Talk:Yaletown

Yale re Yaletown

I don't buy into this:

these Yale residents followed it to the city, and settled in modest housing close to the yards which was soon dubbed Yaletown.

The term Yaletown only came on the public horizon in the later 1980s, after Expo, when the city was casting around for something to name their new neighbourhood. Yaletown may have existed by that name, but on a much smaller basis, and as far as I knew at the time was associated with proximity to the Yale Hotel; applying this name beyond Richards Street or even Helmcken Street has no historical basis, as far as I know; older residents I knew who had lived in that area would simply say the street name they lived on, or just say "downtown". What's the cite for this bit about people from Yale? - and no, bumpf from the city or the Yaletown BIA is not a valid source, as they're quite capable of concocting history to serve as marketing materials in the same way that Whistler has done.Skookum1 23:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Rider: any railway workers in Yale would have been Vancouver-based; they wouldn't have "followed it {the CPR) to the city".Skookum1 23:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I was at the Roundhouse Community Centre a while ago and read somewhere there that the name Yaletown comes from trains coming in from Yale. I think it may have even been one of those photos with Major Mathews' handwritten captions on the bottom. True, the modern parameters go way beyond the original 'hood, and were delineated by city hall, but I think the train story holds, and it would make sense that that's where the hotel (which goes way back itself) got its name as well.Bobanny 15:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a LOT of shoddy and often complete made-up/mistaken civic history around; my favourite bugbear is the monument to Lucklucky, the shoreline grove of maples where Gassy Jack started his bar and which should be smack-dab by the Gassy Jack statue (which is on the stump of the old maple tree) instead of out on today's waterfront at Crab Park, east of the SeaBus terminal and what was then a hundred yards and then some out in the waters of Burrard Inlet. As for what's in the Roundhouse, to me that sounds like a high-schoolish speculation that made its way into the paperwork/marketing portfolio for the area's redevelopment. Myself I think Yaletown is largely an invented name, no more current in old Vancouver than Tokyo Mura (the old pre-WWII Japanese neighbourhood - one of many "mura" (village) away from Japantown - which was around 1st/2nd and Ontario/Manitoba. The tie-in to the town of Yale - to "trains coming in from Yale" - seems entirely spurious, but it's become a nostrum since Yaletown began to be heavily promoted by city and developers back in the '80s; as a neighbourhood name it may have referred to a cluster of houses in behind the Yale hotel; it wasn't used for the warehouse/factory/waterfront district, and it wasn't used for the old (and very extensive) residential neighbourhoods which flanked Homer/Richards/Seymour all the way from there (Drake St.) to Dunsmuir; it was a micro-name if at all, and did not at all refer to the region the city has now proclaimed to be Yaletown; that Yaletown has managed to paint itself as an "historic" and "heritage" district while Gastown continues to languish (and is genuinley historic and heritage)is somewhat laughable as well as pathetic, but I've seen it before with all the concocted/trumped-up into giving Whistler a history and a museum while the much more historic and important-heritage Pemberton and Lillooet areas get no heritage funding at all (except for Olympics-related packaging of feel-good First Nations culture for visitors to Whistler). That's a different axe to grind, but it's the same kind of thing: I just searched the BC Archives, all sets of records (textual, fonds, image, moving images etc), and the only mentions of Yaletown have to do with modern companies usingthat name or recent heritage projects citing it; there are no historic usages as you'd expect to find, and I bet if you dug through the Sun/World/News-Advertiser and Province archives you'd only find it rarely, if at all (unlike, say, Hogan's Alley, Blueblood Alley, Chinatown, Kitsilano/Greer's Beach and other historically-legitimate neighbourhoods). I tried searching BC ARchives for "Yale Hotel", also, but there's only the liquor license records which have to be looked at physically; dating from 1925 onwards. In fact, I'm reasonably sure the Yale Hotel was built after Canadian Prohibition (WWI era) and does not date back to the days when "the trains came in from Yale". There was no passenger service into the north False Creek railyards/factory area, and while some crews may have lived near the Roundhouse their connection to Yale was no more relevant than their connection to Kamloops or Mission; the whole thing seems spurious to me, and smacks of "invented heritage".Skookum1 19:25, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Without historical evidence, I can't disagree with you on the Yaletown name origins. The city archives has a bunch of photos that come up under Yaletown going back to the early 1880s, but it's not entirely clear if that's the product of CVA cataloguers, or Major Mathews. It just seems more plausible to me that it had something to do with the town and the trains than with the hotel. What I don't agree with though is that there's some kind of obvious distinction between authentic and made up names. They're all made up, usually by developers or civic officials/bureaucrats, and these days BIAs. The minority of cases neighbourhood names come from the average joe residents, and it's usually a matter of whether the imposed name catches on. (See the discussion at South Main - "going to Soma" usually means you're going to the coffeeshop for the free internet, not Mount Pleasant - that's why I think it won't catch on for that area.) Authenticity is in the eye of the beholder.Bobanny 20:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Was just at VPL, didn't look too deep, but perused a booklet on Yaletown produced by the city and Van Museum that gives a little more detail (but again, no primary source). Said that the CPRs repair shop moved from Yale when it was decided that Van was to be the terminus. Workers moved in, built the roundhouse, etc., and some of them pretty much disassembled their little Yale houses and brought them to van., giving the area a Yale-ish character (okay, I'm paraphrasing here). Also saw in a little book on Strathcona by John Atkin that says the "Big Leaf Maple Trees" or "Kum Kumulay" (or something close) was at the foot of Dunlevy, at a former native campsite - I think that's what you referred to. But again, no sources, (unlike university pomos). I wouldn't know either way, but I did notice some other factual errors. Bobanny 05:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

My comments about university pomos and their citations I'll save for when I'm back for Lillooet (got rescheduled AGAIN, now on the 8am bus to Whistler to rendezvous there at last...); essentially I think they pick and choose and don't read broadly enough in the source materials to deal with the era(s) in its own terms, instead of just imposing an agenda of something they want to prove and then go looking for evidence which agrees with them, and ignoring that which doesn't (I could make a list if I still had the bibliography/readinglist from HIST-436); and my other main issue with them is that BC was built by individuals more than colours or classes or genders and that it is the history of the individuals that is the most interesting (see my new Nicola (chief) article, not classifying people by expected behaviour types associated with race/class/gender and then trotting out citations to prove the obvious, or to actually contort the obvious or speak so far out of context it's embarrassing (as Barman regularly does, but not alone). "Reading things into" isolated, selective bits of evidence hunted out to justify a cause - that may be standard in the social sciences but it's not scientific, if history is ever scientific (as Thucydides tried to be). I was traised in comparing viewpoints before making up my mind; what I see today is a lot of titled academics (the people who write those articles that carry cites and like to be cited, by people who write on the same topics and also decide what gets published, and who gets to continue to study at that level...no, that's not sour grapes; but they're quite often opinion masquerading as fact, and often ill-informed and highly biased, knee-jerk opinion, with too many catchphrases and pat judgements....).......(returning to lsot phrase) what I see today is a lot of titled academics who, like CanLit authors and poets, feed off their mutual admiration society and pretend to some kind of higher validity.

Citable or not, Morley and writers like him (including modern journalist-historians like Glavin and the Humes) carries views and stories that you won't find, ditto with folk historians like Rothenburger and Barlee (Matthews, on the other hand, can be considered primary source because of all his oral accounts and his own diaristic nature); what I see is the works that aren't heavily footnoted (but carry references in the back) often focus more on story than analysis/propaganda, as the heavily-cited works do; needing to shore up arguments by detailed citing of other citable sources......all very incestuous ultimately, and the popular lack of interest/knowledge in early BC and its history is part of the result of all that unredability and pretenteious/preachy analysis (other than if there's something their ethnic group can seek compensation for).

It was clear to me from a number of writings I was exposed to in HIST-436 (SFU) and since and before, and in some books on the shelves (including Bowering and Barman) that there's a lot of notable authors/scholars in BC history aren't very deeply read in the 19th Century materials at all, aside from being too quick to pass judgement on people of those times (while excusing others); I caught Cole Harris up in-class over something that he should have known and never ventured the opinion he did in his book on Fraser Canyon population issues (can't remember its name - it won awards of course, conferred by his colleages across the country, all pedigreed the same way).

Didn't mean to pomo-rant just now, but that's only an outline; weighed in here relative to Kumkumalay (the site of the Hastings Mill - ft of Dunlevy right?) vs Lucklucky; Lucklucky was SMALL maple trees; it's in Maj. Matthews and also in Olga Ruskin's book (good read, and should be in VPL); the original Squamish only vaguely looks like that of course (as with Kumkumalay). Carrall Street from the edge of the water was the boundary of the Hastings Mill property, which is why Jack landed there; at the edge of the first clearcut in the area, in fact (trees closest to the mill); Alexander and Water Streets were beach - the cut-bank kind with mudflat reaching out - although at Lucklucky there was more of a nice beach, a bit of grass with maples in amidst all those huge confiers; must have been pretty and a nice spot to land, as well as being as close to the thirsty millworkers - and in sight of them - as Jack could get.

That's why Granville, B.I. townsite survey was where it was, Carrall to Cambie, two streets from the beach back to Hastings, beyond which was a strip of remaining forest near te shore of False Creek (then in the middle of Abbott & Pender - it was in those woods where the first whores set up shop, btw); east of Carrall was company property, although IIRC Granville may have been expanded prior to 1885 over as far as Columbia.

The Yale houses sounds familiar a bit now, but if so it was a tiny grouping and probably down on company land, unless maybe the Yale Hotel DID get its name from them being in behind it, I don't know; long way from the CPR yards though. I know the look of "Yale houses" as they're current in North Bend, Boston Bar, Lytton etc - can't recall 'em back in the '70s but granted I never had any reason to go down in the area in those days, not beyond Richards anyway.

Yale, yes, had been the centre of company operations from construction onwards, and I guess you're talking about engineers, trainmen and roundhouse crew and such (the porters and waiters were on Hogan's Alley, as you've probably gathered); so I can kind of buy this except that it's still the taking of a whole microname and spreading it across the whole area. The Stadium and Library are on the edge of it, which ain't right if it was just a few houses brought in down by the Roundhouse....I won't be by the Whistler museum on my trip but when I'm back I may dissect their website for you to show you how funded heritage displays can be completely misrepresentative or misleading; or just pretentious, too. Sure, there's materials in the Archives now branded Yaletown, but there's no ITEMS using that name; it's a concoction, or at least an exaggeration; an expansion or rebranding or whatever. And yeah, Downtown South is so much tackier, huh? I better go...other comments re above when I get bak. Food, zzz, up at 5:30....Skookum1 06:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

One point

Yaletown derives from the fact that the railway workers were from Yale, hence the Yale Hotel c. 1885, CPR workers were moved from Yale and their construction railway duties to build the Drake Street yard. After this, the railway workers stayed in hotels in the area, ate, did shifts and thus the warehouses grew up around it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.76.183 (talk) 02:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe in one tiny corner of the area now described by the term, i.e. right around the Yale Hotel, which is what *I* always understood the name to be derived from. There were no residences down near the Roundhouse, which was all industrial wasteland not so very long ago. and "Yaletown" when used to mean everything up to Robson Street is just not the case. I frequented the Homer/Davie area because of various businesses in that area in the 1970s, and nobody in that area referred to it as being Yaletown; the modern meaning is entirely a branding/marketing gag, and while there might have been a gaggle of houses right around the Yale Hotel, that was made up of "Yalies" (to borrow a term from New England), there's NO WAY areas like Richards & Nelson or Homer & Robson were ever referred to as Yaletown. The industrial area below Homer Street was simply "False Creek" or "down by the yards". Modern popular history likes to trump up this story about workers from Yale moving into the area, but they were very few and by no means did their "settlement" cover all of what's now Yaletown. You're spewing marketing fiction picked up form teh tabloid histories written by imported historians eager to cash in on the city's marketing spew.....Skookum1 (talk) 03:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Other photos needed

The glass towers shown are not really the meaning of yaletown, except to realty promoters. Street-level vistas of Mainland, Homer and/or Hamilton Streets are needed, and maybe lower Davie where the shops/cafes are, something less sterile than the glass towers, which really are an illustration of Pacific Place i.e. the post-Expo Lands project by Concord Pacific. Historic Yaletown, such as it is, is not represented at all by tehse photos, nor the social/commercial streetscape around Pacific & Davie.Skookum1 (talk) 05:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree- these photos do not represent Yaletown!! There should be pictures of the narrow streets, congested with people and traffic, and lined with the shops, offices, homes and restaurants that occupy the adapted turn-of-the-century brick warehouses (with their typical oversized canopies). Yaletown is primarily this trendy but historic district, not the former expo lands. While I disagree with the previous poster- they are not sterile- the new towers represent a recent extension of the neighbourhood. More photos please!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.157.203.56 (talk) 21:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Everyone who lives in, or near, Vancouver can walk the streets mentioned, take photos and upload them as "own work". Problem solved. Peter Horn User talk 13:13, 9 May 2022 (UTC)