CITY OF VANCOUVER & THE VANCOUVER CLUB INCORPORATION DAY LUNCHEON AT THE VANCOUVER CLUB-APR 2024

The Vancouver Club, found on West Hastings Street in 1891, is the focus of this presentation by Michael Kluckner on how the city changed around it, and how it changed and adapted with the times. Illustrated with old colour postcards and snapshot bios, it is a crash course in the history of downtown and the West End.

[@lmiddleman]

14:14 the May 1887 photo is of the first transcontinental passenger train arriving *at Vancouver*. Such passenger trains had been arriving at Port Moody for the previous year.

[@michaelkluckner5439]

But really only a whistlestop, as the provincial government had made the Vancouver land deal with the CPR before the first train arrived in Port Moody, and there was never any port development.

[@lmiddleman]

@@michaelkluckner5439 Not wishing to split hairs here, but for the casual viewer of the presentation, which was quite good by the way, the June/July 1886 passenger train from Montreal to Port Moody is widely seen as the inauguration of transcontinental passenger service.

[@lmiddleman]

George Alexander Walkem was the *step* father of Ray Bicknell's wife, Margaret Louise Stanhope Byrn. This George Walkem was well-connected yes, not least because he was the nephew of twice-BC-premier George Anthony Walkem. And connected roots go deeper, as Miss Byrn's great-grandfather, Charles Sydenham Wylde, was Her Majesty's revenue officer at Brownsville (ie across the river from New Westminster) in the early colonial period of BC's existence.

[@michaelkluckner5439]

I didn't know about Wylde. I remember Margaret from their house on Angus Drive, and their three daughters.