The west coast of British Columbia was developed primarily by the steamships that serviced its numerous, thriving ports. From late in the 1800s until well into the 20th century, the coast was dotted with logging and mining camps, fish processing facilities, mills and the communities that grew up around many of these activities. There were far more communities than exist now and the traffic in goods and passengers was heavy.
SS Rothesay
The Rothesay was typical of the combined passenger/cargo vessels that serviced the earliest development on the coast. Steamships began serving the Pacific Northwest as early as the 1850s, but it was not until well into the 1870s that there was regular, scheduled service on the BC coast.
When Captain John Andrew (Jack) Cates bought the Mannion estate in Deep Bay in 1902, he formed the Terminal Steamship Company. His fleet was composed of the steamships Bowena, Belcarra, Ballenas and Baramba. These were smaller, combined passenger/cargo vessels, offering a basic ferry service that brought countless church, club and company picnickers to Bowen. It was Cates who first realized that the large groups who wanted to travel to Bowen would appreciate greater comfort. He commissioned a new flagship, the SS Brittania, purpose-built by his brother at Coal Harbour. The Brittania carried 300 passengers in relative luxury.
Vancouver in the Steamship Era: Why Bowen Island Became So Popular
A snapshot of life in Vancouver at the turn of the century: in December 1900 the city threw a welcoming parade for returning veterans of the Boer War; the major event of 1901 was the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York (later to become King George V and Queen Mary), Queen Victoria reigned. In 1900, when Captain Cates conceived his scheme to turn Bowen into "Vancouver's Playground", the city had some 30,000 residents. Major employers were the fishing and timber industries and there was already significant tourism. Agriculture was extensive throughout the Delta and Fraser Valley. People traveled by streetcar, boat and electric train throughout the region. Horse-drawn private carriages were still common and the first gasoline-powered motor cars were just being introduced.
Social and leisure activities were centred on the home, clubs of every sort and churches. People gathered in numbers for sporting events, but there were few places of commercial entertainment. The first (and only) cinema in western Canada opened in 1902 on Cordova Street. The Edison Electric Theatre showed silent motion pictures. Hotels offered dining lounges and saloons catered to workers, but neither were acceptable places for respectable people to socialize. It is easy to understand how Bowen Island became such a popular destination resort.
Cates's idea of offering a steamboat day trip to a giant picnic ground with organized games, entertainment, food, swimming, horseback riding and trail-walking would have presented an extraordinary novelty in 1902. From the start Cates was able to handle large groups and so the clubs, churches and societies around which social life was organized took advantage of the opportunity to hold picnics on the Island. As a destination resort, Bowen Island offered an affordable, unique vacation for Vancouver families.
In those early years, prior to the Prohibition Act of 1917, the sale of alcohol was largely unregulated and was the cause of a great deal of concern for the moral tenor of Vancouver society. Saloons operated 24 hours, 7 days per week. In 1888, there were already 45 saloons operating in the waterfront area around Gastown alone. Prohibitionists actively worked to curb the sale of alcohol and the evils they associated with it: drunkenness, poverty, prostitution and disease. The struggle was drawn on class lines, with the saloons as the domain of the working class and the middle and upper classes increasingly engaged in temperance efforts.
Feeble attempts to regulate the saloon business failed to satisfy the increasingly active temperance movement and by 1917 the provincial government passed general legislation prohibiting the sale of all alcohol. Prohibition didn't last long in B.C. (it was over by 1921), but efforts to control the moral character of public drinking did not end until well after the Second World War. It took four years following the end of prohibition to work out a regulatory scheme for what became known as "beer parlours": strictly licensed establishments that could sell beer (and nothing else) to seated patrons of acceptable character. All other alcohol was sold at government stores and one required a licence in order buy it. And it was expensive, with the result that both the regulatory scheme and economics conspired to continue the class divide around social drinking: workers drank beer in stark rooms where no form of entertainment (even the singing of patrons) was tolerated; the better-off members of society drank their licensed liquor at home or in the numerous private clubs that opened at the end of Prohibition. Social mores continued against drinking in public, but the regulatory environment was completely undermined by the private clubs and so, of course, people of all social strata continued to drink, albeit separately.
It was in 1924, in the aftermath of prohibition, that the Union Steamship Company (the new owner of Cates' Bowen holdings) opened the country's largest dance pavilion here and began offering "dance cruises" aboard the luxurious Lady Alexandra, flagship of the Union line. The Lady Alex carried 1,400 passengers and offered dining, dancing and drinking to men and women in the same lounge: all strictly forbidden on land, but beyond regulation aboard. After the short cruise to Bowen, passengers walked a forested trail to the dance pavilion, where some of the best dance bands of the era played. The pavilion could accommodate up to 800 couples on the dance floor, making it by far the largest centre of commercial entertainment to be found in the region.
And little wonder that the dance cruise was soon known as "the booze cruise". At $1 for a ticket, the trip was affordable for a wide spectrum of society and must have provided considerable challenge for the temperance-minded among Vancouver's parents.
"The Good Company"
The Union Steamship Company began operations in 1889, with cargo steamers Comox, Coquitlam and Capilano servicing the camps, canneries and settlements of the BC Coast. Operations extended into Alaska when gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896.
By the turn of the last century, "the Union," as it was affectionately known, was the lifeline of the Pacific Northwest. Settlements and camps more numerous and larger than today's depended entirely on the company for news, mail, supplies and transportation. The arrival of every boat drew a cheerful crowd.
In 1917, with an influx of English capital, the company ventured into the excursion and resort business with the acquisition of 7 acres at Sechelt and the steamers Chasina and Chilco. Selma Park at Sechelt was its first destination resort.
In 1920, the Union purchased Captain John Cates's Terminal Steamship holdings on Bowen Island and began to renovate. The hotel was enlarged and re-named Mount Strachan Lodge. Fine clay tennis courts were added. A saltwater "pool" was created in Deep Bay, between the causeway and Sandy Beach, by surrounding the area with large logs. Much later, in the 1950s, a freshwater pool was built near the hotel.
Over 100 'bungalow' and 50 'camp' cottages were built in Deep Bay and around the Lagoon. A dance pavilion, said to be the largest in British Columbia, was built on Snug Point, near the ferry landing. It could accommodate 800 couples on its sprung-wood floor. "That floor was wonderful for dancing," recalls Jean Jamieson. "It was unique to the area, if not to B.C. as a whole."
The Union staged its grand opening of the refurbished hotel and dance pavilion on the 24th of May 1921. Business went well and by 1923, the company commissioned a new flagship to be built in Scotland. The Lady Alexandra arrived in service in 1924 with tons of Scottish sand in ballast, which was placed on "Sandy Beach" in Deep Bay.
The Luxury Cruise Era
Capable of carrying 1,400 passengers in true luxury, the Lady Alexandra offered daily cruises to Bowen Island for $1 and advertised popular summer evening dance cruises on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Passengers could dine, drink and dance on board, a novelty in Vancouver until well into the 1950s. The "Moonlight Cruise" left Vancouver around 8 pm and returned at midnight sharp, with the band playing "Aloha Oh."
In addition to the Lady Alex, the Union operated the Lady Cecilia and Lady Evelyn on the Bowen Island run.
By 1922, the Union was ready to expand again and purchased Davies Orchard. In 1928, they built 20 cottages amid the orchard trees. Long-term renters of these cottages established flower gardens and held annual garden contests. Islander Marion Moore recalls "delivering milk to the cottages and admiring the lovely rock garden in front of Mrs. Hewitt's house, which was on the slopes above what is now known as the Boardwalk." By the 1930s, in addition to the day-visitors, families were returning to rent the same cottages for the entire summer season. Many visitors to Bowen today have stories of happy summers spent in one of the cottages.
Tourism peaked between 1937 and 1946. The Lady Alexandra alone recorded 137,000 passengers in 1937 and in 1946, 101,000 visitors were said to have arrived on Bowen via one of the Union's "Ladys" or by Sannie boats from Horseshoe Bay.
In 1941, the Canadian Pacific Railway acquired a controlling interest in the Union, only to sell it when tourism began to fall off after the Second World War. Many factors influenced the decline in coastal tourism at that time, with the increasing popularity of the personal automobile is certainly one of them. CPR sold its interest in 1955. In 1956, the Union lost its Bowen Island franchise to the Black Ball Ferry Company. In 1959, the Union fleet was sold to Northland Navigation. For many years the Lady Alexandra was a floating restaurant in Coal Harbour, Vancouver but in 1980, she was stripped and then scuttled in Redondo Beach, California.
