East Vancouver (also called East Van or the East Side) is a region within the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Geographically, East Vancouver is bordered to the north by Burrard Inlet, to the south by the Fraser River, and to the east by the city of Burnaby. East Vancouver is divided from Vancouver's "West Side" (not to be confused with the West End of Downtown Vancouver or with West Vancouver municipality) by Ontario Street (although Main Street is often used as the nearest arterial road).
East Vancouver has been the first home for many non-British immigrants since the 1880s. Historically, it was also a more affordable area and traditionally the home for much of Vancouver's working-class populace, in contrast to its wealthier upper and commercially prosperous middle-class "West Side" counterpart. The East Side is best summarized by its diversity – in terms of family income, land use, ethnicity and mother tongue. The rapid increase in housing prices and gentrification may be affecting diversity of the area.
History.
Colonization: 1860–1945.
In 1860, the False Creek Trail was built alongside a trail used by Indigenous peoples to connect False Creek with New Westminster, traversing the region of East Vancouver. The first colonial settlement in the current Metro Vancouver area appeared in 1865 in what is now Strathcona, Vancouver's first neighbourhood. Similarly to the present, Strathcona was known simply as the "East End". In the 1880s, colonists built homes in what is now Mount Pleasant.
Construction of North Arm Road (now Fraser Street) began in 1872 to allow farmers to bring their produce to market from the north arm of the Fraser River. Later, in 1890, a railway linked South Vancouver and Mount Pleasant. Besides agriculture, canneries were a major employer for many residents in the 1880s and 1890s.
In 1886, the City of Vancouver was incorporated, comprising much of East Vancouver. One exception was the municipality of South Vancouver, created in 1892, which was an independent municipality until 1929. In 1888, the provincial government designated 65 hectares of land adjacent to modern Hastings Street as a park, now known as Hastings Park. Since 1907, the park has been home to the Pacific National Exhibition.
Transportation infrastructure expanded during the 1890s. In 1891, four public houses opened along Kingsway to service stagecoaches and carriages. Hourly tramcar service began operating along a right-of-way parallel to and crossing where the False Creek Trail had existed. In 1913, it was paved and renamed Kingsway. By the 1920s, street car service was installed along the full length of what is now designated Main Street.
Development of the area increased during the turn of the century. In 1893, a small cedar cottage was built near present-day Kingsway and Knight Street. In 1900, the Cedar Cottage Brewery was built near this location and the surrounding area is still known as "Cedar Cottage". In 1911, a municipal hall was built at the intersection of East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street, while the Hastings Sawmill lands were sold to the local working class. In the following year, John Oliver High School was built nearby. The Collingwood Free Library also opened in the neighbourhood. This library was built largely due to donations from a local resident, John Francis Bursill, who wrote for local newspapers under the name "Felix Penne".
Electricity was first provided to South Vancouver in 1914, with one of the first street lights in Vancouver being installed at East 48th Avenue and Nanaimo Street. In the aftermath of the First World War, a building boom occurred in many areas of East Vancouver, resulting in much of the region being occupied by single-family housing by the 1940s.
John Hendry Park was established to contain Trout Lake in 1926 when Mrs. Aldene Hamber purchased and donated the land to the City of Vancouver in order to prevent it from conversion to a municipal landfill. A condition of the donation was that the park be named after her father, John Hendry, and maintained by the city government.
In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited Vancouver, traveling in a royal procession down Knight Street, and making an unplanned stop in the neighbourhood of Collingwood.
After World War II.
In 1947, many farmers were displaced in South Vancouver to open residential land for returning World War II veterans and their families.
During the 1950s, residents requested that the city government clear vegetation around Trout Lake to prevent skinny dipping. Tram service in the Lower Mainland was terminated in 1954 due to increasing automobile ownership and bus service. In 1955, an editorial in "The Province" implied that it favoured large areas of Strathcona and Chinatown being demolished in favour of new development.
In the 1960s, sidewalk paving was completed in East Vancouver, three decades after wooden planked sidewalks were removed. In the late 60s, Non-Partisan Association mayor Tom "Terrific" Campbell advocated a freeway that would demolish much of Chinatown. Campbell also advocated demolishing the historic Carnegie Centre and building a luxury hotel at the entrance of Stanley Park. In 1967, a US-based firm proposed a waterfront freeway, which would have required that 600 Strathcona houses be demolished and a 10-metre-high overpass be built over the centre of Chinatown. Widespread protest, including a crowd of 800 people who protested the proposals at City Hall, led to the resignation of the chairman of the city's planning commission and the end of the proposal a year later.
* 1971 – Strict development regulations were passed to limit development in Chinatown and save the architectural heritage. This also preserved the community from proposed massive freeway projects.
* 1972 – Vancouver city mayor Thomas Campbell (NPA) was defeated by Art Phillips of (The Electors Action Movement). Phillips and TEAM campaigned on rehabilitating Gastown, whereas the NPA slate tended to strongly support the failed freeway project through East Vancouver.
* 1985 – The SkyTrain rapid transit system (current Expo Line) was built to connect downtown Vancouver to Surrey and included five stations in East Vancouver.
* 1986 – The City hosted a World's Fair (Expo 86) on the old rail yard properties at False Creek. Residential densification began to accelerate in this area.
* 1986 to 1993 – The Non-Partisan Association returned to Vancouver City Hall, with former realtor and businessman Gordon Campbell as mayor. The NPA worked more closely with developers, passing a series of pro-development by-laws. Many seniors and poor renters are evicted from properties throughout the city, including Gastown.
* 1994 – The lease expired on the Pacific National Exhibition grounds at Hastings Park. Extensions were granted by Vancouver City Council. The final year for the Exhibition was to be 1997, 100 years after it started operating in Hastings Park.
* 2002 – The SkyTrain's Millennium Line opened, providing new rapid transit service through East Vancouver.
* 2004 – The provincial government transferred authority for the PNE to the City of Vancouver. A consultation process was initiated to determine a new future for the PNE in Hastings Park.
Neighbourhoods, demographics and languages.
The 2001 census identified almost 550,000 in the city of Vancouver (Metro Vancouver had about 2.25 million residents).
The City of Vancouver identifies seven communities as being entirely in the East Vancouver area: Grandview–Woodland, Hastings–Sunrise, Kensington–Cedar Cottage, Killarney, Renfrew–Collingwood, Strathcona and Victoria–Fraserview. The 2001 census identified 220,490 people living in these communities (approximately 40% of the city's population).
Two communities, Mount Pleasant and Riley Park–Little Mountain, straddle both East Vancouver and the West Side.
Two communities are part of East Vancouver but often referred to separately because of their unique place in the city's fabric: the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown.
In addition to East Vancouver, the City of Vancouver is made up of the West End, Downtown, Downtown Eastside, and West Side. The Downtown area is further differentiated into Coal Harbour, Yaletown, Gastown, and other semi-distinct regions.
While the overall mother tongue in the City of Vancouver is 49% English and 26% Chinese (2001), areas of East Vancouver represent a more diverse ethnic population (e.g. residents of Victoria–Fraserview identified their mother tongue as 27% English and 49% Chinese). Note that all other mother tongues (e.g., Punjabi) were identified by fewer than 3% each of the city's population.
Community identity.
East Vancouver has a strong geographic and community identity. This identity is about a diverse community living together within a dynamic urban neighbourhood. This diverse identity is strengthened by many active ethnic communities, a vibrant artistic presence, a politically engaged youth population, and vocal sexual-orientation and gender-identity groups.
The political identity of the community is reinforced by newspapers such as the "Republic of East Vancouver" newspaper (the name of which invokes a long-time joking reference to the left-leaning nature of the community and its labour history) and frequent political and social activism – such as the Commercial Drive Car Free Festival and protests.
The artistic identity is reinforced by events at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, a community poetry anthology ("East of Main"), the Eastside Culture Crawl, and "the Drift", an annual event where local artists present their work centred around Main Street.
While many East Vancouver residents are proud of the diversity in their community, some perceive a long prejudice against East Side neighbourhoods. These concerns include the protests against the 1960s effort to push a freeway through (and over) parts of the East Side, to a perception that municipal spending and planning favours other areas of the city (especially the West Side), to recent debates, such as expansion of the Port of Vancouver operation in East Vancouver and the expansion of the Port Mann bridge and predicted increased traffic through the East Side.
Mayor Sam Sullivan's plans for increased population in Vancouver with "ecodensity" includes coach houses and densification plans via zoning changes mainly for the East Side, with few plans to change zoning or densify the West Side.
Ethnic communities.
Immigrant waves that passed through East Vancouver include English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Italians, German, Eastern European, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and South Asian.
European.
Early settlers of European ancestry in East Vancouver were largely Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh. Today, evidence of these early settlers from Britain and Ireland is found in places such as the Cambrian Hall (built 1929) for the first Welsh Society in Vancouver (est. 1908). Modern British/Irish communities are still active in East Vancouver today, notably at the WISE Hall ("WISE" is an acronym for Welsh-Irish-Scottish-English) and the Vancouver Irish Céili Society.
Italian immigrants formed the first "Little Italy" in the Main Street area by 1910 and then the Commercial Drive area in the 1950s (where Italian businesses and residents are still plentiful). An Italian Cultural Centre opened nearby on the Grandview Highway in the 1970s. Italian commercial and cultural life is also prevalent on Hastings around Nanaimo, and from there eastwards into the Burnaby Heights region of North Burnaby.
While Greek immigrants mostly moved to Vancouver's West Side (e.g. Hellenic Cultural Community Centre on Arbutus Street) there were also strong Greek communities in East Vancouver, particularly near Boundary Road (which divides Vancouver from the eastern municipality, Burnaby). The number of Greek immigrants to Vancouver doubled in the 1960s, although this has declined steadily since the late 1960s.
Other visible European communities that have settled in East Vancouver include Polish (e.g. the Polish Veterans Association Meeting Hall on Kingsway, the Polish Hall on Fraser Street), German (Vancouver Alpen Club/Deutsches Haus on Victoria Drive at E. 33rd), Croatian (the Croatian Cultural Centre near Trout Lake, the Croatian Catholic Church on 1st Avenue) and Hungarian (the Hungarian Cultural Society's center on Kingsway at Fraser, and the St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church on E. 7th at Commercial Drive).
East Asian.
A Chinese community existed before Vancouver was incorporated (1886) and shortly after that date became established at today's Chinatown in the eastern part of Downtown Vancouver. Chinese immigration to the city grew significantly after 1947 when racial immigration exclusion laws were removed by the BC Government.
From the 1980s, many Chinese immigrants chose to live outside of Chinatown, including elsewhere in East Vancouver (e.g. Kingsway St. and Victoria Dr. areas) and Richmond. Immigrants from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan began to move to the Vancouver area in significant numbers from the 1990s. Hong Kong immigrants who were concerned about the transfer of the territory from the United Kingdom to China were among the wealthiest of these immigrants, in contrast to previous waves of Chinese immigrants, and typically moved to non-Chinese communities in the city's wealthier and commercially prosperous upper-class West Side or in wealthier neighbourhoods elsewhere located throughout the Metro Vancouver area.
East Asian communities are