Vancouver

I recently went for a walk in təmtəmíxʷtən (Belcarra), and when I got to… wait, what’s that weird derelict building in the distance?

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Is it an abandoned hotel? No, there’s no way to get there by land. An old naval fortress? No, the location doesn’t make any strategic sense. A hydroelectric dam? Where’s the water behind it?

As it turns out, it is a power plant! Buntzen generating station #2, completed in 1914, was built to supplement the output of BC’s first-ever hydroelectric plant up-inlet. Both stations were powered by water delivered by penstocks from Buntzen Lake, which in turn was supplied with water from Coquitlam Lake via a 4km-long tunnel.

Buntzen station #1 is still functional and supplies 60 megawatts of power to the Metro Vancouver area. Buntzen #2 was shut down at the turn of the millennium and serves as a historic curiosity for kayakers in səl̓ilw̓ət (Indian Arm).

Today I learned the reason why Vancouver has two impressive-looking historic train stations: they were built by two different companies to serve as the terminus of two different railways.

Waterfront station was built in 1914 for the Canadian Pacific Railway, while Pacific Central Station was built a few years later for the Canadian Northern Railway.1

Anyways, neither station is currently used by the company that built it, with Waterfront Station serving as the regional public transit hub and Pacific Central Station used by Via Rail, Amtrak, and various intercity bus companies.

Footnotes

I’m on a quest to explore the creeks and waterways of Vancouver, Burnaby, and New Westminster. First, I need to understand how the topography of my neighbourhood determines the flow of water and the formation of streams.

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Three main topological features define how water flows in the Vancouver-Burnaby-New West area:

• a chain of hills running along səl̓ilw̓ət (Burrard Inlet) from East Vancouver to Coquitlam, including Capitol Hill and lhuḵw’lkuḵw’áyten (Burnaby Mountain);
• a ridge extending from t̕θəcəliʔqʷ (UBC) to sχʷeyəməɬ (New Westminster) along the southern half of the peninsula, with peaks at Little Mountain and the Metrotown area; and
• weirdly enough, a barely perceptible incline between Nanaimo Street and Renfrew Street in East Vancouver.

These features divide the Burrard Peninsula into four watersheds, which determine where a falling raindrop will flow

• north, into səl̓ilw̓ət (Burrard Inlet),
• northwest, into False Creek/English Bay,
• south, into stal̓əw̓ (the Fraser River), or
• east, through Still Creek, Burnaby Lake, and the Brunette River, before returning west via stal̓əw̓ (the Fraser River).

(More detailed watershed maps can be found on the websites of the City of Vancouver and the City of Burnaby.)

Most of the historic streams of Vancouver have been developed over, so rainwater now is mainly conveyed through storm drains and groundwater. In contrast, Burnaby still has plenty of streams carrying rain through its watersheds.

I’ll be exploring these streams and attempting to trace them from source to mouth. Stay tuned for more!

Mount Baker was named by George Vancouver after his third lieutenant, who was the first on his ship to see it.

Although the name is better than a few others in the Pacific Northwest, being the first person to see a giant mountain isn’t a particularly notable claim to fame. Especially when you have to ignore not only tens of thousands of people who lived there but also the Spaniards who had gotten there the year prior.

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The mountain appears as la gran montaña del Carmelo on a map drawn by Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, first pilot on Manuel Quimper’s six-week expedition to the Juan de Fuca strait. The Spanish name is apparently a reference to a religious order whose white cloaks resembled the snow-capped peak. Who knows, if the Nootka Crisis had been resolved differently, it’s entirely possible that Europeans would have ended up calling it Monte Carmelo.

Instead, the name Mount Baker stuck after Vancouver described it in his published memoir.

About this time a very high conspicuous craggy mountain … presented itself, towering above the clouds: as low down as they allowed it to be visible it was covered with snow; and south of it, was a long ridge of very rugged snowy mountains, much less elevated, which seemed to stretch to a considerable distance … the high distant land formed, as already observed, like detached islands, amongst which the lofty mountain, discovered in the afternoon by the third lieutenant, and in compliment to him called by me Mount Baker, rose a very conspicuous object … apparently at a very remote distance.

George Vancouver

Vancouver’s diary mentions encounters with different indigenous groups of the area, some friendly and some indifferent,1 but he never stuck around in the same place long enough to learn their names or pick up their languages.2 If he had, he might have recognized Mount Baker by the name kwelshan, the term used by the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) people around Bellingham and the San Juan Islands, or swáʔləx̣, reportedly used by the nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm̕ (Klallam) people on the Olympic Peninsula.

The mountain itself is surrounded by the traditional lands of the Nooksack and Upper Skagit peoples. The Nooksack use kwelshán for the high open slopes of the mountain and kweq’ smánit for the glacier-covered summit.

Footnotes

Jens von Bergmann has run the numbers on land use in various municipalities in Metro Vancouver. The City of Vancouver in particular has lot of land tied up in streets and detached housing.

Use	CoV land
single-family detached houses and duplexes	34.0%
roads and right-of-way	28.1%
recreation, open space, and natural areas	15.2%
commercial	3.9%
low-rise apartments (residential or mixed-use)	4.1%
high-rise apartments (residential or mixed-use)	1.9%

Because the City of Vancouver has so little area left undeveloped, any proposals for new housing, schools, parks, stores, and so forth will displace some existing use of the land.