Downtown Vancouver Favourites: Gastown

I lived in Vancouver for nine years before moving to the East Coast. My husband was born and raised in Montreal but lived in Vancouver with me for almost four years during the early part of our marriage. I consider Vancouver as my home city in Canada and for my husband, it is his second home. Now, we have a new home in Ottawa.

Our son was born in Ottawa and frequently visits Montreal with us. However, Vancouver, for him, is something unfamiliar and far away.

When we took him there when he was a still a toddler, we made sure that we brought him to some of our favourite places. On some trips, it was just the three of us, and on some, with my family in Vancouver.

I am sure that our son will not remember everything, but there will be plenty of opportunities to go back and rediscover the city I that I have come to love (and greatly miss).

We visited the mountain resort in Whistler and falls in Squamish, hiked and crossed hanging bridges in Capilano and Lynn Valley in Vancouver’s North Shore, went on rides and walked along the lake in Chilliwack, and wandered around a park in Abbotsford.

In downtown Vancouver, we brought him to kid-friendly attractions, along with his second cousins, and we, the adults, got the chance to once again enjoy these places we had overlooked for years. We realized you can never be too old for these things.

Gastown

Gastown is my favourite area in downtown Vancouver. It is the prettiest, in my opinion. It is characterized by cobblestone streets, Victorian-era buildings, antique-style lampposts, and quaint bars and restaurants. This is also the best place to get Vancouver souvenirs.

Gastown was named after John “Gassy Jack” Deighton, a steamboat captain and barkeep who arrived in this area in 1867. His nickname came from his talkative nature and penchant for wild storytelling.

Gassy Jack established the Globe Saloon by enlisting local sawmill workers, paying them in whiskey for their labour. A bronze statue of him, casually standing atop a whisky barrel, can be seen on Maple Tree Square, in the same area where his famous saloon once stood.

Soon, a town grew around the saloon and became a commercial district (Vancouver’s oldest). The Canadian Pacific Railway built a terminal at the end of the street (still in operation as the Waterfront Station, the northern terminus of the Skytrain and the station for catching the West Coast Express and the Seabus.

Gastown became a hub of activity but a great fire in1886 obliterated most of the buildings. The area was rebuilt after a few years, thus, you will notice that many of the current Gastown structures are from the 1890s and early 1900s.

We took our son there to see it’s main attraction – the Whistling Steam Clock, the most iconic feature of Gastown, and the most photographed. The clock uses both a steam engine, which is visible through the sides of the clock, and electric motors to run. The time is displayed on every side of the clock by each of its four faces and it chimes every 15 minutes, playing the Westminster Quarters. Every hour, on the hour, the clock releases its famous puff of steam from the top. We had such excellent timing that day, as we didn’t have to wait long before the clock put on a show for our son.

An interesting building stands on Maple Tree Square, near Gassy Jack’s statue. It is called Byrnes Block, a two-storey, Victorian Italianate building which was built in 1886, making it one of the oldest buildings in the city that is still located on its original site. The Hotel Europe, built it 1908, also resides on the square. It was built in the flatiron style so it could fit snugly on its irregularly shaped triangular lot. This is always a nice backdrop for a photo.

But apart from its beauty, Gastown has a sentimental value to me. My first job in Canada was on Water Street in Gastown, and I used to explore all the shops around there after coming off from work. I took the Skytrain daily from Waterfront Station as well.

This is the first place where I take out-of-town guests and the first picture I take of them is one beside the steam clock.

Gastown was also a weekend hangout place in my younger and single years. My former co-workers and I frequented Steamworks Brew Pub on Friday nights for a round or two of beer and appies while exchanging funny anecdotes, playing cards and small boardgames (yes, we did that at the pub), roasting everyone, and taking votes on who was going to pass out first among the heavy partiers (I started as the lone female employee in my unit, where I became one of the boys, and our Friday beer crew expanded to include their girlfriends and eventually, a couple more new female employees).

My husband and I had our first date (as an official couple) at Al Porto Ristorante in Gastown, and we were glad that it was still in business at the time of our visit (and is still going strong at the time of this writing), so we took our son there for dinner. We ordered the same dishes we had on our date – calamari to start, Veal Marsala for him, and Linguini Pescatore for me. Our son ordered pizza, and we all had tiramisu for dessert.