Five lesser-known moments from Vancouver’s municipal election history

The Story

Vancouver’s first local election took place in 1886, the year the city was founded, with voting that was handled on the spot due to a lack of election infrastructure. According to former Alderman W.H. Gallagher, quoted in connection with an interview with archivist J.S. Matthews, the list of voters was effectively created during the election: “The list of those who voted at the first election was made up with a pen, while the election balloting was in process, from those who voted, and was being added to even up to within ten minutes of the close of the poll.” Gallagher described voters—“all men”—walking up to city staff to state where they lived before casting ballots, including some who lived in hotels. During the voting process, a paddle wheeler arrived and played a celebratory song for what the crew assumed was the winner, but it was not.

The 1923 mayoral election is sometimes linked to a disruption caused by a woodpecker. Former mayor L.D. Taylor, who was seeking the office in 1923, told the Vancouver Province that an issue with the city’s power and electric streetcar network affected voter turnout on the day of the vote, when there was also snow that slowed people down. Taylor said a malfunction prevented his supporters in the West End from making it to their wards in time, adding, “If my supporters working in the West End could have got home to their ward in time to vote, I would have won,” and he lost by 500 votes. After the outage, a woodpecker was reported to have flown into a transformer and shorted out the system, while Taylor later claimed the incident wasn’t nature and that sabotage was to blame.

It took decades for Vancouver to elect its first woman to the alderman role. Helena Gutteridge—described as a feminist and socialist activist who moved to Vancouver from London, England in 1911—was elected in a 1937 by-election, following her work advocating for women’s rights, particularly for working women. A Vancouver Province subhead announcing her victory read: “Helena R. Gutteridge First of Sex to Gain Honour.”

Vancouver also faced pressure to change rules around Sunday cinema in the 1960s. Until the 1960s, cinemas could not open on Sundays, with the city citing the Sabbath, but the issue was put to a plebiscite. The public voted in favour in December 1962, and after council drafted a bylaw, theatres were allowed to open seven days a week starting in April. The initial response was described as modest, with a Vancouver Province headline on April 29 referring to “Sunday movies,” and noting that only two theatres opened and only “a couple of dozen” people attended.

During the October Crisis period, threats connected to Quebec separatism also reached Vancouver’s mayor. In October 1970, Mayor Tom Campbell was assigned two bodyguards after supporters of the Front de Liberation du Quebec made threats. Nothing came of the threat, but Campbell told media that if he were kidnapped, he had left instructions “not to cut a deal.”