A heralded glimpse of Vancouver, before it was called Vancouver
First issue of city’s first newspaper, bought by UBC, may be only copy left
Few people have heard of the Vancouver Weekly Herald and North Pacific News, let alone viewed a copy.
But it’s an important piece of local history, the first item printed in the city on Jan. 15, 1886. It’s so early it was printed three months before Vancouver became Vancouver — the city was then known as Granville.
Rare book dealer Stephen Lunsford may have the only copy in existence. On Thursday he sold it to UBC Special Collections, which plans to scan it and post it online.
It’s an amazing artifact, a unique glimpse of the city just before it was incorporated on April 6, 1886.
Incredibly, the first story in the first column of the first newspaper in Vancouver history is headlined “The Chinese Question.”
“There’s not even a Vancouver yet, and they’re already complaining about the Chinese problem,” Lunsford said.
“In this period in 1886, major anti-Chinese legislation was passed in Victoria because of the (Canadian Pacific) railway being completed — all of a sudden there were all these Chinese railway workers coming into town.
“They weren’t taking over jobs, they were creating new jobs, but there was already this fear. (B.C. politician) Noah Shakespeare had already introduced legislation to prevent the Chinese from working on any contracts that were let by the government. So it’s no surprise that one of the first things in the first paper in Vancouver is the anti-Chinese thing, because it was a very, very strong sentiment at the time. It’s a bad way to start off your history, but there it is.”
It’s difficult to say how many copies were printed of the fourpage broadsheet, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred. Most were probably destroyed in the Great Fire of June 13, 1886.
In Bessie Lamb’s 1942 history of Vancouver newspapers, she writes that Major Matthews of the Vancouver Archives had a copy of the first Weekly Herald, but said it was in rough shape because it had been in a shipwreck in 1920.
The archives doesn’t seem to have a copy today, so it may have fallen apart. Lunsford hasn’t been able to locate another copy at the B.C. Archives or the Legislative Library, which has the most extensive newspaper collection in the province, so his copy might be the only one left.
He obtained it about 20 years ago from a man who owned a newspaper near Spokane, Wash.
“His paper had been established in the 1870s or ’80s,” he relates.
“When this guy bought the newspaper, there was a room probably 20 by 20 feet that was basically filled with newspapers from towns all over the northwest. They must have traded newspapers (with other publishers).”
The publisher donated many American papers to local museums and historical societies, and asked Lunsford if he’d like to take a look at the Canadian ones, which included papers from the Cariboo gold rush town of Barkerville.
“I looked and said ‘I’ll just take them all,’” Lunsford said.
“I didn’t realize the first Vancouver paper was in (the stash), but there were some early papers and I took all the Canadian ones. Sometime later I was going through them and I went ‘Whoa!’”
The Vancouver Weekly Herald and North Pacific News was a fourpage broadsheet in a day when broadsheets were 18 inches wide and 24 inches long (47.5 cm by 60.9 cm). By comparison, today’s Vancouver Sun is 11 by 21 inches (27.94 cm by 53.34 cm). It was published by Richard Alexander, the manager of Hastings Mill.
“He’s clearly jumping the gun, thinking the townsite is going to be called Vancouver and they’re going to have a paper, so he gets one out immediately,” said Lunsford.
It was soon taken over by William Brown, who published it until Oct. 27, 1887.
There are no illustrations in the paper, just reams of type and ads for pioneer businesses like the Granville Hotel, which advertised it had “A BILLARD TABLE” and a
There’s not even a Vancouver yet, and they’re already complaining about the Chinese problem.
bar supplied “with the Best Brands of Wines, Liquors and Cigars.”
Several ads said they were located in “Vancouver City, B.C.,” others in “Coal Harbour, British Columbia.” The “fine and commodious” Brighton Hotel (“the most fashionable WATERING — PLACE in British Columbia”) was in Hastings townsite, which didn’t join Vancouver until 1910.
There is a story of the history and geography of the Granville townsite on Page 2, followed by an item on the forthcoming Vancouver, “successor to all the natural grandeur of scenery, advantages of water communication, mildness of climate, abundance of timber, (and) inexhaustible fisheries which lie in rich profusion around old Granville.”
Lunsford initially sold the paper to a local collector, who recently sold it back to him. UBC’s Katherine Kalbeek phoned him Thursday to see if he had “acquired anything interesting” recently, and Lunsford told her “well, as a matter of fact I’m off to meet (a writer at The Vancouver Sun) in 15 minutes to show them this newspaper.”
She purchased it on the spot.