Vancouver-West End.
3 candidates, one seat.

Each of three Nations describes the water around this district as part of its territory. Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, the Squamish Nation, says its traditional territory reaches from Point Grey to Roberts Creek and includes all of Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet and English Bay, and that some of its village sites are 3,000 years old. səlilwətaɬ, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, gives its name as People of the Inlet and says its people have lived in its territory for thousands of years. Musqueam says its ancestors have lived throughout the Fraser River estuary for thousands of years, and its Declaration of June 10, 1976 draws its territory around the watershed that drains into English Bay, Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm.

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation prints Musqueam's own account of places in Stanley Park. It says χʷay̓χʷəy̓, at Lumberman's Arch, was a large Musqueam village with several longhouses, where hundreds of ancestors lived at one time. spapəy̓əq, at Brockton Point, was home to Musqueam families into the early 1900s. Parks Canada's statement for the park names the village XwayXway and says many tons of shells from its midden were excavated in 1888 for use in building park roads. More than two acres of the midden remain. The same statement says 2000 people gathered at XwayXway for refuge in 1862, and that large potlatches took place there in the 1870s and 1880s.

Parks Canada reports that by 1899 most of the First Nations homes at Lumberman's Arch stood empty, and that in 1900 the Parks Board bought two houses for $25 each and burned them. One Squamish family kept a home near the arch until the last resident died in 1923. The land was then bought from the family's heir for $15,500 and resold to the federal government at the same price.

Parks Canada's statement says Governor James Douglas set the peninsula aside in 1859 as a Government Reserve for military purposes. The land passed to Canada in 1884. In 1886 the council of the City of Vancouver asked the federal government for the use of the land as a park. The government agreed the next year, and in 1888 it leased the reserve of 385 hectares to the city, except Deadman's Island, which stayed in military use. A 99-year renewable lease was signed in 1908.

The Park Board says the park had its grand opening in 1888. In 1859 Captain Richards of the surveying vessel Plumper named Brockton Point after the vessel's chief engineer, Francis Brockton. BC Geographical Names records that Richards reported to Governor Douglas that Brockton, exploring the area of today's Stanley Park, had found coal in nearby Coal Harbour. The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recommended in 1988 that Stanley Park be commemorated by a plaque as a place of national historic and architectural significance.

The City of Vancouver says the West End was thinly settled until the turn of the century because it lay far from the old Granville Townsite. The first settler, the potter John Morton, came from New Westminster for the coal and clay. A survey ship had found coal on the shore near the foot of Bute Street in the summer of 1859. No coal was ever mined there, but the find led Morton and two partners to claim land for a brick works. The Catholic Church established St. Paul's Hospital in 1894 at the end of the Burrard Street trail, which the City describes as way out in the bush. Through the 1890s the forest was logged and grand Victorian houses replaced it.

The City says that after the Canadian Pacific Railway developed Shaughnessy in 1910, the West End's role as a high-class residential area declined and apartments were built along the streetcar lines. One of them, the Manhattan by the architects Parr and Fee, still stands at Robson and Thurlow Streets. City rules kept masonry buildings to six floors and wood frame buildings to three until 1956. Low apartment blocks with Art Deco and Tudor details followed in the 1930s and 1940s. More than 220 high-rises were built between 1962 and 1975. Residents raised concerns in the 1970s and again in the 1980s, and Council started local planning programs with them.

Older buildings remain. Gabriola, at Davie and Nicola Streets, was built in 1900 and 1901 for Benjamin Tingley Rogers, founder of BC Sugar, to a design by Samuel Maclure. It was saved from demolition and rehabilitated in the mid-1970s. Barclay Heritage Square holds restored houses around the Roedde House, built in 1892 and 1893 and now a historic house museum.

BC Geographical Names says Francis Brockton found coal in Coal Harbour in 1859. Parks Canada's statement says that in the early years of the park, members of the city's business class opposed the industrial development of nearby Coal Harbour. The Coal Harbour Official Development Plan, adopted by the City's By-law No. 6754 on November 6, 1990, describes the harbour as one of the original maritime centres of the city that still serves a variety of marine activities.

The plan places Coal Harbour next to downtown and close to Stanley Park. It calls for a mixed-use neighbourhood that focuses on homes and public access to the waterfront. It divides the land into three areas. Marina Quay keeps the working waterfront of the western marina. Harbour Green is built around a waterfront park of at least 3.2 hectares. Burrard Landing may hold hotels, offices and a seaplane terminal, and the commercial precinct between Burrard and Thurlow Streets may include a convention and exhibition centre. The plan requires at least 6.48 hectares of public open space and parks. The Coal Harbour Community Centre now stands on the seawall near Stanley Park.

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation's Heritage Site Finder says Lord Roberts School at 1100 Bidwell Street was completed in 1907 to a design by W.T. Whiteway. It is in the Classical Revival style, with yellow buff brick and entry towers. Seismic upgrading finished in 1996 and kept the original building and gymnasium. The same source says St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church at 1012 Nelson Street opened on May 26, 1933, built entirely of materials from British Columbia to a design by Robert P. Twizell and George S. Twizell. Its two founding congregations were Wesley Methodist and St. Andrew's Presbyterian.

The City completed the West End Community Plan in late 2013. Its later projects include the West End Community Hub Renewal Plan, which lists a renewed West End Community Centre and ice arena, King George Secondary School, the Joe Fortes Library, a new site for Firehall No. 6 and childcare spaces. The City's page links the approved plan to a Council report dated February 27, 2024, and says construction will begin only when all partners have secured funding.

The Park Board says construction of the Stanley Park seawall began in 1917. The stone mason James Cunningham oversaw much of the work from the late 1920s until he retired 35 years later. On September 21, 1980 the whole seawall loop around the park was declared complete, with the last paving between Third Beach and Second Beach. The Park Board renewed two stretches near Second Beach and Sunset Beach in 2010 and 2011 because of erosion.

The Canadian Register of Historic Places gives 1937 to 1938 as the building years of the Lions Gate Bridge. It says Sir Arthur Guinness financed the bridge through a syndicate called British Pacific Properties Ltd. to open the suburbs of West Vancouver for development, and that the bridge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2004. Its south entrance emerges from Stanley Park.

The Park Board bought four totem poles from Alert Bay for Lumberman's Arch in the 1920s and added poles from Haida Gwaii and Rivers Inlet for the 1936 Golden Jubilee. The poles moved to Brockton Point in the mid 1960s. A ninth pole was added in 2009, and three carved gateways by the Coast Salish artist Susan Point were installed in 2008. In December 2006 a windstorm struck the park. The Park Board allocated ninety larger pieces of wood to the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations for canoes, beams and ceremonial and artistic pieces.

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation quotes the archivist Ron Dutton, who says queer communities have gathered in the West End since at least the 1940s. As wealthy families moved away, old mansions were divided into smaller suites and others were replaced by apartment buildings. The Foundation's plaque text says the blocks of Davie Street between Burrard and Jervis Streets became the centre of Vancouver's gay community in the 1970s, after the first demonstration by the Gay Alliance Towards Equality in 1971.

Dutton gives the first parade as 1978, when participants walked on the sidewalk from Nelson Park to Sunset Beach. In 1981 the Pride Society was incorporated, and the festival that year included a parade with a City permit from Nelson Park to Beach Avenue. The page's plaque text puts the first Pride event in 1972, and a photo caption on it dates the first parade to 1981, so its dates for the first parade differ. The City says the Pride Parade still follows a route through the West End and finishes at Sunset Beach. The Foundation's plaque stands at Jim Deva Plaza, beside the rainbow crosswalks at Davie and Bute Streets.