Burning Rituals

The detail of this map was sketched in by Major Matthews, Vancouver’s first Archivist, some 50 years after the fire that wiped out the new city of Vancouver on June 13th, 1886. Matthews interviewed dozens of Vancouver’s early inhabitants — many who were children when the fire occurred — and pieced together a detailed account of the fateful day.

The CPR work crews had been clearing land between the old Granville townsite (Gastown) and today’s Burrard Street, preparing their land grant to sell lots in anticipation of the coming railway, and the influx of new settlers it was expected to bring. They burned the massive slash piles and, as June 13, 1886 was a hot dry day, the conditions were ripe for the fires all over the area to catch and spread. The accounts tell of a “summer gale” blowing up from the west in the early afternoon, carrying embers that began raining down on the townsite. Within forty minutes of the first building catching fire, the whole town was ablaze.

The heat of the fire was apparently so intense that people were vapourized, and the sap of the wood buildings would heat and boil, making buildings literally explode into giant fireballs that leapt across streets and buildings like incendiary bombs. Of the town’s original 600+ buildings and shacks, only about half a dozen were spared, including the Hastings Sawmill, the town’s main source of industry and employment. The next day, the millowners opened their gates and allowed anyone to come and take lumber so that the rebuilding could begin immediately.

In order to prevent another destructive fire, many landowners decided to rebuild using bricks and mortar, and so the Gastown buildings we see today are mostly built of these materials. One exception, which can still be seen today on the SE corner of Hastings and Columbia, is the oldest original woodframe building in downtown (the original Hastings Mill store, which survived the fire, was later moved to the foot of Alma street and is now a museum).

125 years later, the Fire Department held a celebration of the history of firefighting in the city at Maple Tree Square. It was kind of odd for firefighters to choose this day — a day when the fire won and devastated the city — to celebrate their history. But burning rituals, like civic celebrations, help us to both remember the past, and move on from it. If I had a spot of land, or even a wood burning fireplace, I’d be burning a bunch of relics from my past as I prepare to move on from this chapter of my life, too.

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