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Heritage: Cedar Cottage / Kensington

A retrospective on the Cedar Cottage / Kensington neighbourhoods in Vancouver, BC.

Cedar Cottage is the district centred on Victoria Drive north of Kingsway, and Kensington is the district centred on Knight Street south of Kingsway. Cedar Cottage has always been proud to be the only neighborhood in Vancouver to have a lake. The words "East Vancouver" are not often associated with the word "beach," let alone a place to tan and swim in the summer or sometimes skate in the winter. Trout Lake's brief shoreline is a delight for the stroller and the home of unusual sights for Vancouver: a living peat bog, stunted pine trees, migrating ducks and a variety of other interesting birds.

Until the 1860s Trout Lake was a natural home to families of beaver and huge flocks of waterfowl. In 1863 John Hall hiked down the old Indian trail from New Westminster to stake out the lake and its surrounding acreage for himself. In 1867 he sold it to Walter Blackie and for a time it was referred to as "Blackie's Lake." The first industry built in Vancouver, the Hastings Sawmill, arranged for the water rights to the lake and built a flume from the lake to its sawmill to sustain its steam-driven machinery. In 1878 the owners of the mill bought the land, but in 1884 innocently sold it to Israel Powell, a government insider who knew about the coming of the transcontinental railway. Later it became the property of Aldene Hamber, the daughter of Hastings Sawmill owner John Hendry, and her husband Eric Hamber, a future lieutenant- governor of British Columbia. In 1926 they donated the lake and surrounding land to the city on the condition it be named after John Hendry.

The district's first substantial building was the Gladstone Inn, a stagecoach stop built for Gastown pioneer Joe Mannion in 1871 at the corner of what is now Gladstone Street and Kingsway. This stop on the dirt road from Gastown to New Westminster was operated by Thomas Deighton, the brother of Gastown's earliest pioneer, John "Gassyjack" Deighton. In the 1870s Mannion acquired 65 hectares centred on Kingsway as did another Gastown pioneer immediately to the west, postmaster Jonathan Miller (Miller Street bears his name). When local loggers and Fraser River farmers assembled to form a municipality in 1891, they met at the Gladstone Inn and picked the name "South Vancouver." In 1886 Jonathan Miller sold 14 hectares of his land to Arthur Wilson, the present southeast corner of Knight and Kingsway. Here Wilson built a cottage amid a grove of cedar trees and started the Cedar Cottage Nursery.

Cedar Cottage as a district began in 1891 as a remote stop on the new interurban line to New Westminster and took its name from the Cedar Cottage Nursery. The original owners of the site where the village began to grow were L.A. Agassiz, of Agassiz, B.C., and William Brewer, after whom nearby Brewer's Park is named. In 1892 Brewer was elected the first reeve of South Vancouver. Cedar Cottage was located outside what was then Vancouver's southern border at 16th Avenue.

By 1910 Cedar Cottage was a small rural town five kilometres from Vancouver. Most residents had apple or cherry trees in their yards and many kept a few cows, goats or chickens. The town centre boasted Marfew Hall, "the largest hall in South Vancouver," a new movie theatre showing silent films, a Bank of Hamilton and a small roller coaster. Cedar Cottage's existence as an independent rural village was not unlike the story of its roller coaster--new and exciting but rather short-lived.

The coaster disappeared before the depression of 1913, and the population dropped as men went off to fight in the Great War, leaving the main street half deserted. By the 1920s automobiles began to erode the monopoly on pedestrian traffic resulting from the tram stop, favoring the evolution of Kingsway as the main shopping area. Small industries began to replace the stores on Cedar Cottage's main street as the urban sprawl of Vancouver overran the area and dissolved its formerly distinct boundaries. In 1929 Cedar Cottage literally became part of Vancouver when South Vancouver was absorbed by its larger neighbor.

The pre-war boom also saw house construction spill over Kingsway southwards to the hillside above 33rd Avenue. Here grew Kensington Heights, commanding a broad view northward to the city skyline, the harbor and the North Shore mountains. The surrounding district of Kensington didn't fill up until after the World War II.

In Cedar Cottage and Kensington one important constant has been Trout Lake. Area residents continue to picnic there, swim and enjoy walking around it.

February 2, 2005 in Location, Location | Permalink