April 29 is Authors for Indies day. In BC, 23 independent bookstores will be participating, with local authors helping out as guest booksellers throughout the day. (You can see the BC stores and schedule here.)
“Running an independent bookstore is an act of love that supports readers and authors alike, and in doing this, they enrich local communities immeasurably. Indie bookstores are a vital part of our lives, but they need our support,” writes author Jennifer Robinson on the Authors for Indies website.
Yes, independent bookstores certainly do need our support, on this day and on every other day of the year.
But while the struggling independent bookseller may seem like a recent-ish phenomenon, the victim of big-box stores and online retailers and increased competition from non-book-related sources, the fate of BC’s indie bookstores has been lamented for more than a century.
Here’s what J. Francis Bursill, writing as “F.P.”—aka Felix Penne—wrote in his regular literature column in the VancouverDaily World on May 31, 1916!
“Publishers and booksellers are today facing many problems. There is the unsolved problem of inducing something like a proportionate expenditure of the income of the people for personal and family libraries at a stage of social evolution when the motion picture, the automobile, athletics and out-of-door games and other temptations to spend money and time are keeping the relative rate of book buying of the country comparatively low as compared with former days.
“The local book shop does not flourish as it once did, and it is not kept by persons who know and love books as often as it once was…
“Personally, I sigh for the old book shops which flourished 20 or 30 years ago, where one met friends and heard “gossip” good enough for a modern “Pepy’s Diary” or a Boswell’s Johnson. I fear those old “book parlors” are gone—if not “forever” at least for a long time.”
As you can see by visiting any of the wonderful stores participating in Authors for Indies, we still do have some amazing “book parlours.” But they continue to need us to show them the love.
When Thomas Napier Hibben opened his bookstore in Victoria in October 1858 (buying out William Kierski’s establishment on Yates Street), he likely could not have imagined that he was starting one of the longest-running bookstores in Victoria’s history.
Thomas Napier Hibben was a partner in the Noisy Carriers’ Book & Stationery Company of San Francisco prior to becoming the dominant bookseller in Victoria. (Horace Bushnell, California: Its Characteristics and Prospects, 1858)
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1827, Hibben had already amassed several years’ experience as a bookseller in San Francisco by the time he set up shop in Victoria. Hibben had been among the other “forty-niners” drawn by the California gold rush in 1849, but after trying his hand as a prospector, he had turned to the book trade (a story similar to that of early New Westminster and Vancouver bookseller Seth Tilley) (1).
Unlike his predecessor, William Kierski, or his remaining competitor in the Victoria book trade in 1858, W. F. Herre, Hibben actively marketed his new business, placing ads in almost every edition of the Victoria Gazette and later the Daily Colonist. (Perhaps his stint at San Francisco’s so-called Noisy Carrier had taught him a thing or two about promotions!)
A typical ad for T.N. Hibben in late 1858 and early 1859. (Victoria Gazette, December 25, 1858)
At first, Hibben called his store the Express Bookstore, a reference, perhaps, to his location next door to the express company Freeman & Co. But in 1859, the business’s name appears as Hibben & Carswell in recognition of partner James Carswell.
On July 20 of that year, Hibben & Carswell announced their presence in a new brick store they called Stationer’s Hall. Their ad is also an impressive call to buy books. Of all the ads I have seen in my research of BC bookstores thus far, this has to be my favourite.
Hibben & Carswell’s ad in the July 20, 1859, issue of the Daily Colonist.
Notes
(1) British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present: Biographical, vol. III (Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1914), 694.
Appearing in Victoria at almost the same time as William Kierski, W. F. Herre’s “book and paper stand” was located on Yates Street between Wharf and Government (1). A Jewish Frenchman who came to Victoria after first operating a book store in San Francisco (2), he announced his presence in Victoria on August 3, 1858:
(Victoria Gazette, August 3, 1858)
While researching Herre (whose first name I have yet to discover), I came across this amusing newspaper report from May 22, 1860:
A case was called on in the Police Court yesterday morning, which attracted a great crowd thither. It seems that Sergeant Carey has had the bookstore of W. F. Herre, on Yates Street, under his surveillance for some time, suspecting that gambling was being carried on in the rear apartments. On Sunday night last, Carey, in company with officers Dillon, Andrews, Whalen, and Druren, went to the rear of the house, and having peeped through the blinds, discovered a party of men playing cards. The posse then proceeded to the front door and demanded admittance, which being denied, the door was broken open and the following named parties arrested: W. F. Herre, proprietor of the house; N. Koshland, E. Marks, Hennry Barr, and E. Vaenberg. (3)
Herre was charged with keeping a gambling house and fined £20 (4).
Herre’s sideline business was also reported in the San Francisco papers: “Herre…vends newspapers and periodicals ostensibly,” the article read, “but privately he has a very nice little back room, where, in spite of the law and the excessively obnoxious penalty attached thereto, gentlemen have been known to lay down more than they took up cards” (5).
Notes
(1) Victoria Gazette, August 3, 1858; First Victoria Directory (Victoria: Edward Mallandaine & Co., 1860), 72.
(2) Madge Wolfenden, “Books and Libraries in Fur Trading and Colonial Days,” British Columbia Historical Quarterly 11, no. 3 (July 1947): 163; Cyril Edel Leonoff, Pioneers, Pedlars, and Prayer Shawls (Victoria, Sono Nis Press, 1978), 17; Daily Alta California (April 15, 1855): 1.
It is BC Book Day and International Women’s Day, and what better way to honour both than to highlight this milestone in BC’s bookselling history: the 1895 release of Lions’ Gate and Other Verses by Lily Alice Lefevre, the first book (I believe, though I stand to be corrected) written by a woman and published by a BC publisher, Province Publishing (1).
Lily Alice Lefevre, 1890 (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: Port P129)
Calling the book “a little work of about a hundred pages,” the review in the Daily Colonist was full of praise: “The title poem and some twenty-eight others are the products of the pen and the genius of Mrs. Lily Alice Lefevre of Vancouver” (2).
Born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1854, Lily Lefevre came to Vancouver in 1886 with her husband, CPR district surgeon Dr. John Lefevre (3) (whose surgery on Carrall Street was just down the block from Seth Thorne Tilley’s first Vancouver bookstore).
The title poem of her book first appeared in the Vancouver Daily World on December 31, 1889, as “The Lions’ Gateway,” published under her nom de pleume, Fleurange. The first stanza is shown here, but the entire poem (and the complete book) can be viewed and downloaded at the Internet Archive.
One of the things that touched me most when I looked through her first volume of poetry was Lily’s dedication of the book to her mother:
Dedication page from Lily Lefevre’s Lions’ Gate and Other Verses, 1895. (Digitized book from Internet Archives)
In a 1909 Daily Colonist article entitled “Women Writers of the Coast,” Lefevre is featured as “a clever polished writer of either prose or verse.” The article also notes that one of her sonnets was included in a volume of poetry compiled by Lord Dufferin (former governor general of Canada) due to his admiration of Lions’ Gate and Other Verses. “Among the eminent contributors to this book were Tennyson, Browning, Sir Edwin Arnold and Rudyard Kipling, so the honor paid the Canadian lady was a very high one,” the passage adds.
After her husband died in 1906 (they had no children), Lily became a great patron of the arts in Vancouver. She “helped found the Vancouver Art Gallery, and made her home, ‘Langaravine,’ a local gathering spot for writers, painters and academics,” notes the entry about Lefevre in SFU’s digital collection, “Canada’s Early Women Writers.”
In addition to Lions’ Gate and Other Verses and a few publications of the title poem in other forms (such as in a limited-edition album of scenic Vancouver photos), Lefevre published a book of poetry in London with A. L. Humphreys in 1921; a Toronto publisher released the book a year later. “Despite this,” notes Glennis Zilm, “knowledge of her work is not common today even among students of B.C. literature” (4).
Notes
(1) In her master’s thesis, Glennis Zilm includes a chronological list of the books published in British Columbia. Lily Lefevre’s Lions’ Gate is the first listing by a female author (Glennis Zilm, “An Overview of Trade Book Publishing in British Columbia in the 1800s with Checklists and Selected Bibliography related to British Columbiana” [master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1981], 277). ABC BookWorld notes that Lefevre “qualifies as the second female author who lived in B.C. [emphasis added] after Althea Moody had a book published anonymously in London in 1894.” Since Lefevre’s book was published by Province Publishing, this corroborates the fact that she the first female author to be published in British Columbia.
(2) “The Lions’ Gate,” Daily Colonist (July 25, 1895): 8.
(3) “Lefevre, Lily Alice Cooke,” SFU Digitized Collections, http://digital.lib.sfu.ca/ceww-718/lefevre-lily-alice-cooke.
(4) Zilm, “An Overview of Trade Book Publishing in British Columbia,” 143.
Chambers’s Information for the People, one of the volume sets featured in an 1861 ad for Seth Tilley’s Colonial Book Store in New Westminster, offered everything “that is requisite for a generally well-informed man in the less highly educated portions of society”—or so claimed the book’s preface.
“Designed in an especial manner for the People, though adapted for all classes,” the preface continued, “the work will be found to comprise those subjects on which information is of the most importance … The ruling object, indeed, has been to afford the means of self-education, and to introduce into the mind, thus liberated and expanded, a craving after still further advancement.”
Astronomy, geology, meterology, geography, botany, zoology, natural philosophy, mechanics, optics, acoustics, electricity, chronology, chemistry, textile manufacturing, mining, metals, the steam engine, engineering, architecture, agriculture, animal husbandry, health, food preparation, and more: all these were covered in volume 1 alone, which ran to a hefty 824 pages:
(Source: Hathi Trust.)
Volume 2 packed a similar wallop, covering topics such as history, language, society, military and naval organization, countries, the human mind, phrenology, logic, theology and major religions, morality, political economy, commerce, education, social statistics, grammar, mathematics, drawing, gymnastics, indoor amusements, rhetoric, printing, engraving, and household hints.
The regularly updated reference work was edited by brothers William and Robert Chambers and was targeted at the working and trade classes. It played a role in the increasing influence of science and philosophical thought as a challenge to religion. To put the 1860 edition shown above in context: Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published only one year before, in 1859.
“The first bookstore in Victoria was Kierski’s,” wrote Glennis Zilm in her 1981 thesis about the history of trade book publishing in BC in the nineteenth century (1). “Little is known about Kierski’s,” she added, and with that, Kierski’s story seems to have rested in silence ever since.
And little wonder. Unearthing anything about Kierski has been a bit tricky, even in this Google age.
In her thesis, Zilm included an image taken from an 1858 issue of the Victoria Gazette in which Kierski’s first initial is shown as “L.” But flipping through the original pages of the Gazette at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections (a marvellous experience that I highly recommend), I discovered that his initial appears as a “W” in all later instances. Hmmm.
The Victoria Gazette of August 3, 1858, shows Kierski’s first initial as “W.” Previous issues show him as L. Kierski. (UBC Rare Books and Special Collections; Lana Okerlund photograph)Kierski’s ad in the September 3, 1858, issue of the Victoria Gazette. (UBC Rare Books and Special Collections; Lana Okerlund photograph)
With the “Wm.” to work from (see the above ad), presumably short for “William,” I started googling and trying every source I could think of. Soon I found evidence of Kierski & Brother, booksellers and stationers in San Joaquin County, California, around the same period. It couldn’t be a coincidence, I thought.
Kierski & Brother, I then learned, were William and John S. Kierski, immigrants of Prussia who started their American lives in New York before setting up shop in Stockton, California, in about 1856 (2).
No mention of a stint in Victoria, though.
Fast-forward over months of periodic yet unsuccessful searches for more information, and a grainy online image from an October 1858 issue of the San Joaquin Republican finally provided the missing link. William Kierski’s time in Victoria had been brief (about four months), but there is no doubt that the Stockton bookseller is the same person as the first bookstore owner in Victoria:
The article in the San Joaquin Republican proving that the Stockton Kierski and the Victoria Kierski are one and the same. (San Joaquin Republican, October 23, 1858, p. 2)
“BACK AGAIN,” the article reads. “Our old neighbor, Mr. Wm. Kierski, has returned from Fraser river, or rather Victoria, where he has been engaged in business for some months. He went at the right time, and has done a good business as a newspaper dealer, and what is more, had wit enough to sell and return at the right time. Mr. Kierski brings some eight or ten ounces of the different varieties of gold dug from Hill’s, [unclear] and Murderer’s Bars. The specimens are [unclear], though not as bright as the gold dug upon the lower bars in this State. He intends to return when he learns of the discovery of dry diggings and [coarse?] gold. The only specimens of the latter that he has seen in that country are the [unclear] stamped with an American eagle.”
The sale referred to above of Kierski’s Victoria business was to T.N. Hibben, whom the VictoriaGazette announced as the successor to W. Kierski on October 9, 1858. The San Joaquin Republican may have felt that their man Kierski was wise to get out of Victoria when he did, but Thomas Napier Hibben would go on to become the premier bookseller in British Columbia for the next several decades.
Meanwhile, William and John Kierski remained in the book and stationery business in Stockton until at least 1875, judging by ads in the San Joaquin Republican. They also published a number of maps, such as Map of the City of Stockton and Environs in 1861 and A Map of the Seat of the War in Europe in 1866(3). There is no evidence to suggest that either of them ever returned to Victoria for those “dry diggings.” John died in 1894 (4) and William in 1903 (5).
Notes
(1) Glennis Zilm, “An Overview of Trade Book Publishing in British Columbia in the 1800s with Checklists and Selected Bibliography related to British Columbiana” (master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1981), 59.
(2) Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002), 349.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Obituary in San Francisco Chronicle (May 30, 1894): 10.
(5) Obituary in San Francisco Chronicle (July 23, 1903): 10.
The only known photo to exist of Seth Thorne Tilley. Even with the grainy image, Tilley’s sharp eyes and handlebar mustache are distinguishing features. (Vancouver Daily World, June 20, 1896, p. 16)
Judging by his ability to rebound after losing his Vancouver book and stationery store to fire not once, in June 1886, but twice, the second in February 1889, Seth Thorne Tilley must have been a man of spirit and some financial means. The losses he suffered in the fires were not adequately covered by insurance, yet he was able to rebuild and restock quickly and get right back into business.
Judging by his ability to rebound after losing his Vancouver book and stationery store to fire not once, but twice, Seth Thorne Tilley must have been a man of spirit and some financial means.
In May 1889, Tilley could once again be found at 11 Cordova Street, the same site as his second burned-out store, in the newly built Ferguson Block (1). Developed by A.G. Ferguson, the building would soon also house the popular Boulder Saloon, which opened in November 1890 (2).
The Ferguson Block, right, at the corner of W. Cordova and Carrall Streets, about 1891. The Boulder Saloon is on the corner, and S.T. Tilley’s shop is behind the third awning, next door to G.L. Allan’s boot and shoe store. (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: Str P344)
The Ferguson Block is still standing in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood, seen here in 2016. A third storey was added at some point after the building’s initial construction. (Lana Okerlund photo)
Noting the “splendid stock of goods” in the article announcing the bookseller’s reopening, the Vancouver Daily World encouraged the public “to look at Mr. Tilley’s store for their purchases” (3). Tilley’s store continued to receive the support of the newspaper, and a December 21, 1889, article gives us an excellent picture of what the establishment was like:
The Vancouver Daily World was exuberant in its praise for Tilley’s book and stationery store. (Vancouver Daily World, December 21, 1889, p. 4)
“Among Vancouver’s most energetic citizens” and one who took “a strong interest in everything affecting the city’s progress” (4), Seth Tilley was a member of Vancouver society. In 1892, when Edgar Dewdney, newly appointed as lieutenant-governor, arrived in Vancouver aboard a private train car, greeting him were the mayor and city officials, along with “Mr. Dewdney’s pioneer friends—David Oppenheimer, Isaac Oppenheimer, James Orr, S.T. Tilley, and John McLennan” (5). Said Walter Graveley to Vancouver archivist Major Matthews in 1936, “The only time I saw Sir William [Van Horne, president of the CPR] in Vancouver was when he took Mrs. Tilley of the book store to supper at a Hotel Vancouver ball” (6).
(Vancouver Daily World, August 6, 1891, p. 8)
Seth’s son, Charles (Charlie) joined his father’s business as a partner in August 1891, with the store becoming known as S.T. Tilley & Son. “[Charles] is an estimable young man, having many good social and business qualities,” read a notice in the trade periodical Books and Notions (8).
But their partnership would be fairly short-lived. In April 1894, Tilley announced that he had sold his store to Harold Clarke and J. Duff-Stuart, both former clerks at one of Tilley’s competitors, Thomson Brothers (9). Tilley was not yet fifty-eight years old, and he would go on to participate in various business ventures for the remaining decades of his life (10). But it was the end of his bookselling days, and the end of the S.T. Tilley Book and Stationery Store in Vancouver.
Notes
(1) “Tilley’s New Bookstore,” Vancouver Daily World (May 27, 1889): 3.
(2) “A Handsome Resort,” Vancouver Daily World (November 1, 1890): 2.
(3) “Tilley’s New Bookstore,” 3.
(4) John Blaine Kerr, Biographical Dictionary of Well-Known British Columbians (Vancouver, BC: Kerr & Begg, 1890), 306.
(5) “The Lieut.-Governor Arrives” Vancouver Daily World (November 8, 1892): 8.
(6) Cited in Major James Skitt Matthews, Early Vancouver, Vol. 4 (Vancouver: City of Vancouver, 2011), 189.
(7) “Co-Partnership Notice,” Vancouver Daily World (August 8, 1891): 8.
(8) Books and Notions (September 1891): 16.
(9) “New Firm,” Vancouver Daily World (April 12, 1894): 3.
(10) Tilley died on August 20, 1910, just shy of his seventy-fourth birthday. He is buried in Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery. His son, Charles, predeceased him, dying of an unspecified illness in 1898 (Daily Colonist [February 17, 1898]: 1). Tilley’s wife, Jeanne, died in 1931 (Major James Skitt Matthews, Early Vancouver, Vol. 4, memo of conversation with Mrs. Jennie Beck [Mrs. N.D. Tilley Beck], April 20, 1937). Their daughter, Jennie (sometimes recorded as Jeanne), died in Vancouver in 1971.
Following the devastating fire that destroyed his first Vancouver book and stationery store on Carrall Street in June 1886, Seth Thorne Tilley built a new store at 11 Cordova Street, at the corner of Carrall. A year later, when the first official train arrived at the Vancouver terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he and other merchants showed off their new brick-and-wood premises in such a display of pageantry that it seemed as though the fire had been just a blip on the way to their present prosperity.
Cordova Street merchants, including S.T. Tilley, whose store can be seen here, celebrated the arrival of the first official CPR train by decking out their storefronts with banners and trees brought in for the occasion. (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: LGN 459, enlarged detail)
In the first Vancouver city directory, Seth Tilley promoted himself as not only a bookseller and stationer, but an old pioneer of British Columbia. (City of Vancouver: Terminus of the CPR, 1887, p. 69)
By 1888, Tilley’s store was receiving kudos as “one of the finest book and stationery establishments” in Vancouver:
The premises are large and commodious, and the stock, which is complete in every detail, consists principally of a large assortment of books, stationery of all kinds, pictures, engravings, artotypes, etc., also a full line of artists’ materials and fancy goods of every description. Mr. Tilley is a thorough and most reliable man of business, and is highly esteemed in his community. (1)
But just as suddenly as it had the first time, fire once again wreaked havoc with Tilley’s livelihood. In the early morning of February 9, 1889, flames and smoke were noticed coming from a building on Carrall Street, a few doors down from Cordova. The barber shop of Roy and Phillips was soon up in flames, and the fire service was summoned. The fire engine was immediately taken to the water tank at the corner of Water and Powell, but faulty valves rendered it useless, unable to take on any water.
“Although the firemen were on the spot with alacrity, nothing could be done to save the buildings from the devouring element,” read the newspaper account of the blaze (2), which soon spread to the building known as Campbell’s Corner, and then to Tilley’s shop and G.L. Allan’s boot and shoe store next door.
By this time, the fire engine from the Seymour Street fire hall had arrived, but the fire had now been going for 45 minutes and the heat was described as frightful.
Despite the efforts of the fire crew, the Campbell’s Corner building suddenly “fell down with a crash, amid the crackling of timbers, the shouts of firemen, the smashing of bottles and glass, and the thickest of smoke and stream … A number of men with hose got on the roof of the G.L. Allan brick building and fought the fire there and prevented it extending any further” (3). Tilley’s building, however, while not totally demolished, was “only fit for kindling wood and [would] have to be torn down and removed” (4).
It was a hard blow for Tilley. “The well-known and popular stationer,” the Daily World article reported, “is probably the heaviest individual loser, he having just added to his stock, which was valued at about $8,500, and on which he only carried an insurance of $1,000. The telephone company’s service, the central office of which was at the back part of Tilley’s store, is also wrecked and at a standstill” (5).
Seth Tilley’s card of thanks for the help he had received after another fire destroyed his book and stationery store in February 1889. (Vancouver Daily World, February 18, 1889, p. 4)
Mrs. Tilley, who had fainted and been carried out of the building during the early part of the fire, was still “quite prostrated from the shock” of the event several days later and was recovering at St. Luke’s Home, “where every kindness and attention [was] given to her” (6).
But Seth was undefeated. “Phoenix-like,” read the Daily World one week after the fire, Tilley “has again arisen from the flames and ashes, and announces that he is to be found in the Byrnes’ Block, with a full line of goods in stationery and fancy goods” (7).
Notes
(1) The New West (Winnipeg: Canadian Historical Publishing, 1888): 181.
(2) “Very Destructive Fire This Morning,” Vancouver Daily World (February 9, 1889): 4.
Not unlike the bookstores of today, booksellers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries supplemented their book, magazine, and newspaper offerings with a wide assortment of stationery and “fancy goods,” such as leather products, toys, home decor items, novelties, giftware, and greeting cards.
In the last category, Valentine’s Day presented a major opportunity to attract customers into the store. Booksellers’ ads competed with each other in local papers, typically exclaiming something like “Valentines! Valentines! Time is drawing near!” and often emphasizing the “chaste” and “tasteful” nature of their selections. Some offered poems as a way of standing out:
A Valentine poem from Victoria bookseller T.N. Hibben & Co. in the Daily British Colonist, February 4, 1880.
Books and Notions, the leading industry periodical for the Canadian book trade in the mid-1880s to mid-1890s, regularly dispensed advice about when and how booksellers and stationers should display cards—a few days before, not after, the holiday, and “the design which has not before been seen will be the best appreciated” (1).
The publication also previewed the latest trends in Valentine’s Day cards, as here:
Taste has run considerably in the direction of lace goods, and the grotesque element has been largely neglected. Prices run generally in the regions of low figures, from one cent to twenty-five, although costly ones are to be had, up to $10. (2)
Dutton, the Toronto News Company, and McLoughlin Bros. were some of the greeting card companies featured in these articles, and this Books and Notions ad from McLoughlin indicates the variety of cards available:
McLoughlin Bros. ad in the December 1886 issue of Books and Notions.
A selection of Victorian-era lace Valentines, the likes of which were displayed by many of our pioneer BC book and stationery stores, can be seen in the Vintage Valentine Museum.
Notes
(1) “Advice to English Stationers,” Books and Notions (April 1885): 138.
(2) “Trade Chat,” Books and Notions (February 1890): 14.
Looking up Carrall Street at the junction of Carrall, Water, Powell, and Alexander Streets, about May 1886. Tilley’s Book and Stationery Store was located on Carrall next door to the Tremont Hotel (see below for an enlarged view of the Tremont/Tilley section). (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: Str P83)
By the time the above photo was taken in the spring of 1886, Seth Thorne Tilley’s book and stationery store was an important part of Vancouver’s “civic centre,” as Vancouver archivist Major Matthews titled his description of the photo:
Here stood the famous “Maple Tree.” Under its shade or shelter, in sun or shower, pioneers held public meetings, impromptu concerts, or tied their horses. On the trunk proclamations were posted; the square right patch is a notice to electors that our first civic election will take place on May 3rd, 1886. Here the candidates for civic office spoke to the electorate. …
The first Canadian Pacific Railway offices were on the upper floor of the Ferguson Block, on left, erected 1885, the first and only office building. Here the first plans of the city were drawn; the first land sales made; the staff was three. The surgery of Dr. J.M. Lefevre, C.P.R. doctor, was in the next room. James Hartney’s general store is on the street level beneath. Beyond, down the street, is the new “Tremont Hotel,” and next door, “Tilley’s” stationery store within which was the “POST OFFICE, VANCOUVER.” Further down, our first newspaper, the “Vancouver Weekly Herald”…On the extreme right edge, men, on the steps, are leaving “Gassy Jack’s” historic “Deighton Hotel.” (1)
Enlarged detail of photo above shows the Tremont House sign; Tilley’s was located next door to the Tremont, and though we can’t make out the wording on the sign hanging over the right shoulder of the man on the carriage, it likely is Tilley’s. (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: Str P83)
Now forty-nine years old and having opened bookstores in more than one boomtown over the past two and a half decades, Tilley may have felt that the decision to do so yet again was paying off. But then came June 13, 1886.
Now forty-nine years old and having opened bookstores in more than one boomtown over the past two and a half decades, Tilley may have felt that the decision to do so yet again was paying off. But then came June 13, 1886.
Much has been written about the Great Vancouver Fire that decimated much of the newly incorporated city. Lisa Anne Smith’s Vancouver Is Ashes is a riveting minute-by-minute account of that terrible day. One of the stories she shares is of Tilley and his son, Charley, who raced against time to save what they could from their store before they had to run for their lives. The account is largely based on an 1892 article in the Vancouver Daily World that looked back on the day of the fire:
[S.T. Tilley] and his son Charley went into their store on Carrall Street to get out some articles which they desired most to save, but before they were aware of the nearness of the danger, the store was on fire at both the front and rear, and they had to rush out through flame and smoke. In the rush Mr. Tilley lost his hat. They then had a long fight with flame and smoke before they reached False Creek, and several times Mr. Tilley sank exhausted but was encouraged by his son’s “This way, father,” to renewed efforts until the shore of the waters and fresh air were at last reached. (2)
Smith asserts in Vancouver Is Ashes that one of the things Seth and Charley managed to save was their Gilliland telephone exchange, “about the size of a large medicine chest, but twice as heavy” (3). Despite these efforts, Tilley’s losses were great (as were the damages suffered by so many others). The June 22, 1886, issue of the Vancouver Weekly Herald estimated that Tilley had lost $2,500 in inventory and property, a huge sum at that time (4).
Historical accounts of the Great Fire marvel not just at the devastation caused on June 13, but also at how quickly rebuilding occurred. “On the evening of Sunday the 13th inst., Vancouver was a heap of ruins, on Sunday the 20th inst. about one hundred buildings had risen from its ashes,” read an article in the Weekly Herald. “The fire has demonstrated one thing, and that is, the indefatigable energy and pluck of the Vancouverites” (5).
Another newspaper reported that Tilley, “who was amongst the heaviest losers” in the fire, “was the first to commence rebuilding. He was at work before breakfast on Monday morning” (6). Within five weeks of the fire, Tilley’s book and stationery store was once again open for business, this time at 11 Cordova Street.
Cordova Street looking west from Carrall, July 1886, five weeks after the Great Fire. Tilley rebuilt his book and stationery store and telephone exchange office at 11 Cordova, at the extreme right of this photo. (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: Str P7)
By 1887, Cordova Street at Carrall looked as though the Great Fire had never happened. S.T. Tilley’s sign is clearly visible at the right of this photo. (City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S4-: Str P353)
Notes
(1) Major J.S. Matthews, “The Burning of Vancouver,” Vancouver Historical Journal 3 (January 1960): 19.
(2) “Sunday, June 13th, 1886, Was the Date of Vancouver’s Big Fire—A Few Reminiscences,” Vancouver Daily World (June 13, 1892): 3.
(3) Lisa Anne Smith, Vancouver Is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2014), 54.
(4) “Losses,” Vancouver Weekly Herald (June 22, 1886): 2.
(5) “Vancouver,” Vancouver Weekly Herald (June 22, 1886): 1.
(6) Daily News (June 18, 1886), quoted on S.T. Tilley file card at City of Vancouver Archives.
