Great Vancouver Fire

The Great Vancouver Fire destroyed most of the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on June 13, 1886. It started as two land-clearing fires to the west of the city. The first fire was farther away from the city and was clearing land for the roundhouse of the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The second fire was clearing land to extend the city to the west. The Great Fire occurred shortly after the township of Granville had been incorporated into the City of Vancouver in April 1886.

The fires spread northeast into the city, killing at least 21 people and destroying 600 to 1,000 buildings (the exact numbers are unknown). Most residents escaped by fleeing to the Burrard Inlet shore or the False Creek shore. Following the recovery efforts, the city of Vancouver continued to grow. The city's first police force was set up, its first brick buildings were built, and its first fire engine was brought in from the nearby larger town of New Westminster.

European settlement in the Vancouver area began in 1862 after Captain George Henry Richard's 1859 discovery of coal in the Burrard Inlet. The settlement of Granville (later Vancouver) was formed in the mid-1860s between two Burrard Inlet sawmills. It began as shops and hotels providing service to the workers of the mills and later their families. The two sawmills were Moodyville (originally Moody's Mill), opened 1863, on the Burrard Inlet north shore and Hastings Mill (originally Stamps Mill), opened 1867, on the Inlet's south shore. The two mills were the main employers in Granville. In the early 1880s, they employed between 150 and 200 workers, not including loggers and longshoremen. The exact numbers are unknown as many of the workers were transient unmarried men, who worked at a mill for only a few weeks at a time before moving on. To reach Granville required either a nine-mile journey through dense forest from the nearby larger town of New Westminster or a thirty-mile journey via the Fraser River from Fort Langley, the capital of British Columbia at the time.

In 1885, it was announced that Granville would be the west coast terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The township of Granville was incorporated as the city of Vancouver on April 6, 1886, becoming the fourth city in British Columbia. At the first city council election on May 3, 1886, Malcolm MacLean was elected the city's mayor. The inaugural meeting of the Vancouver Volunteer Hose Company No.1 was held May 28, 1886. Future Vancouver blocks and streets had been marked out to the west of the city to allow for its anticipated growth. These had been designated by the Canadian Pacific Railway land commissioner Lachlan Hamilton.

Early Vancouver attracted budding entrepreneurs who were very active in the civic politics forming the new city. The population of Granville grew substantially in the early to mid-1880s. The population and economic growth in the area in early 1886 was so significant three new newspapers were established. The mid-1880s also saw a change in the population from mostly unmarried men and some families with First Nations wives to an increasing number of families especially with European wives.

Following the British victory in the Opium Wars, British colonies such as Vancouver received an influx of Chinese migrants from the provinces surrounding Canton, the sole port for foreign trade. Most of these migrants were employed at the Hastings Mill. The Canadian Pacific Railway also brought in Chinese railway workers, employed to establish the CPR terminus.

The main Indigenous population in the area at the time of European settlement were the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking Musqueam people. When sawmilling began in 1863, the local Squamish men were hired as unskilled labour. The mission reserve near Moodyville and the Indian rancheria at Hastings Mill were the product of the mill's employment of Indigenous people. In 1881, there were at least 500 Squamish people at Burrard Inlet. The First Nations people were not given the same rights as their European contemporaries. The men were not hired for higher skilled and higher paid roles at the sawmills and women were unable to inherit property from their white partners and were often ejected from their homes after his death.

Prior to the fire, Vancouver had experienced three weeks of abnormal heat for late spring. Sunday, June 13, was particularly hot with an offshore breeze from the Pacific Ocean. There was also significant forest deadfall in the area to the east of the city as well as debris from the recent clearing for the expansion of the city which provided fuel to the fire.