In past 10 years, other cities have fared better than Vancouver

Sun

The way the housing market is going these days, homeowners in Greater Vancouver are feeling pretty good about their investments right now.

But if you take a look at the 10-year return the way you might look at a mutual fund’s performance, a home in the city has been a pretty lousy investment.

In fact, if you bought a home in Vancouver 10 years ago with $20,000 down, chances are you would have actually lost money — an average of 13 per cent — after paying all the interest on your mortgage, according to a survey released Monday by Century 21 Canada.

Even if you bought the home outright, the positive 60-per-cent return was the lowest of all 20 Canadian cities Century 21 surveyed, and less than half the 131 per cent you would have made investing the same amount of money in the Toronto Stock Exchange composite index instead.

The smart money was in smaller centres — would you believe Halifax-Dartmouth? With a $20,000 downpayment, someone who bought there in 1994 would have increased their equity 436 per cent. Or a homebuyer could have made 431 per cent on their investment in Peterborough, Ont.

The secret to investing in real estate is timing, especially when doing so with the bank’s money, explained Century 21 president Don Lawby. In 1994, Vancouver home prices were high, and falling in real terms (adjusted for inflation) off their 1989 peak. In most of Canada they were already beginning to turn around.

“The Vancouver market only started to turn four years ago,” he said. And later still in the rest of B.C.

As a result, a house or condominium in the city performed better as an investment over the past five years, with a 50-per-cent return for a buyer putting $20,000 down, or 49 per cent for someone paying cash up front.

A buyer in the Okanagan Mainline real estate district (which includes Kelowna and Vernon) would have done better still, earning a 203-per-cent return on $20,000 invested, or 71 per cent on the full value of the house over five years.

Of the big cities, Ottawa was the place to be, with an average 512-per-cent return on equity since 1999, and 287 per cent since 1994 for those carrying a mortgage.

While most real estate surveys look only at the change in average home prices, Century 21 decided to factor in the cost of financing because “that’s how most people invest in real estate,” Lawby said.

“People gather as big a downpayment as they can, and then they buy a house, leveraging their investment by borrowing money from the bank. So, when they sell the house, they don’t just earn a return on their downpayment; they earn a return on the full sale price of the house.”

The Richmond-based real estate company examined the growth of $20,000 invested in an average home as a downpayment, subtracting mortgage payments at prevailing five-year rates and adding in “imputed rent” (what the buyer would otherwise have to pay for a two-bedroom apartment in the same market) over the course of the five- and 10-year periods. Then it figured what would be left over if you sold the home today and paid off the remaining mortgage principal.

Vancouver was the only place where there was less than $20,000 left over at the end of 10 years.

In the low-interest-rate environment of the past few years, carrying a big mortgage could serve to increase the return on your original investment — the downpayment — faster than owning a home outright. But leveraging can work against homeowners when interest rates rise or when home prices decline. That was the situation for heavily indebted Vancouver homeowners in the mid-1990s.

The good news is that means the Greater Vancouver home prices have probably yet to reach their peak, Lawby said.

“I think there’s an upside” to buying a home in the city now, he said. Although long-term mortgage rates have begun to rise again, rates are still close to historical lows and the economy is growing. The conditions that led to a market bust in 1989 — speculative buying by investors, the onset of recession and the Bank of Canada’s raising the overnight rate three-quarters of a percentage point in one go — are nowhere in sight.

Lawby says home prices in B.C. will continue to rise for “at least the balance of this year.” The big question mark for 2005 is a provincial election, he said.

The time to reconsider carrying a big mortgage is when interest rates are rising fast or when you start hearing bad things about the economy.

“People start talking about recessions a lot sooner than governments come out with the numbers,” he said.

Prospective buyers should also understand that there is no such thing as an average home. Homes will appreciate differently depending on the neighbourhood, age and condition, and the supply and demand for a particular kind of property.

Lawby conceded he did not do particularly well buying a White Rock condominium, which turned out to have leaks.

“Other than that, I would have done okay,” he jokes.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Mike Roberts
Province

While I don’t typically write about entertainment products in this space, I find that we — as a people, city and region — are too often reluctant to pull out the pom-poms and noisemakers and get behind a good thing.

So today I’m going to tell you about my trip Friday night through Storyeum, the largest, most significant tourist attraction to hit town since Expo 86.

Brainchild of wunderkind Danny Guillaume, founder of Petcetera and creator of a similar attraction in Saskatchewan called the Tunnels of Moose Jaw, Storyeum is a 75-minute underground history tour in some serious acreage beneath the cobbled streets of Gastown.

It cost $22.5 million to build, and the Gastown Business Improvement Association and a whack of condo developers are already doing triple back-flips over the social and economic impact Storyeum is projected to have on struggling Gastown and the larger, sadder Downtown Eastside.

Which is all well and true, but what about the show?

To be honest, I was expecting a major hoke-fest glammed up with smoke machines and lasers. What I was not expecting was the pure, magical theatre of the thing, and the eye-popping attention to historic detail.

The show starts in a circular lift that slowly descends, with 200 people aboard, into an ancient rainforest where a Coast Salish youth, the first of dozens of fine actors, experiences his Vision Quest atop a (real) rocky bluff.

Then it’s off to the Big House where salmon cures over the open fire and women in cedar-bark dresses prepare for a younger woman’s pending nuptials.

Then it’s through a dark passage, and the goggle-eyed crowd is suddenly aboard the storm-lashed Santiago, the first-contact ship of Capt. Juan Perez. As torrential rains pour down just a metre from the crowd, an actor screams from the crow’s nest: “Clear the rigging, you poxy swine!” It’s pretty cool.

Then it’s off to the Cariboo Gold Rush to meet Billy Barker and the colourful denizens of Barkerville. Around another corner and we’re underneath the towering wooden trestles that supported the “shining ribbon of iron” as it wound through Rogers Pass and ultimately made us a country.

My only criticism of Storyeum is that it glosses over (or ignores) some of our more shameful history — native smallpox, Japanese internment, the Komagata Maru, indentured Chinese labour — but this is, after all, a celebration of our history, and I suppose some selective revisionism must be forgiven.

Ultimately, Storyeum is a refreshingly unabashed — I dare say, patriotic — pom-poms-and-noisemakers salute to our corner of the country. Which is something that may have made us uncomfortable, before Storyeum arrived.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

Creator Danny Guillaume was a Saskatchewan farmer

Gerry Bellett
Sun

When asked about his background, Storyeum’s creator Danny Guillaume describes himself as the proverbial farmer from Saskatchewan.

It’s a classic piece of self-depreciation from the former Moose Jaw grain grower who came west in 1987 — made two fortunes — and is about to turn Gastown on its ear with his $22.5-million, all-action, pop history show.

“I tried farming for five years and I knew I couldn’t make it. So I came here and became an entrepreneur,” says Guillaume, 42.

Swapping the tractor for a calculator didn’t do him any harm.

He opened a video rental business, developed it into a small chain and sold it. Next he turned his attention to the pet industry and founded Petcetera — a runaway success — which he sold when he realized he didn’t want to be a retailer.

His latest business venture, to be unveiled Tuesday, is his most ambitious yet and has had Gastown in a dither since he first proposed the idea two years ago.

In essence he’s aiming at attracting a million customers a year to a unique sound and light show about the history of B.C. which would put it among the top tourist attractions in the province.

It’s the biggest boost to Gastown in years and merchants there are drooling at the prospect of the numbers of visitors it will bring to the historic district’s few streets.

It has already brought 150 permanent new jobs to the area and its economic jolt is being felt in the neighbouring Downtown Eastside.

“I don’t know anyone who’s against it,” says Jon Stovell, president of the Gastown Business Improvement Society.

“We think it’s the most exciting thing happening in Gastown although there are other less splashy things happening as well. There’s an incredible amount of development taking place here.”

He estimates that new and planned development including Storyeum will add up to $100 million in retail and residential projects.

David Wong, principal of the architectural firm e-Atelier, whose office is directly opposite Storyeum, said some of that development is the result of Guillaume’s decision to spend such a large sum in the area.

“Canadians are conservative and tend to wait until someone else makes the first move. But since he came in we’ve seen lots of activity,” said Wong.

“Our company is being asked to do three major renovations of historic buildings, two in Chinatown and one on Main which I’m sure were influenced by having Storyeum arrive,” says Wong.

“It’s the best thing that’s happened down here for a long time. All the businesses are gearing up for a gold rush.”

Storyeum is contained in a 104,000-square-foot development located on Water Street on the site of the old Woodward’s parking lot that has been demolished and rebuilt by the city, which owns the property.

Guillaume’s company, Historical Xperiences Inc., has a 40-year lease on its portion of the site.

Described as an experience in “magical history” the development takes up the street front where a large public concourse and ticket sales area are located.

But most of it is underground, beneath the parking lot in cavernous theatres reached by descending floors where the history of B.C. will be re-enacted using actors, props, special effects, song and dance and the latest in multimedia wizardry.

While elements of what visitors will find in Storyeum can be seen in other attractions around the world — the use of costumed actors to create atmosphere can be found from Disneyland to the Wigan Pier exhibition in northern England — but as a complete package there’s nothing remotely like Storyeum anywhere, except perhaps in Moose Jaw.

For anyone doubting the concept, Guillaume recommends a visit to his home town and a head count of customers entering the Tunnels of Moose Jaw — an experiment he undertook four years ago to see if his vision of a multimedia history exhibition would work.

“I put in $2 million to build it up and now we have 135,000 visitors a year and it’s the biggest tourist attraction in Saskatchewan,” Guillaume says.

He is expecting to have about 800,000 customers in his first year.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Gillian Shaw
Sun

Coming in your telecommunications future is the day when you’ll call up for phone service and find yourself the recipient of an array of offerings to keep you connected, entertained and organized — in fact, you could have a total digital makeover.

That’s the future as seen by Bell Canada and Telus, the two telecoms turned digital department stores that are vying for the hearts, minds and homes of B.C. consumers.

For a long time it hasn’t been enough to simply provide a phone service, or even add a mobile phone to the consumer offerings. Today’s savvy telecommunications companies are taking a leaf from bankers’ books and looking to build relationships with their customers.

It’s a relationship in which they want consumers to turn to them for all their digital needs — whether it’s the delivery of entertainment, the creation of home networks so kids can do their homework online while Dad surfs the Web, creating a wireless solution to keep their home-based business humming, or a security system with cameras to let homeowners see what’s happening on the home front from any computer they happen to be sitting at.

Telus CEO Darren Entwistle calls it the “digital home solution.”

“We want to provide a bundle for customers that, at the end of the day, will enhance their lifestyles,” he said. “We want to take the technology we have, enable the digital home through that technology and make the future a little more friendly.

For Entwistle it means one-stop shopping: “By having one high-quality supplier to deal with all their digital needs, not talking technology but talking solutions that are meaningful for the lives they lead, which are becoming increasingly frenetic.”

In Vancouver this week to muscle into Telus’s home turf, much as Telus is intruding into its backyard, Bell Canada is talking from the same marketing textbook.

“I think the future of these businesses will be determined by our ability to service the entirety of a household. It is not going to be about the one-off sale of Internet service, or telephone or video,” Bell Canada CEO Michael Sabia told The Vancouver Sun editorial board Thursday. “The real competition will be in a sense for the totality of the broadband home.

“Those companies that can bring an integrated solution to the broadband home — that’s what the focus of competition is going to be about. It’s what we’ll see in the future.”

One part of the over-all home solution is the delivery of video, which Bell already does through its satellite service, with almost 1.5 million subscribers. The company can also deliver that video signal over fibre to multiple dwelling units, distributing it throughout the building essentially over copper telephone wire. The economies of scale work for multiple dwellings, but fail when it comes to single homes, so Sabia said his company is trial-testing a video solution, IPTV (Internet Protocol television), in which greatly compressed video signals are run over standard broadband lines. Sabia said commercial deployment is probably a year to 18 months away.

Service is a key differentiator and both Telus and Bell are trying to overcome their various customer-service problems to appear the winners in this area.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Licensing, leashing bylaw enforcement among measures in five-year plan for crackdown

Ai Lin Choo
Sun

VANCOUVER – Vancouver unleashed a new initiative Wednesday to crack down on dog owners with unruly animals.

As part of a five-year strategic plan, the city’s animal control department, parks board and police department will work together to step up the enforcement of dog-licensing and leashing bylaws, and raise dog owners’ awareness about being responsible and respectful.

Tom Teichroeb, the city’s chief licence inspector for animal health, told a police media briefing Wednesday the crackdown follows numerous reports about unruly dogs.

Vancouver sees about 20 serious dog-biting incidents a year and gets weekly complaints from senior citizens nervous about going into parks, he said. There have also been reports of dogs knocking over children at beaches.

“What we’re talking about is respect for the community. We’ve had real issues around this in the community,” he said.

The Vancouver park board also receives hundreds of complaints every month, especially about unleashed dogs in parks, said park board spokesman Bill Manning.

A study conducted by the Vancouver park board last year showed 20 per cent of the population of Vancouver has reported being bothered by an off-leash dog, and that 20 to 25 per cent of dog owners aren’t picking up after their pets.

There are 29 off-leash areas in Vancouver where dogs can play at specific times, but many people don’t follow the rules, Manning said.

“Since 1998, when the program began, there seems to be a growing sense of entitlement where people feel they can have their dog off-leash at any park at anytime.”

Fines ranging from $50 to $75 will be levied against dog owners who fail to license, leash or clean up after their dogs.

Vancouver police spokeswoman Const. Sarah Bloor, said police officers will also be available to help animal control officers should confrontations occur.

“We want to ensure that the parks are safe not only for residents, but for people who go to them,” she said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Sun

NEW WESTMINSTER I The sale of Saint Mary’s Hospital is a done deal.

On Thursday, May 20 — the day the 117-year-old hospital closed its doors for good — the Sisters of Providence announced they’d sold the property to Bosa Development Corporation.

“We are working with the city to come up with a plan that fits with their vision, our vision and the community,” said Nat Bosa, company president. “We would like to proceed as soon as we can. Our plan would definitely be to be on the ground early next year.”

Bosa said the proposal may include 400 units in two highrises and lowrise buildings. No commercial or health care use is planned for the site.

“We are working on a concept,” Bosa said. “We are redefining and moving forward until we can come to some kind of decision with us and the planning department.”

Bosa said the site was purchased for $4.44 million.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Statistics Canada’s leading index extends a string of healthy gains

Eric Beauchesne
Sun

OTTAWA — The outlook for the Canadian economy continues to brighten, thanks to a rebound in home sales, increased consumer spending and a robust U.S. economy.

Statistics Canada‘s leading index, a barometer of the short-term outlook for the economy, rose by 0.6 per cent in April, extending a string of healthy monthly increases, it said Wednesday.

That and other evidence of economic strength helped boost the dollar nearly three quarters of a cent to a close of 72.64 cents US (up from 71.92 on Tuesday), while Bay Street’s benchmark S&P/TSX stock index closed up more than 30 points.

“Housing returned to the lead, after being a pillar of growth last September and October,” Statistics Canada said. “The housing index, after snapping out of a three-month slide in March, jumped 1.4 per cent in April, its largest gain in six months.”

Also boosting the leading index was the continued strength in the U.S. economy, it said.

The areas of weakness were centred in manufacturing, where demand for workers remained flat as factories cut back on the number of hours being worked and continued reducing inventories.

However, in a separate report there was good news from retailers.

“After a slight dip in February, consumers returned to shop at large retailers with a vengeance in March,” Statistics Canada said. “Consumers stocked up on staple products at large retailers in March, filling up their cupboards and renewing their wardrobes.

“Consumers may have decided to add some extra touches around the house and yard, as hardware, lawn and garden products posted a significant increase for large retailers in March. Home improvement projects may be planned as well, as hardware and home renovation product sales increased.”

The report, combined with the healthy increase in auto sales, suggests overall retail sales in March were stronger than expected, said Merrill Lynch economist Robert Spector. It also sets the stage for an acceleration in economic growth in the second quarter of the year.

Meanwhile, Canadian bond and stock markets got a healthy infusion of cash during the month from foreigners, who added $6.2 billion worth of Canadian securities to their portfolios.

Foreign investors bought $3.6 billion in Canadian stocks in March, the largest purchase since June 2002, and added $2.3 billion to their holdings of Canadian bonds, Statistics Canada also reported.

Canadians, meanwhile, added a modest $100 million to their foreign equity holdings, and $1.0 billion to their foreign bond holdings.

Statistics Canada also released evidence that Canadian travellers have recovered from the shock of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, albeit with what RBC economist Derek Holt noted was some help from a stronger currency.

“More Canadians travelled abroad in March than any other month since August 2001,” Holt noted. “As such, foreign travel by Canadians has fully recovered from the post-9/11 shock effect on foreign travel.”

Visits here by foreigners, however, fell, led by a drop in same-day trips by Americans.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Manufacturers expect heater prices to climb by 50 to 60 per cent

Nelle Maxey
Sun

Every year American homeowners cause at least 2,000 residential fires by storing or spilling flammable liquids – gasoline — around gas-fired appliances.

One result is a new North-American-wide safety standard for hot-water heaters, a standard some in the industry are calling the biggest change in product design since modern water heating was invented more than a century ago. And all in the industry expect it will result in higher heater prices.

How much higher? Most manufactures are talking about a cost increase of 50 to 60 per cent, depending on “which level of the distribution chain you are in.”

Some manufacturers have also adopted order-limit policies to distributors to restrict inventory build-ups of old equipment before the the new standard becomes ”the law of the land.” (In Canada phase 1 of the FVIR, for flammable vapour ignition resistance, standard comes into effect on July 1.)

Because gas-fired water heaters draw combustion air through vents at the bottom of the appliance, flammable vapours — which are heavier than air and naturally sink to floor level – can be drawn into appliance resulting in a fire or explosion.

In response to this safety problem, the American National Standards Institute has developed a new standard and a manufacturer’s consortium has developed the necessary technical adaptations for the equipment. The new standard requires that gas-fired hot water heaters be designed so they “shall not ignite flammable vapours outside the water heater.”

Basically, the design change developed by the consortium involves a sealed combustion chamber with an air inlet that directs airflow through a perforated arrestor plate. If flammable vapours enter the combustion chamber, the flames burn off the top of the arrestor plate and are prevented from flashing back into the room.

However, the arrestor plate created its own safety problem.

”If the arrestor plate becomes blocked with contaminants, the unit may not combust properly,” one manufacturer’s representative reports. ”Once the water heater starts reburning the same air, it produces carbon monoxide.”

PM Engineer magazine, in surveying manufacturers about the new standard, found they have developed at least three solutions to LDO contaminations, or contamination by lint, dust and oil. Some employ baffles or louvres to change direction of intake airflow and thus cause LDO particulates to drop out of the air stream.

One manufacturer has a removable screen at the bottom of the water heater for filtering LDO. Another has positioned the air intake on the sides

of the tank rather than at the base. This cuts down on the pickup of LDO contaminates which accumulate at floor level.

The same survey also found manufacturers are installing temperature sensors that shut off gas flow when triggered by excessive internal temperatures whether in response to vapour ignition or a clogged arrestor plate. The sensor used by Rheem Manufacturing Co. is unique in that it shuts off air flow and gas flow to stop combustion in the chamber and avoid overheating the unit in an uncontrolled burn.

As much as the new standard is needed, its introduction does mean homeowners will be paying more for an appliance at the same time they are paying more for fuel.

Industry has predicted that the privatization and deregulation of BC Hydro will mean an increase in electric energy costs of between 50 and 60 per cent over the next few years.

As for gas rates, the British Columbia Utilities Commission last year approved a 16-per-cent increase in the price of gas. Terason said last year it expects the new price would add $184 annually to a typical Lower Mainland homeowner’s gas bill; $167 to an Interior homeowner’s bill and $183 to a Kootenay homeowner bill.

To keep gas competitive with electricity, however, the increase reflected only a portion of increased commodity cost gas utilities are paying for natural gas in the current North American market.

This means gas utilities will have shortfalls to recover in future rate increases. When electric rates start to climb, you can expect gas rates to climb as well.

Web sites for readers wanting to know more:

www.ansi.org

www.appliancemagazine.com

www.bradfordwhite.com

www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca

www.pmengineer.com

www.reevesjournal.com, Spring 2003

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Telephone system and Internet will be joined together

Jim Jamieson
Province

In the not-too-distant future you may be buying your telephone number from a domain-name registrar instead of being assigned one by the phone company.

So says Timothy Denton, a telecommunications analyst who was in Vancouver yesterday to address the Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority — the non-profit body responsible for operating the dot-ca Internet country code.

Denton, a member of CIRA’s board of directors, believes an emerging communications standard called ENUM will revolutionize the way people keep in touch with each other.

ENUM allows the translation of standard telephone numbers into a format that can retrieve Net-based information and can also be used to route communications over the web.

In essence, ENUM can bridge the gap between the traditional telephone network and the Internet — yielding cost savings and greater flexibility in communications.

“It is the next big thing,” Denton said in an interview before his CIRA address.

“It’s going to change everything at a fundamental technical level. It’ll bring in more services to people who want them. It will unite the two billion telephones with the hundreds of millions of computers there are worldwide.

“It will allow you to get information out of devices that are now not accessible by telephones.”

When ENUM is adopted, phone numbers will become hyperlinks to the Internet.

“It will enable you to connect your phone to span the generation gap between computers and phones,” he said.

“You can punch in a number and other resources become available to you that aren’t just telephony. It’s a way of combining these two worlds in an addressing system that is based on Internet tech, rather than phone technology.”

Currently, Internet telephone calling — technically called Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) — is moving its way through the corporate world and beginning to hit the consumer radar screen.

Eventually, all phone calls will be done through the Internet.

Denton, however, said we can expect to be dealing with the current antiquated phone system for some time to come.

In the meantime, ENUM also would offer complete number portability that has no reference to geography.

How soon might we see this rolling out?

Denton suggested we’re still a few years away.

An industry-government process was started in Canada this spring, with phone companies, cable companies, domain-name registrars and CIRA involved. The U.S. is engaged in the same process.

In North America, a big issue to be resolved is the international country codes. There are 19 countries under +1, including Canada, the U.S. and most of the Caribbean.

Japan, China and Korea are several years ahead of the rest of the world and are currently in testing, Denton said.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

‘Wow! This is a special place’ That’s what Danny Gillaume hopes visitors to his dazzling multimedia museum will say about B.C.

John Bermingham
Province

Once upon a time there was a story, and that story became British Columbia.

On June 1, Vancouver‘s “Storyeum” opens in Gastown, offering visitors a chance to live through B.C.’s history in a massive underground theatre.

Storyeum is the brainchild of Danny Guillaume, a 42-year-old entrepreneur who plans to turn this into a major tourist attraction.

“The idea is to bring awareness and appreciation to our history,” said Guillaume. “A lot of people don’t know that we have an interesting history. Let’s look at history and bring it to life.”

The $20-million Storyeum theatre occupies the former Woodward’s parking lot and is the size of six hockey rinks.

Guillaume, who founded the highly profitable West Coast Video and Petcetera chains, saw the potential in the Gastown site and approached the owners, the city of Vancouver, which jumped on the idea.

The building features two huge circular elevators, the bigger of which has a 52-foot-diameter and is one of the largest in the world, holding up to 199 people at once.

Storyeum will present a 70-minute theatre and multimedia show that includes elaborate stages, live actors and a musical score, all from B.C. More than 20 live actors in period costumes will play out key events in real time, and it’s all backed up by large multimedia displays.

“What makes us tick in B.C.? Why are we unique in the planet? Why do we have a different attitude?” said Guillaume.

Visitors will be taken on a journey through the natural history of B.C., early First Nations history and European exploration and settlement. Then it’s on to the Gold Rush, the Canadian Pacific Railroad and waves of immigration to B.C. from all corners of the earth.

Film crews have been travelling around B.C. capturing images of the province and its people for a sweeping six-minute finale.

Guillaume said the Storyeum stories have all been taken from B.C. native legends, personal diaries and the historical record.

“You can blow through history and learn nothing, or you can look at history and say, ‘Wow! This is a special place,'” he said. “We’re bringing these old stories alive. It’s an educational experience.”

Storyeum will employ about 180 people, half of them actors, and hopes to attract a million visitors a year. A ticket to the show will cost about $20 for adults, $15 for kids, plus GST.

History comes to life in Storyeum’s huge halls

– CONFEDERATION: Before joining Canada in 1871, B.C. could have joined the U.S. But Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald agreed to take on B.C.’s debts and promised to build a railway within a decade. Thousands of Chinese workers helped build the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and 600 of them perished. The Last Spike was driven in on Nov. 7, 1885, near Revelstoke, linking East to West. This exhibit dramatizes the construction of that historic railway.

– NEW WORLD: Trading routes to the Pacific Rim and the elusive Northwest Passage brought Captain James Cook to Nootka Sound in 1778 with his ships Resolution and Discovery. But Spanish explorer Juan de Fuca may have got here in 1592. From 1792 to 1794 Capt. George Vancouver mapped B.C.’s coastline aboard the ship Discovery.

– GOLD FEVER: It’s 1860. Billy Barker has struck gold on Williams Creek, sparking the Cariboo Gold Rush. By 1862, Barkerville was the biggest city in North America west of Chicago and north of San Francisco. Its population of 5,000 was bolstered by the arrival of Chinese labourers and women from the Bride Ships. It was destroyed in 1868 in “The Great Barkerville Fire.” This exhibit features a reconstructed street from a Gold Rush town.

– FIRST NATIONS: Prior to the arrival of Europeans, there were up to 250,000 people living in B.C. These hunter-gatherer cultures were highly evolved, with their own languages, traditions and spirituality. In Storyeum, a Coast Salish girl comes of age in a naming ceremony that takes place in a big-house.

© The Vancouver Province 2004