B.C. Day is coming up on Monday, Aug. 1, a day on which we take some time to honour our province, its past, present and future. A couple of little bits from our Royal City history seem to be in order to mark this date.
There has been a lot of coverage of the New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services' 150th anniversary this year, but an additional comment about the early Hyack firehall is appropriate. This hall sat on Columbia Street between Sixth Street and Church Street, though closer to Church, on the same side as today's police station. Over its lifetime, it became to the town and its residents far more than just a fire hall.
Many important meetings were held in this hall, as well as performances and concerts, parties and gatherings, events of social and cultural importance. It was a welcoming place for special visitors to the city, a place to gather after a funeral, before moving on to the cemetery, and even a place for early oral school exams, at which family and friends attended to see how students did on particular subjects.
Because this was a relatively small, simple wooden structure, it seemed to disappear among the larger multi-storeyed, brick and stone structures that sur-rounded it, and some are surprised to learn that it remained in action until it was destroyed with the rest of downtown in the city's Great Fire of 1898. An intriguing photograph taken during that blaze shows a tongue of flame descending on the hall, basically only its cupola and finial visible in the picture, with the caption "the last of the Hyack Hall." In almost a blink of an eye, it vanished into history.
Another local bit of history takes us back to the fall of 1886 and a street junction that many will recognize, where Eighth Street used to connect to Front Street. Today this would be at the very back of Hyack Square. Beyond this were docks along the river's edge, while to one side was the early wooden train station. This is today's Keg site with some small buildings and businesses on Columbia and Eighth completing the scene.
What was being contemplated at the time is not the curious part of this item, but rather the extent of coverage of what was being considered. The city was to install on a tall pole a 450-candlepower lamp, very powerful for its day, at the Eighth and Front waterfront spot where it would serve as a welcoming direction beacon for incoming shipping.
It was considered that it would also cast useable light for the whole area from Front Street to Begbie Street effectively lighting up the entire corner. Today lighting such as this is commonplace, but in 1886 this would have been hugely dramatic.
Happy B.C. Day!
