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Nanaimo celebrates 150th anniversary of its first city council meeting

City became British Columbia's 6th municipality, looked 'pretty wild west'

One hundred and fifty years ago, Nanaimo council gathered for its first meeting, marking the early framework for what would become governance one day to more than 100,000 people.

On Dec. 24 1874, the City of Nanaimo was incorporated as B.C.'s sixth municipality. This came almost exactly 20 years after James Douglas had entered into a treaty relationship with Snuneymuxw First Nation.

According to Christine Meutzner and Danica Goble with the Nanaimo Community Archives, the Nanaimo of then was nothing like the city today.

The new municipality was home to fewer than 2,000 mostly white residents who maintained a close trade relationship with the Snuneymuxw people.

"It's pretty much like you would see in old westerns. A lot of false fronts, a lot of wood," explained Meutzner, archives manager. "There is no bylaw at that point insisting on brick or other fireproof materials, it looks pretty wild west."

Dark soot filled the air from the use of coal, which served as the town's main industry. Walkways were built of wood nailed to the ground so that residents didn't need to walk in the mud and free-flowing sewage, and the odd nail along the walkways poked up and tore the clothing of the townsfolk. 

"You can imagine how keen early councils were – not just that first one, but all of them – to improve," Meutzner said. "They must have been desperate to make it nicer, because Victoria was prettier, and here we are up here with our kind of grubby place and people complaining about being tripped up by bad nailing jobs and you couldn't really paint your house a decent colour, or any colour really, because it would just get ruined by that pervasive coal dust in the air."

On Jan. 20, 1825, an election was held making Mark Bate Nanaimo's first mayor, in a vote among 219 white men. He was elected alongside a council of John Bryden, Richard Brinn, John Hirst, Richard Nightingale, John Dick, William Raybould and John Pawson. Two days later, on Jan. 22, the first meeting of the new council was called to order.

Recorded in the minutes, Mayor Bate said that he believed it was proper to say a few words on the important business council had undertaken to carry out. 

"They trusted that in all their deliberations they would treat each other with courtesy and forbearance, work together in harmony, and, as there was a deal of business to be done in commencing the municipal government of the city," his paraphrased speech read. "He hoped that each member of the council would, by all means in his power, aid in forming and bringing to a satisfactory issue the different matters that would of necessity come before them."

The first bylaw was designed to regulate council procedures, but others followed as the year progressed. One bylaw regulated the maintenance and repair of sidewalks, authorizing enforcement to ensure property owners constructed sidewalks in front of their buildings, while another was discussed to prevent cruelty to animals, expressly forbidding exposing cattle to the elements on the wharf.

A sanitary committee was formed in the spring of 1875 to deal with nuisances following an incident of a discarded pig carcass. The committee also served to address other sanitary issues including street gutters, which were prohibited as a dumping ground for refuse following a street bylaw that year. 

"They were trying to make it, either into a mirror image of what they had come from, or at least a better version of what it was," Meutzner said. 

The archives manager explained that the Nanaimo of then was different not only in its civic business, but also in its boundaries and even physical make-up. Departure Bay, Wellington and Harewood were far outside the township, which was limited to the downtown of today and the waterfront along Newcastle Channel.

Bowen Road's Quarterway Pub existed as a rest point, serving as a quarter of the journey by stage coach to Wellington, which was a separate community developed by Robert Dunsmuir for coal mining. Wellington's coal was shipped from Departure Bay, while Nanaimo's was shipped from its own port. 

"I think one of the biggest things that always blows people away is how much of Nanaimo's downtown is [on] land that has been filled in," Meutzner said. "It's hard for them to imagine the Port Theatre was water, it's hard for them to imagine Terminal Avenue was a tidal ravine, that the mouth of the Millstone was considerably bigger. Where the assembly wharf is, that's all man-made."

Aside from politics and geography, Aimee Greenaway, curator at the Nanaimo Museum, said 1874-75 also marked construction of an aerial tramway to transport coal from Harewood mine to ships at Nanaimo Harbour, and Emily Stark was hired as the first black teacher on Vancouver Island, teaching at Cranberry-Cedar School.

"In the months after the first city council meeting, the Entrance Island lighthouse station was completed, the first Bastion Street bridge was built and the first hospital opened on Chapel Street," Greenaway explained. "Another thing in 1874 I thought was interesting is that George Norris established the Nanaimo Free Press and he was quite active in covering city council meetings and presenting that information in the paper."

The City of Nanaimo is marking the 150th anniversary of its first council meeting with an outdoor art festival called Luminous Paths: Nanaimo’s 150 and Beyond, with temporary light installations set up for the next four weeks at Maffeo Sutton Park.



Jessica Durling

About the Author: Jessica Durling

Nanaimo News Bulletin journalist covering health, wildlife and Lantzville council.
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