Join Us For Our 7th Heritage Lounge This Sunday, June 16th, 2019 At The Main Street Car Free Festival From 12 – 7

The Mount Pleasant Heritage Group is excited to again be participating in the Main Street Car Free Festival and our Heritage Lounge will be located in front of Heritage Hall.

Along with displays and maps about Mount Pleasant’s history, neighbourhood walking tour pamphlets, and a colouring station with pages created by local artists, we will have information about how the Mount Pleasant Heritage Group is advocating for Mount Pleasant’s ‘Living Heritage’.

Mount Pleasant’s heritage lives not only through its buildings but also through its village atmosphere, street vitality, distinct commercial identity with a diverse and vibrant mix of local businesses, and a long and rich tradition of being an arts and performance hub.

Following up on a letter we wrote to Mayor and Council, seven City Councillors met with us to discuss how much Mount Pleasant’s heritage, in both its tangible and intangible forms, contributes to the liveability of the City and is treasured by residents.

Come by and find out about the next steps the Mount Pleasant Heritage Group will be taking in our proposal for a heritage precinct in the ‘Heritage Heart’ area and how you can help. Mount Pleasant Heritage Lives!

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Join Us For Our 6th Heritage Lounge This Sunday, June 17th, 2018 At The Main Street Car Free Festival From 12 – 7

This year the Mount Pleasant Heritage Group (MPHG) is excited to be participating for the first time in the Main Street Car Free Festival and our Heritage Lounge will be located in the vicinity of Heritage Hall between 15th and 17th Avenues.

Post Office Station C (Heritage Hall) c 1920s Philip Timms VPL 19162

Along with displays and maps about Mount Pleasant’s history, including its long and rich tradition of being home to a vibrant arts community, we will have a colouring station with colouring pages created by local artists celebrating the neighbourhood’s heritage. The pages are free for the taking and if you don’t have time to sit down and do a little colouring we encourage you to take one home.

We will also have some neighbourhood walking tour pamphlets, including one created by the Mount Pleasant BIA.

Hope you can come by and help us celebrate our historic and cherished neighbourhood. Mount Pleasant Heritage Lives!

 

 

Treasured Buildings 2015-2016

Thanks to John Atkin, Christine Hagemoen and Robert Lemon for information and to Bruce Macdonald for all of his support.

Sources:

B.C. City Directories – Vancouver Public Library

Celebrating 100 Years of Learning – Florence Nightingale Elementary, 2012

Grandview Heritage Group– Centenary Signs

James Johnstone – When An Old House Whispers…

Mount Pleasant Historic Context Statement – written by Bruce Macdonald for Donald Luxton & Associates and the City of Vancouver

Street Names of Vancouver – Elizabeth Walker, Vancouver Historical Society, 1999

Vancouver Archives (Water Service Records) and VanMap – City of Vancouver

Vancouver Building Permits – 1901 to 1921 – Heritage Vancouver

Vancouver Daily World

Vancouver House Styles – Vancouver Heritage Foundation

Vancouver Schools  Establishing Their Heritage Value – Commonwealth Historic Resource Management Ltd. for the City of Vancouver & Vancouver School Board, 2007 – pp. 29-31, 80

Vanishing Vancouver The Last 25 Years – Michael Kluckner

 

 

Thanks for dropping by the Heritage Lounge!

It was great to meet so many people interested in Mount Pleasant’s history and passionate about retaining our heritage.

Many thanks to Bruce Macdonald for the loan of his maps and photos, to Stan of Rath Art Supplies for the loan of easels and to the Quebec Manor Co-op for the loan of the Lounge furniture.

The Heritage Lounge crew this year was Alyssa, Anna, Danielle, Sandra, Taran and Val.

The Mount Pleasant Heritage Group extends its appreciation to the Vancouver Foundation for supporting our Heritage Lounge and Treasured Buildings Sign project with a Neighbourhood Small Grant.

The Naming of Mount Pleasant and Its Map of Canada Streets

Here are a couple of highlights from our discussion of Mount Pleasant’s early days.  This discussion took place at our April monthly meeting and we used our Mount Pleasantries as a guide.  A previous post, Brewery Creek Ravine As A Playground At The Turn Of 1900, is another.

Mount Pleasant was named in 1888 after a small Irish village outside Dublin – the birthplace of the wife of Henry Valentine Edmonds. In 1869 Edmonds, the clerk of the municipal council in New Westminster, had acquired District Lot 200A, the wilderness south of False Creek in the future Mount Pleasant. “He was speculating that Vancouver’s unusually fine natural harbour would someday become home to the terminal of a transcontinental railway, since he had witnessed first hand the pandemonium that ensued when San Francisco had been declared a transcontinental railway terminal.”

Map by Bruce Macdonald based on the Dakin fire insurance map, 1889 (City of Vancouver Archives: AM54-S23-2– /Major Matthews Collection)

By 1888, a year after the arrival of the railway, Dr. Israel Powell, one of the people who had negotiated British Columbia’s confederation with Canada in 1871, was a co-owner of the lot. “The first street in Mount Pleasant had originally been an ancient First Nations and animal trail, now known as Kingsway…the super-Canadian and Ontario-born Powell named all his streets in Mount Pleasant after Canada’s provinces to create a representation of the map of Canada…The centre street of Vancouver’s grid system is Powell’s Ontario Street, in the 000 hundred block going east-west, probably since Ontario is known as central Canada…The western Canadian Streets are west of Ontario Street, and the eastern Canadian streets are east of it.”

Information, quotes and map from the  ‘Mount Pleasant Historic Context Statement‘ (pages 2 – 5) written by Bruce Macdonald in 2008 for Donald Luxton and Associates and the City of Vancouver.