HISTORY Documents from early Vancouver shared online
Volunteers transcribe council minutes from 1886 to 1890
Sam Sullivan doesn’t think much of Vancouver’s first mayor, Malcolm MacLean, who probably stole the city’s first election. But he digs his successor. “I’m such a groupie of David Oppenheimer, I went to the Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn (where he is buried),” said Sullivan, who was Vancouver’s 38th mayor and is the MLA for Vancouver-False Creek.
Oppenheimer was quite busy during his four years as mayor. He was instrumental in the creation of Stanley Park and the construction of much of the city’s infrastructure, from streets to sewers to streetcars.
But Sullivan ran into a problem when he tried to look through the council minutes during the Oppenheimer years of 1888 to 1891. The original handwritten documents in the city archives are too fragile to handle, and the microfiche copies are difficult to read.
So Sullivan decided to have them transcribed. Initially he hired someone to do it, but that proved expensive, so he recruited volunteers.
It took almost four years, but the transcripts of all city council meetings between 1886 and 1890 are available online at globalcivic.org/documents-ofearly-vancouver
Most of the first council meeting on May 10, 1886 was devoted to different factions arguing over the candidates for city clerk (John Rooney was hired, at a salary of $75 per month).
Bigger issues quickly cropped up.
“It’s really fascinating to watch after the big fire (of June 13, 1886),” said Christopher Stephenson, one of six volunteers that worked on the transcriptions.
“The city is being built plankby-plank, more or less. The sidewalks are literally being built. There’s notes about raising funds for the hospital, petitions for a female section of the prison, people complaining about things like, ‘They’re building a crematory too close to my house!’ ” Sullivan finds it fascinating. “There’s so many interesting things, from the (first) Granville Bridge to False Creek to Stanley Park and Hastings Park; all these things came about as a result of decisions that were made at Vancouver council,” Sullivan said. “You can see the city develop as you read these documents.”
Volunteer Margaret Sutherland said the issues may be different, but the way the politicians argued is the same as today.
“At one point the city council was considering an offer for electric lights, like street lights,” said Sutherland, who was the coordinator for the project.
“The fire, water and light committee was having a spat with the finance committee because the fire, water and light committee thought these street lights looked pretty good, and the finance committee was sure it was some old, obsolete stuff (from) San Francisco they were trying to pawn off on this little place up north.
“They didn’t end up buying them; they bought another system. I’ve been to that meeting. I’ve heard that discussion about: ‘This is just the old junk they couldn’t sell.’ ”
Amid all the mundane dayto-day stuff are some startling decisions.
“You get these little bombshells, like when the mayor (McLean) agrees to hold an antiChinese meeting at city hall,” Sullivan said.
“The result of that first meeting was (Vancouver’s) first race riot in February 1887.”
Sullivan is so happy with the project he’s set up a non-profit society, Transcribimus, to do more document transcriptions. The focus will be on the kind of thing the Vancouver Archives doesn’t have the staff to do, such as the handwritten council minutes (which go up to the 1920s).
“As we were getting to the end of the Oppenheimer years, we (thought), we’re learning how to do this, maybe we should go beyond that,” Sullivan said.
Sutherland is gung-ho about going through more ancient documents.
“I took early retirement from a government job (to do this),” the 60-year-old said.
The Transcribimus website is transcribimus.ca