Vancouver Past

Focusing on Vancouver's social history, the essays written forthis special edition of BC Studies treat hitherto neglected areas ofthe city's past and bring new insights into how its residents livedand worked. Receiving particular attention is the socio-economic andresidential structure of Vancouver with one author arguing that thecity's economy created an urban working class which was at oncemore complex and politically more conservative than that of the highlypolarized communities on Vancouver Island and in the Interior.

An article exploring the pre-1916 activities of the Sam Kee Company,one of the wealthiest merchant firms in Chinatown, offers a fascinatinglook inside the immigrant world and attests to the importance ofbusiness in facilitating immigrant settlement in the New World.

Almost forgotten now are the accomplishments of the Mothers'Council of Vancouver -- a group of politically active women who gavesupport to the unemployed and the strikers from 1935-1938. Anotherwriter recalls the 1946 occupation of the old Hotel Vancouver when agroup of veterans protested against the city's acute housingshortage.

Other essays deal with elementary schooling from the 1920's tothe 1960's, labour history, the geographic and social developmentof neighbourhoods, crime during the Great Depression, and childbirthand hospitalization. The volume provides a lively portrait of city lifeover a sixty-year period and lays the groudwork for future analysis ofthe modern metropolis as we know it today.