Here stood Hamilton first Land Commissioner Canadian Pacific Railway 1885. In the silent solitude of the primeval forest he drove a wooden stake in the Earth and commenced to measure an empty land into the streets of Vancouver.
So reads the bronze plaque that was affixed for over 50 years at the corner of Hamilton and Hastings Street in Vancouver, on the western edge of Victory Square. That exact spot became the first street corner of what would eventually become downtown as we know it.
I’ve spent the past 27 years of my life working on Hastings and Hamilton Streets, first at Teamworks Concert Productions, then Mint Records, and, for the past 18 years now, at the dear old CBC. Every time I passed by the plaque, I imagined that wet winter day in 1885 when Lauchlan Hamilton drove that stake into the dirt beneath the massive cedars, and all those that walked up and down Hamilton Street’s cobblestones in the 131 years since.
That’s why I was so alarmed when the building the gorgeous plaque was attached to at 300 West Hastings Street (a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce that dated back to 1959), was unceremoniously torn down about a year ago. My old pal and business partner Randy Iwata (who still runs Mint Records across the street in the Dominion Building), caught sight of the plaque being jackhammered out of the wall. Randy has posted the progress of both the tear down and the construction of the new building almost daily on his Instagram account (@mintrandy) but there has been no news or sign of the plaque. Was it thrown out? Stolen? Sold for scrap metal? Is there no accounting for historical reverence in this town? We feared the worst.
The new building at 300 West Hastings is now very close to completion, so last week I decided to try and find out the fate of the commemorative panel for myself. I gingerly tip-toed into the construction site, past large men in construction hats working with very loud machinery. As soon as I was inside, John Spadafora, the friendly site superintendent, approached and introduced himself. When I explained my interest and concern for the plaque, a smile crossed his face.
“We saved it,” he reassured me. “The plaque is in a safe place. We refurbished it, cleaned it up, and it will have a permanent new home in the foyer of the building. It should be going up next week if you want to come down and take a look.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and shook John’s hand in thanks. A piece of Vancouver history was saved.
Maybe the continued acknowledgement for Hamilton’s stake also has something to do with the new residents of downtown’s first corner: the six-story building will be part of Simon Fraser University. The upper four floors will serve mostly as a residency for SFU post-grad students, the second floor a teaching and workspace, and the ground level a new café, foyer, and gathering place for public events. That means that the once-beleaguered Victory Square is now an educational zone, bordered on three sides by SFU, Vancouver Community College, and the Vancouver Film School.
My fears alleviated, it feels about right that a school named after the first European to arrive by land at what would become Vancouver, is now situated on what would become our first-ever street corner. All I ask of SFU is that the plaque remains accessible to public, since we all have a stake.
