(Go to on-line activity) - (Go to lesson plan index)

Materials Needed:

Maps, either suitable for the overhead projector or enough copies for small group work, such as those from the excellent reference book: Vancouver: A Visual History by Bruce Macdonald. Talonbooks: Vancouver, 1992. eg: resource books from the school library (or take the class to the library so they know where to find the materials.

Objectives:

To become aware of early areas of Vancouver: Moodyville, Granville townsite, including Gastown, Hastings townsite, West End, Musqueam, New Westminster, Burrard Inlet, False Creek, and locate them on a map to read a map well enough to locate students' current homes on historic maps of Vancouver

To get a sense of the city's development based on a comparison of decade maps

Unless you are very familiar with Vancouver history, it is important to read up on early stories, documentation and photography, so that you can tell relevant, interesting stories as students look at various settlement maps of the city. Ensure that students are familiar with terms such as decade, century, settlement and townsite when doing map comparison.

Bruce Macdonald's excellent reference book Vancouver: A Visual History provides a First Nations map of the Vancouver area in 1850 on pages 10-11; pages 4-5 list Vancouver neighborhoods; and the three maps of 1880, 1890 and 1900 present the astounding rate of growth the fledgling city was experiencing.

Activity Description:

Using a series of maps (either as overhead projections or enough copies that students can work in small groups), students should look at the area of early Vancouver and answer the following questions:

Before the first traders and settlers came to Vancouver, several different groups of First Nations people inhabited sites around Burrard Inlet. Can you find those areas on the earliest maps?

What were the first areas to be settled by the newcomers?

Why do you think these areas were settled first?

The young settlement was not known as Vancouver. What names were first given to early settlements?

Hastings Mill is the oldest building still in existence today from pioneer days. The Hastings Sawmill constructed it on their site at the foot of Dunlevy Street to the east of what later became Gastown. Can you locate on a map where it was built?

A Guide to Researching Historic Buildings in Vancouver, pp. 41-51, lists Vancouver's designated heritage buildings as well as schools. Is your school listed? Is your school close enough to any other these buildings that you could go for a visit? Locate information about the following sites and locate them on early maps: Moodyville (Moody's Mill on the North Shore); Granville townsite; Gastown colloquial term for Granville, based on John Deighton's (Gassy Jack) saloon Hastings townsite; West End; Musqueam; New Westminster; Burrard Inlet; False Creek.

Locate your house (or school) on maps of early Vancouver, checking on how the area changes each decade. This information could then be written up in report form (with a drawing, based on early photos of the area?) for each student's personal history record.

What areas of the city of Vancouver do you already know? (Possibly Chinatown, the West End, Stanley Park, etc.) Pages 4-5 of Vancouver: A Visual History lists all the areas. What area is your house in? Is this the same area your school is in? How many of Vancouver's areas have you been to?