First Narrows is the official name for the entrance to
Burrard Inlet
french: Baie Burrard
, image = Burrard Inlet 201807.jpg
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, caption = Aerial view of Burrard Inlet
, image_bathymetry = Burrard-Inlet-map-en.svg
, alt_bathymetry ...
, the mouth of
Vancouver, British Columbia
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
's inner harbour.
Name origin
Captain
George Henry Richards
Sir George Henry Richards (13 January 1820 –14 November 1896) was Hydrographer of the Royal Navy from 1863 to 1874.
Biography
Richards was born in Antony, Cornwall, the son of Captain G. S. Richards, and joined the Royal Navy in 1832. ...
named the First Narrows and Second Narrows during his 1859–60 survey for the British Admiralty. Judge
Gray
Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed ...
suggested the alternative name of "Lion's Gate" in 1889 with respect to
The Lions (peaks)
The Lions (Squamish: "Ch'ich'iyúy Elxwíkn" Twin Sisters) are a pair of pointed peaks (West Lion – ; East Lion – ) along the North Shore Mountains in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They can be seen from much of the Greater Vanc ...
to the north, a name generally adopted for the later bridge.
Dredging
In 1909, the
DGS ''Mastodon'' was ordered from a shipyard in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...
. She was commissioned in 1911. Her crew worked 24 hours a day, six days a week, from 1912 to 1917, to dredge the channel. The 5 million tons of excavated material was a mixture of blue clay with embedded rocks and boulders. Some of the boulders were too large to be scooped up by the dredge's buckets, and had to be smashed first. The project widened the waterway from to .
Ferry
In 1909, John Lawson, John Sinclair, William Thompson, and Robert McPherson founded the
Ambleside
Ambleside is a town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lakes, in Cumbria, in North West England.
Historically in Westmorland, it marks the head (and sits on the east side of the northern headwater) of Windermere, England's largest n ...
to
Gastown
Gastown is the original settlement that became the core of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and a national historic site and a neighbourhood in the northwest section of the Downtown Eastside, adjacent to Downtown Vancouver.
Its h ...
ferry service with a 35-passenger converted fishing boat. An experimental
English Bay run proved unsuccessful. In 1912, the municipality of
West Vancouver
West Vancouver is a district municipality in the province of British Columbia, Canada. A member municipality of the Metro Vancouver Regional District, West Vancouver is to the northwest of the city of Vancouver on the northern side of English Ba ...
acquired the unprofitable enterprise. The terminal relocated from the foot of 17th St to 14th St, where the former ferry building still stands. Over time, larger vessels, which could carry up to 120 passengers, replaced the original ones. The bridge opening and the inauguration of bus transit led to the demise of the ferry service, which ceased operations in 1947.
Bridge
The
Lions Gate Bridge
The Lions Gate Bridge, opened in 1938 and officially known as the First Narrows Bridge, is a suspension bridge that crosses the first narrows of Burrard Inlet and connects the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, to the North Shore municipal ...
opened in 1938 and was designed to have enough clearance to permit ocean going vessels to transit beneath.
References
{{coord, 49, 19, 00, N, 123, 08, 26, W, region:CA-BC, display=title
Landforms of Vancouver