-known member of the slaya tooth is probably Chief Dan George who became an actor and starred alongside Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josie Wales and alongside Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man for which he received an Oscar nomination just prior to the arrival of European settlers in the region a smallpox epidemic swept through the area most likely having been introduced by Europeans further south the slaya tooth were particularly hard hit and were almost wiped out completely because of this they allowed the Squamish to come down and settle barard Inlet alongside them for example they shared a village in what is now Stanley Park called ququ in fact the musam also used this Village and may have used it for over 3 3,000 years however the main Squamish settlement in the Vancouver area was located at the base of the calano river and was called kulin take note that all of the various things in Greater Vancouver named calano such as the river lake University and suspension bridge are all named after a Squamish Chief named Joe calano who in turn got his name from the people who lived near quam Mulin overlooked Quin and visible from many parts of Vancouver are two peaks that are usually called the Lions however the Squamish call them the two sisters because Legend has it that they were made to commemorate a peace treaty between themselves and the Haida which involved twin brothers from the Haida Nation marrying twin sisters from the Squamish Nation another place name with Squamish Origins is Kitsilano it's named after August Jack katalan o whose grandfather was chief of a village called snok now I've chosen to highlight the musam slay tooth and Squamish because these are the three nations whose traditional territory overlaps with the modern boundaries of the city of Vancouver which is why they are the three who are mentioned during land acknowledgements statements that are heard quite frequently in Vancouver at the start of formal speeches or seen at the bottom of websites however I do want to make it clear that there were and still are many other indigenous Nations living in Greater Vancouver these include the quum after which the modern city of Coquitlam is named as well as the kite tasan seamo katti and qulan it is estimated that the total population of all these nations around the year 1750 was perhaps as high as 100,000 although like I mentioned earlier there was a small po Fox epidemic just prior to European contact that resulted in a major population decrease however the main point I want to make is that what we now call Greater Vancouver was quite densely populated long before the arrival of Europeans while it was not one big sprawling Metropolis like it is today it was a collection of many small towns and Villages bustling with activity now when it comes to European contact that happened for the first time in 1791 when a Spanish explorer named Jose navarez arrived and had a brief encounter with the musan then just one year later in 1792 the British Explorer George Vancouver also passed by he crossed paths with some other Spanish explorers and met with them on a beach which is now called Spanish Banks George Vancouver's father was from the Dutch town of cden so his her name would actually have been Vancouver meaning from Kuan so that explains why Vancouver is called Vancouver but George Vancouver did not actually stay long nor was there any attempt made at a British settlement during the 1700s the next European to pass by was the British Explorer Simon Fraser in 1808 he actually came from the opposite direction having traveled Overland and then down the river that now bears his name note that he's also the namesake of Simon Fraser University by this point the Spanish had basically given up their claim to the area but the British now had a new competitor the Americans you see They too had reached the Pacific Ocean over land in fact they did so a few years before Simon Fraser when Lewis and Clark arrived via the Columbia River therefore in 1818 the US and the UK agreed to share the area the British called it the Colombia District while the Americans called it Oregon Country but of course both sides forgot to ask the indigenous population what they thought in 1824 the British founded Fort Vancouver not here but here it served as the end point of the York Factory Express which became a major trading route across the continent then in 1827 they established Fort Langley the first European settlement in what is today Greater Vancouver so initially it looked like the whole area all the way down to the Columbia River would eventually become British but then in 1843 the Oregon Trail opened up and around a thousand Americans arrived and started to settle the West Coast at this point it became clear that a firm boundary would have to be set the Columbia River seemed like an obvious choice but in the end in 1846 the British agreed to the 49th parallel instead with the exception of this island known as Vancouver Island note that the Explorer George Vancouver got quite a few things named after him marking the border at the 49th parallel led to a strange situation that exists in Greater Vancouver to this day Point Roberts it belongs to the US but its residents are cut off from the of their country also take note that nowadays along this part of the Border there is simply two roads parallel to each other and Canadians and Americans can simply walk up to each other and say hello there are cameras monitoring things but security is nowhere near as heavy as it is at the Mexico US border but back to the mid 1800s in 1858 the area to the north of the 49th parallel became the colony of British columia the New Colony needed a capital and originally the plan was to build it across the river from Fort Langley but instead this site was chosen and named New Westminster however it did not remain a capital for long you see originally Vancouver Island was a separate Colony with its own Capital at Victoria but then in 1866 the two colonies merged and Victoria was chosen to be the capital of the whole thing now at this point I want to point out the fact that unlike in most other parts of what is today Canada no treaty was ever made between European settlers and First Nations with regards to most of the territory that now comprises British Colombia in other words the territory was never actually seated which has led to all kinds of legal problems that still exist to this day that said let me now show you how the modern city of Vancouver came to be initially New Westminster was the main European settlement in the area and all of this was simply considered the outskirts of New West but that would eventually change it all started with the founding of stamps Mill in 1865 to this day the lumber industry is a major player in Vancouver's economy this is because the area has some of the largest trees in the entire world around the same time what is now Stanley Park was designated as a military reserve and a road was built between it and New Westminster using an old trail that had been used by First Nations for Generations this would later become Kingsway a major thoroughfare through Vancouver to this day tourism is another Big Industry that has been in Vancouver from the start during the 1860s the New Brighton hotel opened up here named after the the popular seaside resort in England and the area around it was designated as the Hastings Township today this area is the site of the pan an amusement park and outdoor performance venue this year it was host to Boys to Men bony M and many others another major Milestone occurred in 1867 when an Englishman named gassy Jack opened a pub near stamps Mill in order to cater to the workers that Pub became the first building in what would eventually become downtown Vancouver a small settlement built up around the pub that became known as Granville although it was also simply known as Gast town for years Gast town was marked by this statue of gassy Jack but in 2022 the statue was torn down when protesters argued that he was definitely not the type of man that deserves a statue after all at age 40 he quote and quote married a native girl who was only 12 she ended up running away from him at age 15 after he got her pregnant of course the other major event that occurred in 1867 was that Canada became a country initially Canada did not include British Columbia and in fact around this time BC actually considered joining the United States instead however that did not happen instead Canada managed to convince BC to join it in 1871 based on the promise that a Transcontinental Railroad would be built within the next 10 years they were a little late but in 1886 the ceremonial last Spike for the Canadian Pacific Railway was hammered in however at that point the exact Terminus for the railroad had not yet been established originally the plan was to have it end at the newly built town of Port Moody just north of New Westminster but instead the provincial government managed to convince the railway Executives to extend the line to Granville in exchange for a bunch of free land that same year in 1886 Granville changed its name to Vancouver and officially incorporated as a city with its original boundaries set at what would become Alma Street 16th Avenue and Nimo Street to this day the original boundaries are noticeable because near them the cross streets don't quite line up correctly anyway CP Rail was able to sell off its land bit by bit and thus the company became extremely wealthy and Powerful basically directing the first few Decades of Vancouver's growth things got off to a bad start though when a fire destroyed most of the city in the same year that it was incorporated but after that the city started to grow fast and in fact it is still growing at a very fast pace today starting in 1886 real estate speculators bought land in Vancouver built buildings and then flipped them for a profit a trend that continues to this day and which has resulted in Vancouver being one of the most expensive North American cities to live in especially when it comes to housing for example this modest house is currently for sale can you guess how much the ask prices the answer is $2.2 million but I'm getting ahead of myself let's go back to the late 1800s and pick up the story from there once the CPR was in charge they shifted the downtown area from Gast town to the area around Granville Street which ran from Waterfront Station across a newly built bridge and then down through what was then a dense forest note also that this body of water known as false Creek was originally larger and that what is now Main Street had to cross a bridge close to what is now Science World it led to Vancouver's first suburb Mount Pleasant which is now not a suburb at all but rather a core part of the city from the very beginning the areas west of Main Street became the more wealthy areas and the areas east of Main Street became the more poorer workingclass areas a trend that basically continues to this day in 1888 the city council made an important decision they designated what had previously been a military Reserve as a park instead it became Stanley Park which is to this day one of Vancouver's greatest features it was named after Canada's governor general at the time lord Frederick Stanley the person for whom the Stanley Cup hockey's Greatest Prize is also named after sadly the Vancouver Canucks the city's NHL team has has never won that cup however a much earlier team called the Vancouver millionaires did way back in 1915 another key feature of Vancouver from the start was its Port here's what it looked like around the turn of the century you see Vancouver's location on the west coast of Canada allowed it to become a key point on what was called the all red route a Global Network that allowed trade and travel to occur throughout the British Empire without passengers having to pass through any non-british countries now being a coastal city one popular past time that developed in Vancouver was swimming for this reason a man named Joe fores Vancouver's first official lifeguard became one of its most popular early residents now in other parts of North America most cities were built before modern things like electricity and street cars came along but Vancouver was being built right around the same time when these these things were brand new and therefore it was able to be built as a modern city from the get-go whereas most cities had to build street car lines through already existing neighborhoods in Vancouver the street car lines often came first therefore impacting where the neighborhoods ended up a good example of this is the Commercial Drive area which is where I happen to live the street car line that ran from Vancouver all the way to New Westminster passed through this area and therefore it became very commercial which is why it's named The Way It Is later it became a popular area for Italian immigrants and therefore today is known as Little Italy Commercial Drive is also the location of the new useful charts store if you're familiar with this channel you'll know that we sell many of our charts as posters such as our timeline of world history and our Evolution and classification of living things so if you happen to live in Vancouver feel free to drop by we're located at 2916 Commercial Drive and are open 7 days a week from 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m. we're just a few blocks south of the sky train station and there's also a great new bookstore nearby and a board game shop so it's well worth the trip but back to the history of Vancouver from the very beginning Vancouver has always been a very multi-ethnic City for example it is the most Asian city outside of Asia with around 50% of its residents being of Asian descent the two largest Asian groups are those with Chinese ancestry and those with Punjabi ancestry However unfortunately these communities got off to a rough start when it came to being treated equally many of the early Chinese settlers were former Railway workers who were willing to work for less than half of what whites were paid initially they were forced to pay a head tax as well and were only allowed to live in what became Canada's first and largest Chinatown still located here then in 1907 there were three days of anti-asian riots aimed at both Chinese and Japanese immigrants things have gotten better since then but unfortunately anti-asian racism does still exist today and in fact has been on the rise again because of coid in the early 1900s India was still part of the British Empire and therefore as British subjects punjabis were supposed to be able to travel to and settle in Canada if they wanted however in 1914 352 passengers traveling on a boat named the kamagata Maru were turned away and forced to return to India where 26 of them were killed and another 200 imprisoned because they were suspected to be political agit ators despite this unfortunate incident many punjabis did end up settling in Vancouver initially in this area here which today is known as Punjabi Market or Little India one fact about Vancouver that is less wellknown is that it once had a mostly black community at a location known as Hogan's alley it was home to Vice chicken and Steakhouse which played host to many musical greats such as Louis Armstrong count Bassie and Nat King Cole however Hogan Alley's most famous Resident was Norah Hendrick who was frequently visited by her grandson Jimmy Hendrick sadly most of Hogan's alley was raised to the ground during the 1960s to make way for a freeway that was never built another sad chapter in Vancouver's history occurred between the years 1899 and 1958 this is when the St Paul's residential School operated in North Vancouver a school that many children from the musam slay Toth and Squamish nations were forced to attend operated by both churches and the government Canada's residential school system is now seen as being a form of genocide because it specifically aimed to quote Kill The Indian in the child end quote and hence fully destroy indigenous language and culture we also now know that these schools were places where both physical abuse and sexual abuse occurred and where malnutrition and disease were allowed to go unchecked fortunately Canada is now starting to reconcile with this dark phase in its history by focusing on a Truth and Reconciliation process in fact September 30th Is Now national day for Truth and Reconciliation there's obviously still a lot of work to be done but thankfully the mus slay Toth and Squamish are still here and to this day are an integral part of the City's population let me now continue with how the city of Vancouver evolved during the 20th century in 1916 what had originally been a sand bar in fals Creek was made into Granville Island initially an industrial site but nowadays a popular tourist destination filled with interesting shops and a large public market around the same time the Eastern portion of false Creek was filled in and another Railway company CN built its Terminus station called Pacific Central here now like I mentioned earlier the original borders of Vancouver were different than they are today everything to the south of 16th Avenue was originally going to become part of bernabe but then in 1892 it incorporated as South Vancouver although a bit later in 1908 the Western half split on off to become a separate city called Point gray but then a process of amalgamation occurred first in 1910 Hastings Township joined Vancouver and then in 1929 the three cities of Vancouver South Vancouver and point gray all combined together to form the city of Vancouver with the borders that it has today at this point a new city hall was built near to where the three original cities used to connect now you'll note that this part over here is not actually part of Vancouver it was designated early on as the university endowment lands and is now the site of UBC Western Canada's largest university and to the South is Sea Island which is actually a part of Richmond in 1931 it became home to the Region's first airport which today is the Vancouver International Airport also known as YVR to the North Vancouver has two major Bridges connecting it to the NorthShore the more famous One is the lion's Gate Bridge built in 1931 the other one called the second Narrows Bridge was actually built before this although the original was eventually replaced by a new bridge also called The Iron Workers Memorial Bridge named after 18 workers who died during construction one of Vancouver's most iconic buildings was also built during the 1930s the Hotel Vancouver for many DEC ades it was Vancouver's tallest building although nowadays it has been eclipsed by 34 skyscrapers that are even taller one of the most recent ones is this unique Tower built in 2020 and called Vancouver house also well-known is Harbor Center which has a revolving restaurant on top and is located near Canada Place a convention center and cruise ship terminal with an iconic roof that looks like a series of sails one thing that makes Vancouver different from most other North American cities is that it has no freeway leading to the downtown core like I mentioned earlier there was initially a plan to build one but construction was stopped due to public backlash instead Vancouver ended up with a unique public transport system known as the sky Train although the downtown park goes underground like a Subway most of it is elevated hence its name the first line opened up in 1986 its line lach coincided with Expo 86 which was a World Fair held in Vancouver that same year that line is hence known as the Expo line the system expanded in 2002 with the Millennium line and then in 2009 with the Canada Line built in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics since then the Millennium line has also been extended to kitum and is currently being extended along Broadway with plans for it to to eventually go all the way to UBC now unfortunately I can't talk about the history of Vancouver without mentioning the downtown east side which during the 1980s and 90s descended into what is now Canada's poorest neighborhood known for its high levels of homelessness drug use and mental illness it was also the location where Canada's worst serial killer Robert pikon took his victims from between 1982 and and 2002 killing perhaps as many as 49 women most of them prostitutes and several of them indigenous for many years the police bungled the case due in part to systematic racism but fortunately in more recent times there has been a rise in activism bringing attention to the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women and the Need For Truth and Reconciliation between settlers and first na ations okay let me conclude by pointing out one of Vancouver's fastest growing Industries film nowadays as many as 50,000 vancouverites work in the film industry with Vancouver now being the third largest production Center in North America after Los Angeles and New York that's why Vancouver is now nicknamed Hollywood North TV shows filmed in Vancouver include the xfiles Battlestar Galactica Smallville Supernatural The Flash Riverdale and many more that was a look at the history of Vancouver if you found the video interesting you might also be interested in this video by the channel indigenous history now on the nearby city of Seattle and don't forget if you're ever in Vancouver do come visit us at 2916 Commercial Drive thanks for watching [Music] [Music]
