This book reveals one of the greatest eras in Vancouver's history, an era before automobiles when people, regardless of race, religion, or social status, rode together in the same shared vehicles.
From the 1890s to 1915, state-of-the-art electric street cars and interurbans carried citizens from downtown to the farthest reaches of the Lower Mainland. Vancouver's early "people's vehicles" with affordable fares carved an exciting new future for the city of 10,000 residents who otherwise had only their feet, a bicycle, or a costly horse and carriage ride for transportation through the muddy urban streets. The way the city developed was dependent on public transit, and even modern transit is very much indebted to the earliest plans.
As well as a history of transit, this book explores the dramatic ways Vancouver was changing at the turn of the 20th century. It reveals the individuals and the groups who were involved in carving the city from the wilderness, and creating a glamorous metropolis. Over 150 archival images of classic streetcars and conductors, city streets and buildings reveal Vancouver as it was then.
About the Author: Heather Conn is an award-winning writer, editor and photographer, Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines including Canadian Geographic, Quill and Quire, Reel West, The Georgia Straight, the Edmonton Journal and The Vancouver Sun. She won the Southam Communications Lighthouse Award twice, achieved 1995 B.C. Festival of the Arts recognition and was part of the team that won the 2001 Dalton Pen Communications Award of Excellence for a Vancouver transit history display. Former Communications Manager for BC Transit, she wrote the commemorative book Vancouver's Trolley Buses, 1948-1998.
Henry Ewert grew up in Vancouver, a mere two blocks from a streetcar barn. A long-time enthusiast of transit, he has amassed a major collection of railway memorabilia and historic photographs. He is a member of several historical and cultural organizations including the West Coast Railway Association, The Fraser Valley Railway Heritage Society and the Transit Museum Society. In 2000, he received the Norris Adams Memorial Award for Outstanding Service in the Preservation of Railway History. Other books Henry has written are The Story of the B.C. Electric Railway Company, Victoria's Streetcar Era and The Perfect Little Streetcar System.
