Hastings Mill

From the author of Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 and other books about Vancouver comes a new title focusing on the city’s beginnings as a small sawmill operation called Hastings Mill. Established in 1865 on Burrard Inlet, two years before Vancouver was incorporated, the enterprise kick-started the city’s development into the metropolis it is today.

Lisa Anne Smith writes of the mill community’s pioneers, who prevailed despite fires, floods, epidemics, economic upheavals, and other challenges. While the mill survived the fire of 1886, it burned to the ground in 1898 — and then was rebuilt within a year. The only surviving relic of the fire was the company store, preserved today as the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum. The mill itself was demolished in 1929 to make way for the construction of a deep-sea pier.

Smith, a curator of the museum, goes into considerable detail about efforts launched in 1930 by the Native Daughters of British Columbia to rescue the store — Vancouver’s oldest building — from demolition. It was moved by tugboat from Vancouver Harbour to its present location on the shore of English Bay.

The high points of this book include dramatic descriptions of early calamities, as well as the almost comic unfolding of the city’s first election, which happened during a labour strike and was marked by bribes, fraudulent voters, and angry mobs. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, Hastings Mill is certain to be of interest to readers who are curious about Vancouver’s colourful history.