MAP 547 - Panoramic view of the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, 1898, via the Vancouver Archives. Here you can see a detail of Brewery Creek, and that smoke stack in the centre of the image? That’s the site of Charles Gottfried Doering’s Vancouver Brewery, later known as the Doering & Marstrand Brewery. Actually, after a merger with the Red Cross Brewery, it became known as Vancouver Breweries Limited. There are so many subtle name changes in Vancouver’s beer history, it’s hard to keep track! More about that some other time.

The City of Vancouver Archives recently announced on their blog that thanks to funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program, they have completed a project to digitize 512 maps and plans.

Maps are great archival records, filled with meticulous details of the city, typically accompanied by exquisite penmanship. However, they are like many early illustrated works—difficult to attribute. The map above, one of the most popular birds eye views of the city, states in very fine print at the bottom right hand corner: “Entered according to act of Parliament of Canada in the year 1898 by J.C. McLagan at the Department of Agriculture.” In a larger embellished font, the map also states “Published by the Vancouver World Printing and Publishing Company, Limited.”

Both of these details are interesting because J.C. (John James Campbell) McLagan was the editor and owner of The World newspaper which operated from 1888-1924. Bessy Lamb gives an excellent early history of The World among other early Vancouver newspapers in this 1942 research paper at UBC, and when you’re finished reading that, you can followup with this paper on women in the early BC newspaper trade, as McLagan’s wife Sara Anne took over the paper after his death. But back to the fine print on the map; it’s still not clear to me what all of this means. Was J.C. McLagan also employed by the Department of Agriculture?

I dug deeper and discovered this Vancouver Board of Trade annual report from 1892, indicating that he was indeed on the standing committee of Agriculture, along with S. Oppenheimer and E.E. Penzer. Actually, J.C. was also on the Immigration committee, so he must have been a busy man! What I really want to know is who was the cartographer?! Did J.C. McLagan actually have time to draw maps in his spare time, along with chairing meetings and running a newspaper?

I believe the answer lies here, in this document on Archive.org (original document in the National Library of Canada). Manitoba and the Great North-West was published in 1882, and it features a full page birds eye view map of the city of Winnipeg, very much in the same style as this map above. J.C. McLagan’s name is clearly stated on the title page, responsible for the “Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Winnipeg”. If the history books have not yet noted John James Campbell McLagan as an excellent cartographer, I believe they now stand corrected.

I hope you this has demonstrated just a few of the things you can learn from an old map! Take that, Google Maps!

Beer ads from the Vancouver Daily Province, December 20, 1940. First, an ad for Coast Breweries of New Westminster, followed by an ad for Vancouver Breweries Ltd.

Note how similar the branding appear in these competing ads; Lucky Lager is the one beer that looks unlike all the rest with it’s distinctive cross label, and ironically, it’s the one brand that appears to have fared the best. Burton Ale and Old Country Ale could go head to head, while Britannia Beer and Pilsener Lager Beer would also be fairly matched. The brand UBC Bohemian seems an odd curiosity today, and 4x Cream Stout was over 10% alcohol!

Rainier Beer is a personal favourite of mine, and typographically, it competes well with Cascade. I’ve included a full colour Rainier Beer label here, brewed at the Westminster Brewery Ltd. in New Westminster, BC. It’s true Rainier was originally an American brand, but it was purchased by the Sick’s beer empire in 1935 after American prohibition, as described on the Rainier wikipedia page. It has changed hands a number of times since then, and brewing finally came to an end in 2003. The Rainier brand has since been revived and is now brewed under license, albeit south of the border.

I was contemplating why nearly all these brands have disappeared; I’m sure the consolidation of breweries and post-war advertising were factors, but I guess tastes also change. And it’s probably easier to introduce a new brand than it is to update an older one. The fact that Lucky Lager continues to be produced here in Canada is a small miracle, although I think it wouldn’t be out of the question for more of these lost brands to make a resurgence.

If you’d like to OD on some more vintage beer labels, check out this acquisition of 3,000 beer labels at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto. Oh, and be sure to sing along to this Labatt beer-drinking songbook from the 1930s!

Happy Christmas everyone, and once again, please drink responsibly!

Cascade Beer - The Beer Without a Peer, from the back of Fruit Magazine (December 1909), seen on archive.org. The name “STAHR” appears in the bottom right hand corner of the image.

Cascade Beer was an early brand of the Vancouver Breweries Ltd, the Reifel family’s brewing empire. If you don’t already know the Reifels, take a look at a few of their contributions to our city: they built the Commodore Block, the Vogue Theatre and the Studio Theatre (the Studio was across the street from the Vogue, which later became the Eve Theatre (1972-78), the Lyric, the Towne Theatre, Tonic, and now Joe’s Apartment); they donated property for the original Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street; they built the “Casa Mia” (recently under contention as the owners want to convert it to a seniors’ hospice) and the “Rio Vista”, two mansions on Southwest Marine Drive; they farmed sugar beets during WWII on Reifel Farms; and as I’ve mentioned before, they donated the land for the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta. Oh, and yes, they may have participated in sending alcohol into the US during prohibition. But more about that some other time.

Vintage Vancouver beer labels, from Capilano Brewing Company and Vancouver Breweries Limited, seen this week at auction on ebay, from a seller in Warsaw, Poland of all places. The Capilano Brewing Company dates back to 1934 (note the label is stamped 621+35, my guess indicating 1935) and the second label is a special Jubilee beer for the city’s 50th birthday in 1936 (note the label is stamped 4+8+36, most likely indicating 1936). Vancouver Breweries Limited dates back even further to 1901, and became part of the holding company British Columbia Breweries in 1911, and continued to operate under the name Vancouver Breweries for a good while. Cursory brewery details obtained from the book Brewed in Canada: the untold story of Canada’s 350-year-old brewing industry by Allen Winn Sneath.