The end of the “golden age” of shipping arrived at precisely the time when urban British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest began to thrive. Nevertheless, old negative attitudes about the urban waterfront and the people who lived there survived the transition into the twentieth century and continued to be fueled by local conditions in Vancouver, where the disruptions and displacements of colonialism, a mostly immigrant population, and volatile regional economy made the city a highly changeable place. By the start of the First World War, however, the Vancouver Police had begun turning the city’s dockside neighborhoods into closely monitored spaces that the city’s leaders and businessmen hoped might make Vancouver into Canada’s foremost Pacific port. This talk will dig into police records, maps, and newspapers of the era to sketch a picture of life in Vancouver’s urban waterfront at the start of the twentieth century, as well as the people and institutions who shaped it.

Madison Heslop is an Assistant Professor of Canadian history at Western Washington University. She received her PhD in History from the University of Washington, where she wrote her dissertation on the connected histories of the Seattle and Vancouver waterfronts.