40 for 40! An analysis of the Vancouver Centennial Plaques

A couple of years of trawling through the Vancouver Archives, searching old newspapers, time travelling on StreetView, driving all over the city… and I’ve found forty plaques!

That may not seem like much, but I’m amazed that this many survived forty years of Vancouver redevelopment and weather, especially as they’re not looked after by anyone.

And finding 40 plaques just in time for their 40th anniversary is perfect!

Of the 40 plaques, 28 are still up, but 12 are no longer installed. I’m still counting them as “found” though, because I have visual evidence of where they used to be.

That leaves 60 missing. These may have been up in 1986, but removed in the forty years since, or they may never have been installed in the first place. The “final” list of plaques in the Archives includes places where the property owner declined to have a plaque installed. One rejection letter said it didn’t fit with the style of the building. Another said they didn’t want to advertise the connection to a murder.

The condition of the plaques is also surprisingly good – possibly due to the fact that most of them are installed above casual grabbing height!

Now, looking at all 100 plaques together…

I wanted to see if the plaques were only downtown or if they had been installed all over the city.

[Note: The neighbourhoods are from the City of Vancouver’s City Social Indicators Profile 2020 and I added UBC and Stanley Park]

So… yes. The vast majority are in the downtown core and its surroundings. Only 15 are not within Clark Drive and 16th Avenue.

Moving on to what the plaques commemorate…

As you’d expect from plaques installed to celebrate the anniversary of Vancouver’s incorporation, most of them focus on the early days of the city.

Just under 70% of the plaques cover subjects from the 1880s to the 1920s, with a bunch focusing specifically on 1886. 20% cover topics from earlier years and just over 10% cover the 1930s to the 1980s. The latest plaque is about the Pope’s visit in 1984.

As for topics, I went into the project assuming pretty much every plaque would be for a building and its relationship to a white man.

And yes, most of them are for a specific building or place, but there are a good number looking at events or people, whether individuals or groups. A bit of a precursor to the Places That Matter initiative.

But when it comes to diversity, not so much. Only four plaques relate to indigenous history, nine for other ethnic groups and only two specifically about women.

Initially, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the plaques aren’t all sunshine and lollipops. There was at least an attempt to show that not all history is positive for everyone. There are plaques about the internment of Japanese Canadians, anti-Asian riots, and the Komagata Maru incident. However, this does means that most of the plaques about negative events relate to non-white people.

Thankfully, plaques nowadays are written by or with the diverse groups that make up the city and allow those people to tell their side of the story. They can decide what they want to memorialize and what to celebrate.

The big list of plaques is here and I’ve put everything on a Google Map too.

If you find another one, please let me know!

And now, some thanks!

·       To the Vancouver Heritage Foundation for inspiring me to start the search.

·       To the wonderful staff of the City of Vancouver Archives for digging everything out. And for being so welcoming to my daughter.

·       To my family for driving all around Vancouver with me and understanding why I get so excited by each new find.