![\"Film](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.C7teU6LM_Z2g7egn.webp\")
The lions went up in January 1939. Their maker was gone by March. Charles Marega, the sculptor who designed the two concrete lions at the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge, died at the Vancouver School of Art two months later, at the end of a lecture.
At 3:15 on the afternoon of Friday 24 March 1939, Charles Marega finished a lecture to his students at the Vancouver School of Art. He reached for his hat and coat, and he fell. Within minutes he was dead. He was 67.
\nCharles Marega designed the two concrete lions at the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge. They were the last big work of his life. He would have liked bronze or stone, but the budget was small, so they are concrete. They were hoisted onto their pedestals on 23 January 1939, two months before he died. Many websites give his death as 27 March 1939. The newspapers of the day say Friday 24 March.
\nHis obituary called him the maker of “most of the monuments” in Vancouver’s parks. He was born on 24 September 1871 at Lucinico, near Gorizia, then in Austria-Hungary. He studied sculpture in Zürich and Vienna and worked in South Africa. He reached Vancouver in October 1909.
\nHe stayed for good. From 1925 he taught modelling and sculpture for the Vancouver School Board. He sat on the council of the Vancouver Art Gallery. When he became a Canadian citizen in 1926, he called the meeting of mountains and sea here “the widest sweep of beauty in all the world”.
\nHis wife died in 1936. Parks Canada now lists him as a National Historic Person.
\n![\"Newspaper](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/portrait.DqIy3i9__Z256wtn.webp\")
A great deal of what stands in the city’s parks. His obituary in The Vancouver Sun listed the Harding Memorial and the bust of David Oppenheimer in Stanley Park. It added the King Edward fountain at the courthouse and the statue of Captain Vancouver at City Hall.
\nWhen he died he was planning a large monument to Vancouver’s pioneers, for Stanley Park.
\nCheaply, and Marega minded. The commission came from A.J.T. Taylor, the bridge’s promoter and an old friend. Marega told his family in a letter that he would have liked bronze or stone, “but it has to be cheap”. So the lions would be concrete.
\nThere was a tug of war over where to make them. One of the bridge’s engineers, a Montrealer, pushed to have them modelled in his home town, according to MONOVA, the museum and archives of North Vancouver. They were made in Vancouver.
\n![\"An](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/sculptor.Bpv8338q_Z1lCfbV.webp\")
The contractor Stuart Cameron & Co. cast each lion in two parts, The Province reported: a body of six and a half tons and a two-ton head. Early on Monday 23 January 1939, derricks mounted on trucks lifted the bodies onto their pedestals, and the heads were set on afterwards. (The Province had spoken of “the crane crew” on the Friday before.) Marega was “just too nervous to watch”, the paper said. Two small concrete lions went to Taylor, for his summer house on Samuel Island.
\nLook at the lions and you can see what Marega made of the material. They are not lifelike. They are Art Deco: the mane falls in flat, layered plates, like a stiff cape, and the face is squared off. Each lion lies on a broad base with its head up, like a sphinx, and its big front paws reach over the edge. Behind it rises a tall fluted pillar.
\n![\"Film](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/lion.ChsMhifQ_Z1VaPhQ.webp\")
On the morning of Monday 23 January 1939. Two derricks mounted on trucks lifted each lion onto its pedestal at the south entrance of the bridge. The Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Daily Province both reported it that day.
\nThe Sun printed a photograph of the lions with a caption. It called them the finishing touch to the span and said each weighed eight and a half tons, which matches the 1999 book’s figures of about 6.5 tons for a body and 2 for a head. W. F. Way, who supervised the job for Stuart Cameron & Co., told the paper it was a ticklish one. In the photograph a woman, Miss Lolita Copefield, stands beside one of the lions. The caption says she “may boast of being the first person to be photographed beside the massive lions”.
\n![\"Black-and-white](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/copefield.BpeskNWN_ucWwW.webp\")
The Province wrote that Marega was among those not there: he was too nervous to watch, for fear that something might happen to his lions. It gave other weights, seven and a half tons for each lion, and said that the heads, two tons apiece, were set on afterwards.
\nThe papers on either side of the day agree. On opening day, Saturday 12 November 1938, the Sun reported that the two big lions were “not ready yet”. Their pedestals were in place. On 25 March 1939, Marega’s obituary called them his latest work, “the two immense lions guarding the south approach” to the bridge. Later sources give the same day: the Sun’s This day in history columns say 23 January 1939, and a photograph published by the Vancouver Courier in 2019 is marked 25 January, two days after the lift.
\nOn Friday 24 March 1939, at the Vancouver School of Art. The Sun’s obituary, printed the next day, gives the time as 3:15 p.m., at the end of a lecture. A caption on the same page says “Friday noon”. We follow the story, which tells the moment in order. The Province, the same day, also said Friday afternoon.
\nThe Canadian Press agrees on the day. Its report, datelined Vancouver, 24 March, says he died suddenly “late today” while teaching. Victoria’s Daily Colonist printed it on Saturday 25 March.
\nThat settles it. A newspaper of 25 March cannot report a death on 27 March.
\nAt his funeral on 28 March, A.J.T. Taylor, who had commissioned the lions, was one of the six pallbearers.
\nWe do not know, because none of them points to an original source. English Wikipedia’s infobox gives 27 March 1939, with no citation. Wikidata gives the same date and cites Wikipedia. A 2016 blog post gives 27 March, and an age of 68, without a source.
\n27 March 1939 was a Monday. It was not the day of the funeral either: The Province reported the service on Tuesday 28 March. We have found no source for 27 March.
\nThe obituary has errors of its own, and they are a useful warning. It calls Marega “a Genoese by birth”; he was born near Gorizia. It says he was 63; the Canadian Press said 63 too, but he was 67. It says he came in 1910; most sources give 1909. The Province’s obituary that day repeats all three. A paper of the day is strong on the day. It is weaker on a life.
\nYes. They still guard the south approach, and the federal register of historic places counts them among the features that make the bridge a National Historic Site.
\nThere are stories about them, too. Workers are said to have put coins under the paws, and a keepsake box inside one lion. We have found nothing to confirm any of it.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: Charles Marega designed the two concrete lions at the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge, hoisted onto their pedestals on 23 January 1939. He died at the Vancouver School of Art on Friday 24 March 1939, aged 67.
\n
The lions went up in January. Their maker was gone by March.
\nWho made the lions on the Lions Gate Bridge?\nThe sculptor Charles Marega designed the two concrete lions at the south end. A.J.T. Taylor, the bridge’s promoter, gave him the commission, and the contractor Stuart Cameron & Co. cast them.
\nWhen did Charles Marega die?\nOn Friday 24 March 1939, at the Vancouver School of Art, at the end of a lecture. The Vancouver Sun’s obituary and the Canadian Press both give that day.
\nWhen were the Lions Gate Bridge lions installed?\nOn 23 January 1939, early in the morning.
\nAre the Lions Gate Bridge lions made of stone?\nNo, they are cast concrete. Marega would have preferred bronze or stone, but the budget was tight.
\nHow old was Charles Marega when he died?\nHe was 67. He was born on 24 September 1871; the 1939 newspapers wrongly gave his age as 63.
\nWhat we read from 1938 and 1939
\nLater accounts we used
\nOur readings
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.C7teU6LM_Z2g7egn.webp", "date_published": "2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "The lions", "Charles Marega", "A.J.T. Taylor" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/lions-gate-bridge-tolls", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/lions-gate-bridge-tolls", "title": "How much did it cost to cross the Lions Gate Bridge? Tolls from 1938 to 1963", "summary": "From November 1938 to 1 April 1963, a car and driver paid 25 cents on the Lions Gate Bridge. Walkers and car passengers paid 5 cents until August 1956.", "content_html": "From November 1938 to 1 April 1963, a car and its driver paid 25 cents to cross the Lions Gate Bridge. People on foot and passengers in cars paid 5 cents until 1956. As far as we can find, the car price never changed.
![\"The](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.DZroxjAH_22QYtA.webp\")
In the last week of March 1963, a letter reached The Vancouver Sun from a toll collector on the Lions Gate Bridge. The collector thanked the more than 99 per cent of drivers who had paid with good grace. To the rest, the letter had one line: “after April 1 you won’t be missed”.
\nFrom November 1938 to 1 April 1963, a car and its driver paid 25 cents to cross the Lions Gate Bridge. Passengers in private cars and people on foot paid 5 cents each, until the province dropped their toll on 1 August 1956. As far as we can find, the price for a car never changed. Here is how the tolls worked, who kept the money, and why they lasted so long.
\nA quarter for a car, a nickel for a person. The company’s general manager, Major P. A. Curry, announced the scale on 29 September 1938. A car and driver paid 25 cents. Each extra passenger paid 5 cents. People on foot paid 5 cents, and so did a cyclist. Children under five crossed free. A driver could buy a weekly pass for $1.25 or a twelve-trip ticket for $2; passengers, a book of 25 tickets for $1.
\nIn today’s money that was not small change. By the consumer price index behind the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator, 25 cents in 1938 is about $5.51 in September 2026 dollars. The $1.25 weekly pass comes to about $28.
\nThe booths were split by kind. Late in October 1938 the Sun reported two toll houses for cars at the north end, and one for people on foot at the south end.
\nWalkers paid first. The bridge opened to them on Saturday 12 November 1938, with the collectors due at 9 o’clock. About 1,200 paid the pedestrian toll that Saturday, in sleet, and 5,750 on the Sunday, the company said. Cars and their tolls followed on Monday 14 November. On the afternoon of Sunday 20 November, the Sun reported, twelve collectors were on the bridge.
\nThe company could only estimate the first week: more than 15,000 vehicles and 40,000 people on foot or riding as passengers. “Owing to the large number of weekly tickets and commutation books in circulation,” Major Curry told The Province, “it is impossible to state the exact number of cars and passengers.”
\nYou may see 7½ cents given for people on foot. That was the most the 1927 act allowed, as we explain below. What walkers paid was a nickel: the papers of 1938 and 1939 say so, and A.J.T. Taylor’s construction film shows ticket B 00001 marked “Amount paid 5c”.
\n![\"Close-up](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/ticket.DaGLtMkR_Z1Ubdm.webp\")
![\"An](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/ticket2.DBcD6zbq_aFWdz.webp\")
![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/advert.o7N6o2qf_1ATVAA.webp\")
The law capped it, and the company kept most of it. The bridge company’s act of 1927 allowed it to charge at most 25 cents for a car, 5 cents for each passenger and 7½ cents for a person on foot. The company charged people on foot 5 cents. Vancouver and the two North Shore municipalities gave the company an exclusive franchise for 50 years from November 1938.
\nThere were exceptions. A federal lease of 27 November 1936, for the bridge’s land in Stanley Park, let members of Canada’s armed forces, and federal employees on duty, cross without paying.
\nThe cities got a share. In January 1955, the Sun reported that Vancouver and West Vancouver each received about $35,000 a year from the bridge’s tolls.
\nAbout $20,000 a month at first. From 14 to 30 November 1938, 51,137 vehicles and 98,532 passengers and walkers went through the toll booths. By May 1939, the Sun reported, the bridge was taking in “something like $20,000” a month.
\nThe company kept improving the gates. In May 1939 it installed a new toll register. Each payment lit up in neon on an indicator, and so did a weekly pass or a punch card.
\nThe new bridge took business from the old one. In January 1939 a North Vancouver man, A. P. Croker, told the Board of Trade that the Second Narrows Bridge would lose about $25,000 a year to it.
\nDuring the war, the toll booths sold Victory Bonds as well as tickets, as a photograph in the City of Vancouver Archives records.
\nBecause the province wanted its money back. It bought the bridge company in January 1955 for $5,959,060. The 1999 book Lions Gate says the province kept the tolls to recover the cost.
\nLittle changed at the gates at first. In February 1955 a reader complained to the Sun about morning line-ups, with six southbound toll gates open. The weekly ticket still cost $1.25, as it had in 1938.
\nThe first cut came in 1956. On 12 July, Premier W. A. C. Bennett announced that passengers in private cars and people on foot would cross without paying from 1 August. Bus passengers were still under discussion. The Province reported that the bridge had taken in about $1,200,000 in tolls in 1955. The highways minister, Phil Gaglardi, put the passengers’ savings at $400,000 a year or more. A car and driver still paid 25 cents.
\nAt one minute past midnight on Monday 1 April 1963. By then the quarter had shrunk in value. In September 2026 dollars, 25 cents in 1963 is about $2.64, less than half its 1938 worth. That day the Sun reported that the crossing took about half its usual 25 minutes. Traffic cones funnelled five empty toll stations into two lanes, and cars rolled through at about 30 miles an hour. A few drivers still stopped at the booths. Others reached for passes clipped to their sun visors.
\nKeeping the booths had cost money too. In 1962–63, its last full year of tolls, the province spent $79,701.40 to maintain the toll facilities on the bridge. West Vancouver Archives holds a weekly pass good on both the First Narrows and Second Narrows bridges, dated from 29 March 1963, days before the end.
\nBy the next day, crews had started taking down the toll gates, a two-week job, the Sun said.
\nMore than its price. The 1999 book Lions Gate puts it bluntly: by 1963 “the public had now paid for the bridge twice”. Our reading is that this is fair as a figure of speech. The tolls paid the company’s bonds, then paid back the province’s purchase.
\nToday there is no toll, and there has been none for longer than there was one.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: From 14 November 1938 to 1 April 1963, a car and driver paid 25 cents to cross the Lions Gate Bridge. Passengers in private cars and people on foot paid 5 cents until 1 August 1956, then paid nothing.
\n
As far as we can find, a car and its driver paid 25 cents for all 24 years. The one change came in 1956: passengers and people on foot stopped paying.
\nDoes the Lions Gate Bridge have a toll?\nNo. Tolls ended at 12:01 a.m. on 1 April 1963. From November 1938 until then, a car and driver paid 25 cents.
\nHow much was the toll on the Lions Gate Bridge in 1938?\n25 cents for a car and driver, 5 cents for each extra passenger and 5 cents for a person on foot. A driver’s weekly pass cost $1.25.
\nWhen did the Lions Gate Bridge stop charging tolls?\nOn 1 April 1963, at one minute past midnight. Passengers in private cars and people on foot had already stopped paying on 1 August 1956.
\nWho collected the tolls on the Lions Gate Bridge?\nThe First Narrows Bridge Company collected them from 1938 until January 1955, when the province bought the company. The province then collected them until 1963.
\nWhy did the province keep the tolls after buying the bridge?\nTo recover what it had paid for the bridge: $5,959,060, The Vancouver Sun reported in January 1955.
\nWhat we read from the time
\nLater accounts we used
\nOur readings
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.DZroxjAH_22QYtA.webp", "date_published": "2026-11-06T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-11T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "Tolls", "Opening day" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/who-was-first-across-the-lions-gate-bridge", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/who-was-first-across-the-lions-gate-bridge", "title": "Who was the first person to cross the Lions Gate Bridge?", "summary": "No one can be sure. On 12 November 1938 The Vancouver Sun named Mrs. Mary Sutton, 75, as first across, but said five others claimed it too.", "content_html": "On Saturday 12 November 1938, The Vancouver Sun gave the honour to Mrs. Mary Sutton, 75, who set out from home on foot in the dark. Its front page said five others claimed the honour too, and an inside page said the dispute would never be settled.
![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.C0DJuu8k_Z11ajaC.webp\")
It was still dark when Mrs. Mary Sutton set out on foot on Saturday 12 November 1938. She was 75. She started shortly after 6 o’clock, in sleet that turned to snow, and halfway across the Granville bridge a young man gave her a lift. By her own account she reached the Lions Gate at a quarter to eight, an hour and a quarter before the bridge was due to open. The Sun had her walking all the way, through two inches of slush on the new park road, and arriving at about 8 o’clock.
\nNo one can be sure who crossed the Lions Gate Bridge first. The Vancouver Sun gave the honour to Mrs. Sutton on its front page that same day. But its subheading said five others claimed it too, and an inside page counted “five different persons”. Such arguments, it said, “never will be settled”. The Sun was right, and the reasons are worth a look.
\nWhat we know comes from the Sun and The Province of that day. Mrs. Sutton lived in Vancouver and drew the old age pension. She came from Moose Jaw.
\nShe meant to be first, and she said so: the day before, she told friends she was “certainly going to be the first”. Her plan was to walk across and then walk home again.
\nThe paper’s headline made her the winner, with “First” in quotation marks. Its subheading added: “Five Others Claim ‘Honors’”.
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/queue.CKdepe1y_1s2ECV.webp\")
Because its own reporters saw a crowd, not a winner. The front page said Mrs. Sutton “is believed to have beaten all younger competitors”. The bridge staff told the paper she “certainly was among the first two or three”. That is not the same as first.
\nThe toll collectors were due at 9 o’clock. By then, the Sun said, at least a dozen people had already crossed. The collectors were not yet there to count them.
\nSeveral people, each with a different kind of first. R. F. Hearns claimed to be the first North Shore resident across. Hearns stepped onto the bridge at its northern entrance at 8:50 a.m.
\nMr. and Mrs. William Green, of Marine Drive, were the first couple from West Vancouver. Mrs. Green carried an umbrella. “It was a lovely walk,” she told the Sun.
\nJ. A. MacRae of Caulfeild held auto pass No. 101, the first sold to the public. The pass was good only from Monday. That Saturday MacRae walked across instead, with two children.
\nMr. and Mrs. Paul Cantwell came straight from their wedding at St. Augustine’s Church. Crossing the bridge was the first lap of their honeymoon.
\nAnd the Sun named an earlier walker still. R. W. Keyserlingk, of British United Press, had crossed about six months before, on the swaying catwalk the cable crews used. The paper called Keyserlingk the first private citizen to walk across.
\nThe company’s own notice said 9 o’clock. On 3 November 1938, the general manager, Major P. A. Curry, moved the opening for people on foot from 6 November to 9 a.m. on 12 November, because bad weather had slowed the last work. The Province printed the hours that day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., for that Saturday and the Sunday after.
\nSo where does 8:50 come from? It is R. F. Hearns’s time, not the bridge’s.
\nSome popular histories say the bridge opened to pedestrians at 8:50 a.m. The version we can trace is by the historian Chuck Davis, who names The Province, the Sun’s rival. In his telling, a gateman let Hearns through early because of the snow and cold. Davis also gives Mrs. Sutton ticket No. 1 and Hearns ticket No. 2. The Province reported all of it that day. Its front page, in a story by Stuart Keate, tells of a gateman who let Hearns go ahead because it was cold, and says Hearns left the north side at ten minutes to nine. A photograph caption says Mrs. Sutton had ticket No. 1 and Hearns No. 2.
\nThe two accounts can fit together. Mrs. Sutton was waiting at the Stanley Park end, where, The Province said, the south gate was thrown open at 9 o’clock and the tollman made sure she went first. Hearns walked on at the north end, ten minutes before the hour. Davis thought Mrs. Sutton had to wait for nine o’clock, and gave the honour to Hearns.
\n![\"An](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hearns.D4yrKYAD_1ocukT.webp\")
No, they came in the afternoon. On 5 November the Sun reported that Mayor George C. Miller and West Vancouver’s reeve, J. B. Leyland, would meet in the middle of the bridge at 3 p.m. sharp on Saturday.
\nThey did meet there. On Monday the Sun printed a photograph of the two men at mid-span. Leyland, it said, remarked: “this is some bridge”. The paper called their handshake a ceremony “to officially open the bridge”, with “no fanfare, no main speeches”.
\nThere were other early crossings, but none was a lasting opening to the public. A Board of Trade party crossed on 5 October 1938. On Sunday 16 October hundreds of people strolled across before the company barred both ends. A.J.T. Taylor’s construction film shows cars crossing on 4 November. (We tell those stories in When did the Lions Gate Bridge open?)
\nOur reading is that there may have been two firsts, one at each end. On the city side, the Sun put Mrs. Sutton ahead of the rest, and bridge staff put her among the first two or three. On the North Shore side, R. F. Hearns claimed to be the first. The Province’s photograph caption says much the same of both: Mrs. Sutton was the first to cross, Hearns the first to cross from the north side. At least a dozen others crossed before the collectors arrived.
\nMrs. Sutton is the one people remember. The Sun’s own This day in history column named her again on 12 November 2012.
\nThe woman in the best-known photograph of the day is someone else: Miss Doris Milligan, crossing under a clear umbrella. Major J. S. Matthews, the city archivist, took the picture. She does not appear among the Sun’s claimants.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: No one knows for sure. On 12 November 1938, The Vancouver Sun named Mrs. Mary Sutton, who reached the Stanley Park end at about 8 a.m. R. F. Hearns claimed to be first from the North Shore, stepping on at 8:50 a.m.
\n
She set out in the dark to be first. Five others, the Sun said, claimed the same.
\nWho was the first person to walk across the Lions Gate Bridge?\nThe Vancouver Sun gave the honour to Mrs. Mary Sutton on 12 November 1938, but said five others also claimed it. Bridge staff said she was among the first two or three.
\nWhat time did the Lions Gate Bridge open on 12 November 1938?\nThe company announced 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for people on foot. At least a dozen people had crossed before the toll collectors were due at 9.
\nWhere does the 8:50 a.m. opening time come from?\nIt is the time R. F. Hearns stepped onto the bridge at its north end, as the Sun reported. Our reading is that later histories turned it into the opening time.
\nWho was the first North Shore resident to cross the Lions Gate Bridge?\nR. F. Hearns, by the claim the Sun reported on 12 November 1938. Mr. and Mrs. William Green were the first couple from West Vancouver.
\nWho is the woman in the famous opening-day photograph?\nMiss Doris Milligan, photographed crossing in the sleet by Major J. S. Matthews, Vancouver’s city archivist. She is not among the claimants the Sun names.
\nWhat we read from 1938
\nLater accounts
\nOur readings
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.C0DJuu8k_Z11ajaC.webp", "date_published": "2026-11-05T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-05T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "Opening day", "Mary Sutton" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/who-paid-for-the-lions-gate-bridge", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/who-paid-for-the-lions-gate-bridge", "title": "Who paid for the Lions Gate Bridge? The Guinness brothers and the mountainside behind it", "summary": "Private British money led by three Guinness brothers paid for the Lions Gate Bridge, the road to their West Vancouver land. The province bought it in 1955.", "content_html": "The Lions Gate Bridge was built with private money, raised in Britain and led by three brothers of the Guinness brewing family. They were not buying a bridge. They were opening up 4,000 acres of West Vancouver mountainside.
![\"The](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.CtviUE2r_Z1Kh1zn.webp\")
On 22 March 1939, a four-masted yacht sailed into Vancouver harbour. She was the Fantome, 1,223 tons, out from England by way of the West Indies and San Francisco. The Vancouver Sun said her owner had come to look at the new Lions Gate Bridge and the North Shore project, both “financed by the British syndicate which he heads”. Her owner was the Hon. A. E. Guinness.
\nThe Lions Gate Bridge was paid for privately, by British investors led by three brothers of the Guinness brewing family. The money ran through two companies: British Pacific Properties, which owned 4,000 acres of West Vancouver, and the First Narrows Bridge Company, which built and ran the bridge. The bridge was the road to the land.
\nThree brothers, the sons of the first Earl of Iveagh. Rupert Guinness was the second Earl of Iveagh. Walter Guinness was the first Baron Moyne. The third was Arthur Ernest Guinness, the yacht owner of 1939.
\nThey came in through Lord Southborough. He was a London contact of A.J.T. Taylor, the Victoria-born engineer who had gone to England in 1926 to find money for the bridge. Southborough introduced Taylor’s plans to the brothers, and they put up most of the money.
\nSome of the family came to see it. In June 1934, a party travelled to Vancouver in a private railway car: Taylor, Southborough, the banker W. S. Eyre, two younger Guinnesses and a trustee of the Iveagh Trust.
\nFor the land. On 18 November 1931, British Pacific Properties bought 4,000 acres of mountainside from the District of West Vancouver. It paid $75,000 and promised to spend $1 million on improvements within five years.
\nWest Vancouver had the land cheap. Earlier speculators had walked away from it and left the taxes unpaid. The 1999 book Lions Gate ties its development to the bridge.
\nIn 1933 the Boston firm Olmsted Brothers laid out the first 1,000 acres. A golf course opened in 1937. In February 1938, Taylor told a Board of Trade group that the company had spent $1.5 million to $2 million on Capilano Estates since 1932.
\nThe estates also came with rules about who could live there. The 1999 book Lions Gate records covenants on British Properties land that kept out Asian residents. In 2014 the National Post found one current title that still bars a sale to “any person or persons of African or Asiatic race or of African or Asiatic descent”. Under British Columbia’s Land Title Act such covenants are void, and an owner can ask the land title registrar to cancel one at no charge.
\nThe company’s 1939 booklet was open about the tie between the estates and the bridge. It calls them “twin achievements”, developed by the same interests that “provided the capital for the Lions Gate Bridge”.
\nOn the day of the 1933 vote, one of the bridge’s engineers, P. L. Pratley, put it plainly: the bridge was “part of a larger project”, and “our clients here have never worried if the bridge could be made to pay”, The Province reported.
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/estates.DX8Aprcb_ojqKb.webp\")
Mostly as bonds. Page 47 of the 1939 booklet lays out the First Narrows Bridge Company’s finances.
\nThe company could issue 500,000 shares at $1 each. It also issued $2.7 million of first-mortgage bonds at 5 per cent, due in 1967. On top of that came $3 million of second-mortgage bonds, also at 5 per cent, over 40 years.
\nAdd the two bond issues and you get $5.7 million. That is exactly the cost the same booklet gives for the whole project, with its approaches, the park road, the franchise and working capital. Our reading is that the bridge was built almost entirely on borrowed money.
\nWho lent it? Largely the owners themselves, it seems. In April 1938 the Sun reported that the Guinness interests held over 80 per cent of British Pacific Properties, with a matching share of its bonds. In the bridge company, it said, they had a “similar interest”. Their man in Canada, L. Peter Candler, sat on both boards. On the bridge company’s, the Sun said, he represented the majority of the shares, which the Guinness interests held.
\nHow much each brother paid, we do not know. No source we have read splits the money among them.
\n![\"Page](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/company.BOZDeOlB_Zahnn0.webp\")
About $5.7 million to $6 million, depending on the source. The company’s booklet gives $5,700,000 for the project. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives $5,873,837.17. As work was about to begin, in March 1937, the Sun called it “the $6,000,000 First Narrows Bridge”. In March 1939 The Province put the cost at $5,800,000.
\nThe $6,000,000 was an estimate. We have not seen accounts that reconcile the other two.
\nSlowly. In May 1939 the Sun reported tolls of about $20,000 a month. By 1953 the company still owed $3,713,500 on its bonds, against assets of $5,079,438. It expected to be clear of debt before 1977.
\nBy then the bridge was crowded, and the company wanted to build a twin beside it. To pay for a second span, it wanted higher tolls. In January 1955, Premier W. A. C. Bennett refused to change the 1927 act that capped them.
\nBecause the province wanted it, and the company could not grow it on the old tolls. On 18 January 1955 the cabinet authorized the province’s toll authority to buy the company’s shares. The Vancouver Sun gave the price on its front page on 21 January 1955: $5,959,060. The sale had been completed the day before. Bennett called it $6,000,000.
\nThe Guinness side said it was “self-evident” that the government should own and control the bridge and its planned twin. In the legislature, an opposition member said the province had been “taken down the river”, paying $6,000,000 for a bridge that cost $5,700,000. A reader wrote to the Sun that the province got it at half price.
\nSome later accounts say the family sold at the original cost of $5,873,837. That figure is the cost of building, not the price of the sale.
\nA neighbourhood, and the lights. In 1956 the branches of the family divided their holdings in British Pacific Properties. In 1986 the family paid for the lights along the main cables, for Vancouver’s centenary and Expo 86. The two strands of lights cost $300,000, The Province reported. On 19 February 1986, Premier Bill Bennett gave the signal to switch them on from the ferry Queen of Tsawwassen. Louise and Erskine Guinness cut a cake to mark the night. A Sun editorial that week said the family “underwrote the cost”. It gave most of the credit to the provincial secretary, Grace McCarthy, “whose brainchild it was”, and proposed a name: “Gracie’s Necklace”.
\nThe company that bought the mountainside still develops it. In 2025 it shortened its name to British Properties.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: The Lions Gate Bridge was built with private British money, led by Guinness brothers Rupert, Arthur Ernest and Walter. Their company owned 4,000 acres of West Vancouver; the bridge opened the land. The province bought the bridge company in January 1955.
\n
First the Guinnesses bought a mountainside. Then they built the road to it.
\nDid the Guinness family build the Lions Gate Bridge?\nThey paid for it. Three Guinness brothers, Rupert, Arthur Ernest and Walter, led the British investors behind the First Narrows Bridge Company. The company paid; contractors built it. Dominion Bridge and Hamilton Bridge (Western) did the steelwork, and Stuart Cameron Ltd. built the piers.
\nWhy did the Guinness family build the Lions Gate Bridge?\nTo open up their land. Their company, British Pacific Properties, bought 4,000 acres of West Vancouver in 1931, and the bridge was the road from the city to it.
\nHow much did the Lions Gate Bridge cost?\nThe company’s 1939 booklet gives $5,700,000 for the whole project; The Canadian Encyclopedia gives $5,873,837.17. The money was raised mostly as 5 per cent bonds.
\nWhen did the Guinness family sell the Lions Gate Bridge?\nIn January 1955, when the province’s toll authority bought the bridge company’s shares. The Vancouver Sun reported the price as $5,959,060.
\nWho were the Guinness brothers?\nThe three sons of the first Earl of Iveagh: Rupert, the second Earl; Walter, the first Baron Moyne; and Arthur Ernest Guinness.
\nWhat we read from the time
\nLater accounts we used
\nOur readings
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.CtviUE2r_Z1Kh1zn.webp", "date_published": "2026-11-04T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-04T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "Guinness family", "A.J.T. Taylor", "West Vancouver", "British Pacific Properties" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/how-the-lions-gate-bridge-idea-took-shape", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/how-the-lions-gate-bridge-idea-took-shape", "title": "How did the Lions Gate Bridge get built? The long road from idea to approval", "summary": "The Lions Gate Bridge idea took shape from 1924 to 1936: West Vancouver land, British money, a 1933 Vancouver vote and Ottawa's approval on 30 April 1936.", "content_html": "The idea of a bridge at First Narrows was decades old. It took shape between 1924 and 1936, through a West Vancouver land deal, British investors, a Vancouver vote on Stanley Park and a federal order of 30 April 1936.
![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.cntZKRgi_Z23wOnR.webp\")
On Thursday 6 September 1934, The Vancouver Sun put the bridge on its front page, and the news was bad. Word from the federal cabinet was that the main span must grow from 1,500 feet to 1,800. The bridge company, the Sun reported, “has been given no official notification”.
\nThe Lions Gate Bridge took shape between 1924 and 1936, in four places at once. West Vancouver offered land. A.J.T. Taylor brought British money. Vancouver voted to let a road run through Stanley Park. And Ottawa, after a long fight over ships, approved the bridge on 30 April 1936.
\nLong before anyone could pay for one. The bridge company’s own booklet of 1939 traces the idea to 1890, to a prediction by George Grant Mackay. In 1894 a company won a federal charter for a tunnel under the narrows. In 1909 an engineer, Fred L. Tytler, drew a suspension bridge for people on foot.
\nNone of it was built. A slump in 1913 and the war that followed left the North Shore quiet, the 1999 book Lions Gate says.
\nThe idea came back in 1924. West Vancouver’s reeve, David Morgan, had admired the Clifton Suspension Bridge in England. That year The Province printed a drawing of a bridge at First Narrows, with two 250-foot towers and an 1,800-foot span. The company’s booklet also dates the plan to 1924.
\nThere were two, and they were rivals. The booklet says both were “promoted by Vancouver men”: the First Narrows Bridge Company and the Lions Gate Bridge Company. West Vancouver offered tax breaks to any private builder.
\nThe idea passed its first technical test. A royal commission reported on 15 January 1927 that a bridge was possible. It suggested a 1,400-foot span with 190 feet of clearance for ships.
\nIt failed its first public test. On Saturday 25 June 1927 Vancouver voters turned down the road through Stanley Park that any bridge would need, 4,724 votes to 2,099. Not one of the city’s eight wards voted yes. On 17 June 1930 the two rival companies merged as the First Narrows Bridge Company Limited, with the bridge builder W. C. Ditmars as president.
\nThrough friends in London. Taylor was an engineering contractor born in Victoria in 1887. In 1926 he moved to England to look for capital and met a retired banker, William Stephen Eyre. In 1928 the two set up British Pacific Securities.
\nLord Southborough then brought in three brothers of the Guinness brewing family. West Vancouver had already promised more than 4,000 acres of mountainside to the project. By the early 1930s Taylor’s group controlled the bridge company. The 1999 book Lions Gate says December 1930; the company’s booklet says 1932.
\n(How the Guinness money worked is a story of its own: Who paid for the Lions Gate Bridge?)
\nBecause the road to the bridge had to cross the park, and the park was precious. Before the Depression, opponents said a bridge would harm Stanley Park, spoil the harbour view and squeeze the shipping channel. Some feared it could be bombed in a war.
\nThe park was not even Vancouver’s to give. It was federal land, a former military reserve. Ottawa had leased it to the city in 1908 for 99 years, at $1 a year. So in August 1932 a federal order set aside up to 4.5 acres, “immediately eastward of the light-house at Prospect Point”, for a bridge head. It still needed the city’s written consent.
\n![\"An](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/parkroad.AD6v-X3d_1gbAyq.webp\")
The city’s experts split. On 11 December 1933, Vancouver’s Town Planning Commission voted 5 to 4 against the bridge. It called the plan premature and the design inadequate.
\nTwo days later the voters overruled them. Times were hard, and the bridge was sold as work for the unemployed. On 13 December 1933 the bridge agreement carried, 17,806 votes to 7,615, about 70 per cent. All twelve wards voted yes. Six years earlier, about seven in ten had voted no. The Province had argued against the deal, though not against a bridge. Its editorial the next day said: “The hope of work in connection with the bridge was, no doubt, the overwhelming influence.”
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/returns.BHlmbSzX_Z1YD5n0.webp\")
The city’s agreement with the bridge company, which was to take effect only if the voters approved the bylaw, also barred Asian workers from the job. The Province printed the agreement on 1 December 1933, twelve days before the vote. Clause 11 says that “no Asiatic person shall be employed in or upon any part of the undertaking”. The National Post quoted the clause in 2014. Clauses like this were not rare: a provincial review in 2017 found the same ban in Vancouver agreements of 1911 and 1913. In its apology of 2018, the City of Vancouver says it once used its contracts to keep people of Chinese heritage from working for anyone doing business with the city. In the same years, the federal Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 shut out almost all Chinese immigrants, until its repeal in 1947.
\nWe include the clause because it is part of the record.
\nBecause the bridge would cross a harbour, and the shipping interests objected. Under the Navigable Waters Protection Act, Ottawa had the last word.
\nOn Tuesday 17 July 1934, at 11 a.m., the Minister of Public Works held a public hearing in the Hunter Building in Ottawa. The Canadian Pacific Railway objected, with the Vancouver Merchants Exchange, the Chamber of Shipping, the Shipping Federation of British Columbia and a Vancouver alderman. The company had asked for a 1,500-foot span. The protesters wanted 1,800 feet.
\nThat was the fight behind the September headline. The Sun reported that the minister, H. A. Stewart, was acting on Prime Minister R. B. Bennett’s instructions. A Sun headline of the time, reproduced in the book Lions Gate, called it “Bennett’s private blockade”.
\nThen Taylor lost his partner. W. S. Eyre died in August 1935. Taylor, the book says, decided to wait for the next federal election.
\nIn October 1935 the voters returned Mackenzie King as prime minister. On 30 April 1936, an order in council approved the design and the site. The main piers had to move north, and the main span grew to 1,550 feet between the towers. Work had to start within a year and finish within four. In the company’s booklet, its chairman, Lord Southborough, credits the “good offices” of the prime minister of the day.
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/liner-1938.6B4IdnA3_TIBdT.webp\")
Vancouver celebrated. On 31 May 1936, during the city’s Golden Jubilee, The Province printed a drawing of the coming bridge by Ron Jackson. Its towers looked quite different from the ones built. West Vancouver Archives holds the menu of a citizens’ banquet that August, for the Jubilee and the bridge approval together.
\nThe company let its first contracts in January 1937: on the 21st, by its own booklet, or the 20th, by The Vancouver Sun. On 31 March 1937, crews began clearing the road through Stanley Park.
\nThe old name never quite left. In British Columbia law, the bridge is still the First Narrows Bridge.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: The Lions Gate Bridge was approved in stages: Vancouver voters let a road cross Stanley Park on 13 December 1933, and Ottawa approved the design and site on 30 April 1936. A.J.T. Taylor raised the money from British investors, including the Guinness family.
\n
A city vote, British money and an order from Ottawa. Then the clearing crews went into Stanley Park.
\nWhen was the Lions Gate Bridge approved?\nVancouver voters approved the road through Stanley Park on 13 December 1933, by 17,806 votes to 7,615, about 70 per cent. The federal government approved the bridge’s design and site by order in council on 30 April 1936.
\nWho came up with the idea of the Lions Gate Bridge?\nThe idea of a bridge at First Narrows goes back at least to 1890. The project that was built was driven by A.J.T. Taylor, an engineering contractor from Victoria, who raised the money from British investors.
\nWhy was the Lions Gate Bridge controversial?\nThe road to it had to cross Stanley Park, and shipping interests, including the Canadian Pacific Railway, feared a bridge would limit ships in the harbour. Vancouver voters rejected the park road in 1927, 4,724 to 2,099, and approved the bridge agreement in 1933, 17,806 to 7,615.
\nWhy did Ottawa have to approve the bridge?\nThe bridge crossed a navigable harbour, which needed federal approval, and Stanley Park was federal land leased to the city. Ottawa held a public hearing on 17 July 1934 and approved the bridge on 30 April 1936.
\nWhat is the official name of the Lions Gate Bridge?\nIn British Columbia law it is still the First Narrows Bridge, the name in the province’s Provincial Public Undertakings Regulation. The company that built it was the First Narrows Bridge Company Limited.
\nWhy is it called the Lions Gate Bridge?\nAfter the harbour entrance it crosses. In 1889 Judge John Hamilton Gray suggested calling First Narrows “Lion’s Gate”, after The Lions, the twin peaks on the mountains to the north. The bridge took that name; the channel kept its own. More in What was First Narrows like before the bridge?
\nWhat we read from the time
\nLater accounts we used
\nOur readings
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.cntZKRgi_Z23wOnR.webp", "date_published": "2026-11-02T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-11T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "A.J.T. Taylor", "Guinness family", "Stanley Park", "Ships and the harbour" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/first-narrows-before-the-lions-gate-bridge", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/first-narrows-before-the-lions-gate-bridge", "title": "What was First Narrows like before the Lions Gate Bridge?", "summary": "Before 1938, First Narrows could be crossed only by boat. Ferries ran between the cliff at Prospect Point and the Capilano River's shifting sandbanks.", "content_html": "Before the Lions Gate Bridge, the only way across First Narrows was by boat. A West Vancouver ferry ran the length of the channel, between the cliff at Prospect Point and the shifting sandbanks off the Capilano River.
![\"The](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.DrSz9T6R_9O78X.webp\")
From 1913, West Vancouver’s little ferries sailed from a terminal at the foot of 14th Street. Each trip ran east through First Narrows, under the high cliff at Prospect Point, to the foot of Columbia Street in Vancouver. It took 25 minutes.
\nBefore the Lions Gate Bridge, First Narrows could be crossed only by boat. It was a tidal channel at the mouth of Burrard Inlet. On one side stood the cliff at Prospect Point. On the other, the Capilano River kept building sandbanks into the water. This is what the place looked like, and how people got across.
\nFirst Narrows is the western entrance to Vancouver’s inner harbour. Stanley Park forms its south shore. The mouth of the Capilano River and the Ambleside shore of West Vancouver form its north shore.
\nThe ice sheet of the last ice age had left the Vancouver area at least 14,000 years before today. Its weight had pressed the land down, so when it left, the sea around Vancouver stood nearly 200 m higher than now. The land rose back, most of it in under 1,000 years. The Capilano River’s delta, on the north shore, formed within the last 10,000 years. The geologist John Armstrong wrote in 1990 that, left alone, it would probably have spread across First Narrows in a few thousand years, “turning Burrard Inlet into Burrard Lake”.
\nCaptain George Henry Richards gave the channel its name. He charted First Narrows, and Second Narrows farther east, on his survey for the British Admiralty in 1859 and 1860.
\nThe entrance soon had a nickname too. Judge John Hamilton Gray suggested “Lion’s Gate”, after the twin peaks called The Lions on the mountains to the north. The province’s official place-names record dates his suggestion to 1889; one encyclopedia of coast place names says about 1890. The bridge would later take that name. The channel kept its own.
\nIt was narrower than it is today. Sandbanks reached far out from the north shore: a shelf of mud and boulders ran 200 to 600 yards (about 180 to 550 m) into the channel.
\nFrom 1912 to 1917, the government dredge Mastodon worked the channel around the clock, six days a week. The bottom was blue clay and boulders, some too big for the buckets until they were broken up. By 1917 the dredge had taken out more than 5 million cubic feet, about 140,000 cubic metres. The channel grew from about 270 m (900 ft) wide to about 430 m (1,400 ft).
\n![\"View](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/dredge.DVrM2lZM_21ymM1.webp\")
The river kept pushing back. Until the Cleveland Dam was built upstream in 1954, the Capilano carried silt and rock down to the narrows, and the shoals moved. Ships kept close to Prospect Point, across from the river mouth. In 1908 a light and a fog bell went up on the Capilano shoals.
\nStrong enough to matter to every boat. The tide pours in and out of Burrard Inlet through this one gap. Canada’s official current tables give First Narrows a maximum rate of about 6 knots at large tides, on the flood and on the ebb. That is about 11 km an hour.
\nThe two directions are simple. The flood sets southeast, into the harbour. The ebb sets northwest, out toward English Bay. These are today’s figures, for the channel as dredged; the narrower channel before 1917 may have run differently.
\nThe ground under the water was mixed, too. When the bridge company printed an elevation drawing of its bridge in 1939, it wrote “Sandstone” under the south tower and “Sand and Gravel” under the north one. The same booklet says the north pier site sat just above the water at low tide, with a tide range of 13 feet.
\n![\"Elevation](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/ground.ynFrN_RZ_1csNr8.webp\")
A light, a lookout and a wreck. The Prospect Point light was lit on 1 October 1888, four days after Stanley Park opened. Its first keeper, John Grove, tended it until 1926.
\nThree months before the light, the steamer Beaver ran onto the rocks at Prospect Point. She was the first steamship on this coast, launched in 1835. Sources disagree on the day in July 1888. Her wreck stayed on the rocks until 1892, when the wake of a passing steamer knocked her under.
\nHigher up, on the bluff, a signal station watched the ships come in. The bridge took over that job. A.J.T. Taylor filmed the construction in colour. One of his title cards says the new signal station at the bridge centre was “replacing Prospect Point Station”.
\nMostly by ferry. In 1909, John Lawson and three partners started the West Vancouver Ferry Company. Their boats ran from the Hollyburn wharf, at the foot of 17th Street, through the narrows to the foot of Columbia Street.
\nIt did not pay. By 1912 Lawson had put $11,500 into it. That year Lawson sold it to the new Municipality of West Vancouver for $6,000.
\nThe municipality built a ferry terminal at the foot of 14th Street in 1913. It had a tea room, a ticket office and a freight shed. The boats got bigger. Sonrisa, built in 1913, carried 120 passengers.
\nThe ferries ran seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Later they left every half hour, and every 20 minutes at rush hour. A ride cost 10 cents at first, and 20 cents by 1939. Hikers and skiers bound for Hollyburn Mountain rode with huge knapsacks.
\nThe route was not gentle. West Vancouver’s own history of the ferries says the boats ran the whole length of the narrows, through “currents, tide rips, and dense marine traffic”.
\nThere was one, the long way round. The Second Narrows Bridge opened on 7 November 1925, about 8 km east of First Narrows. It carried a railway track with a narrow roadway on each side. The bridge company’s 1939 booklet sums up the old choices: two municipal ferry lines, and the Second Narrows Bridge.
\nThat bridge kept getting hit. Ships struck it in 1927, in 1928 and twice in 1930. On 19 September 1930, a barge jammed under one span on a rising tide and lifted it off its supports. The span fell into the inlet. The bridge stayed closed until 1934.
\nFor those years, the North Shore had no road bridge to the city at all. Only boats crossed.
\nPeople switched quickly. On 4 February 1939, The Vancouver Sun reported that West Vancouver ferry traffic was still about 30 per cent below the year before. It gave about 60,000 riders for January 1939. Many residents, the Sun said, were “using the Lions Gate Bridge in preference to the ferries”. West Vancouver fought back. On 6 February 1939, to meet “the competition of buses”, it cut the single fare from 20 cents to 15.
\nThe war kept the boats going a few more years. At midnight on 8 February 1947, Captain G. B. Warren sounded the whistle of West Vancouver No. 6, and the ferry sailed the last scheduled trip, from the foot of Columbia Street to the Ambleside pier.
\nThe 1913 ferry building still stands at the foot of 14th Street. The light at Prospect Point still shines, from a tower built in 1948. The bridge’s own lights now hang above the channel the ferries used.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: Before the Lions Gate Bridge, First Narrows could be crossed only by boat. West Vancouver’s municipal ferries ran through it, from Ambleside to the foot of Columbia Street, in about 25 minutes.
\n
Before the bridge, you crossed First Narrows in a boat, for 10 to 20 cents.
\nWhat is First Narrows?\nFirst Narrows is the western entrance to Vancouver’s inner harbour, at the mouth of Burrard Inlet. Stanley Park and Prospect Point are on its south side; the Capilano River mouth and West Vancouver’s Ambleside shore are on its north side.
\nHow did people get to West Vancouver before the Lions Gate Bridge?\nMany took West Vancouver’s municipal ferry from the foot of Columbia Street in Vancouver, a trip of about 25 minutes. By road, the only way was over the Second Narrows Bridge, which opened in 1925 and was closed from 1930 to 1934.
\nWhen did the West Vancouver ferry stop running?\nThe last scheduled sailing left the foot of Columbia Street at midnight on 8 February 1947. The ferry service had started in 1909.
\nWas First Narrows always as wide as it is now?\nNo. Dredging from 1912 to 1917 widened the channel from about 270 m (900 ft) to about 430 m (1,400 ft).
\nWhat ship was wrecked at Prospect Point?\nThe steamer Beaver, the first steamship on the Northwest Coast, ran aground at Prospect Point in July 1888. Her wreck sank in 1892.
\nWhat we read from the time
\nLater accounts we used
\nOur readings
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.DrSz9T6R_9O78X.webp", "date_published": "2026-11-01T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-01T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "First Narrows", "Ferries", "West Vancouver", "Ships and the harbour" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/when-did-the-lions-gate-bridge-open", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/stories/when-did-the-lions-gate-bridge-open", "title": "When did the Lions Gate Bridge open? Why you’ll find four dates", "summary": "The Lions Gate Bridge opened for public use on 12 November 1938, on foot. Cars followed two days later; the ceremony and the royal drive came in May 1939.", "content_html": "The Lions Gate Bridge opened for public use on Saturday 12 November 1938, when people walked across in sleet. Three more dates are also called the opening: cars on 14 November 1938, the company’s ceremony on 26 May 1939 and the royal drive on 29 May 1939.
The sleet came in over the harbour on Saturday 12 November 1938, and still people came. They walked out onto a bridge that was now open to everyone, toward the far shore at West Vancouver. The first day belonged to them — not to a ribbon, not to a car.
\nThe Lions Gate Bridge opened for public use on Saturday 12 November 1938, to people on foot. Cars had to wait until Monday 14 November. A ceremony and a royal drive in May 1939 are also called “the opening”. Four dates, four different things — and none of them is a mistake. Each marks a different moment, and each has its own people.
\n![\"Timeline](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/images/stories/four-dates-card-1200x630.png\")
The Vancouver Sun put it on the front page that same day: the bridge had “opened to pedestrian traffic today in a driving sleet storm”. The paper counted five people who claimed to have been first across, and hedged the claim it put on its own front page. (Who really went first is a story of its own: Who was first across the Lions Gate Bridge?)
\n\n\n“Vancouver’s magnificent new Lions’ Gate Bridge opened to pedestrian traffic today in a driving sleet storm that failed to keep enthusiastic pedestrians from striving for the honor of being first across.”
\nThe Vancouver Sun, 12 November 1938
\n
The big ceremony would come later. That Saturday afternoon there was only a small one: Mayor George C. Miller and Reeve J. B. Leyland met at the centre of the span and shook hands. The Sun called it a ceremony “to officially open the bridge”, with “no fanfare, no main speeches”. Then the bridge was simply open, and people used it. About 1,200 paid the pedestrian toll that Saturday, and 5,750 on the Sunday, the company said.
\nThe bridge’s own side remembered the day the same way. A.J.T. Taylor, the bridge’s promoter, ended his colour film of the construction with a title card: the bridge “opened to traffic on Nov. 12th, 1938”. The 1939 booklet about the bridge gives the same date.
\n![\"Title](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/film-card.C9flfmwZ_1lSNjI.webp\")
Yes, but only on trial.
\nOn Tuesday 4 October 1938, Mayor George C. Miller and the former mayor G. G. McGeer stood at the railing of the new bridge. “People will come to see it from every part of the world,” Miller told The Vancouver Sun.
\n\n\n“People will come to see it from every part of the world.”
\nMayor George C. Miller, 4 October 1938
\n
The next day, Wednesday 5 October, a Board of Trade party crossed on a tour of inspection, after lunch at the Stanley Park pavilion. The Province said scores of businessmen walked over the new pavement, guided by Major P. A. Curry of the bridge company. The Canadian Press said a caravan of 80 cars drove over, the first traffic the bridge had carried, and told readers the public could expect to use it about 8 November.
\nOn Sunday 16 October hundreds of people strolled across. The Province called it an “unauthorized” preview, after which the company ordered bars placed at both ends. Major Curry put it more kindly to The Vancouver Sun the next Saturday: the company had tried letting people on for half an hour. “We were swamped and had to close it again.”
\n\n\n“We were swamped and had to close it again.”
\nMajor P. A. Curry, the bridge company’s general manager, on the Sunday of 16 October 1938
\n
Then came another first. A title card in A.J.T. Taylor’s film says that 4 November 1938 “saw the first cars cross the span from end to end”. The next cards show cars waiting “for final obstructions to be cleared”, and John Anderson receiving the first ticket, marked B 00001. Anderson was Taylor’s partner. The public’s first tickets were others, both numbered 1: Mrs. Sutton’s on 12 November, for a person on foot, and Reeve Leyland’s on 14 November, The Province reported. Mayor Miller had car ticket No. 2, and Major Curry let the two men keep theirs as souvenirs. None of the 1938 newspapers we have read mentions the 4 November crossing, so we do not know who drove. It seems to have been a rehearsal for opening day.
\nThere was even a walker. On the opening Saturday the Sun said the first private person to have walked across the new bridge was R. W. Keyserlingk of British United Press, who had crossed on the swaying cable catwalk about six months earlier.
\nSo the bridge had been crossed by inspectors, by test cars, by one man on a wire and, for half an hour, by a crowd. It had not yet opened for good.
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/snow.7fcmPND2_Z33n37.webp\")
The bridge was ready. The road onto it was not quite.
\nThat first Saturday, the company’s general manager, Major P. A. Curry, explained, as the Sun reported, that cars would not be let on until Monday morning. The pavement on the North Shore approach, he said, “had to be given time to set properly”. The bridge itself was “completely ready for traffic of all kinds”.
\nIt is an ordinary reason, and a useful one. It explains why two of the four dates sit only two days apart.
\n![\"Two](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/sleepers.QzVrjeM9_IYFAF.webp\")
On Monday 14 November 1938 there was a line at the gate. Douglas Craig and Jimmy Pratt had queued since 11 o’clock the night before to be the first car north, and the line held 15 or 20 cars when the gate opened. The Sun said they were probably the first people to sleep on the bridge. C. H. Chamberlain of Lower Capilano drove the first car southbound, The Province reported; the Sun printed his name as Charles Charleston. From that Monday, cars crossed and paid tolls.
\n![\"An](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/chamberlain.C6M8riwp_aYNG6.webp\")
Many sources call this day the opening, and they have a point. BC’s transportation ministry wished the bridge a happy birthday on its TranBC blog on 14 November 2012. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives 14 November as the day the bridge opened to traffic. The Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s page on the bridge describes its commemorative plaque as marking the bridge’s completion on 14 November 1938. The plaque is the company’s own. It was unveiled on 29 May 1939, and the Sun photographed it the next day: “The Lions’ Gate Bridge, completed November 14th 1938”, followed by the engineers, the builders and the directors.
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/plaque.qNW_qQr1_ZoFcYN.webp\")
The 1939 bridge booklet seems to have kept both November dates. It says the bridge opened to traffic on 12 November, and dates the company’s franchise, its right to run the bridge as a business, from 14 November. One day for the public, one for the business.
\n![\"Two](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/booklet.MtfFLR_1_ZxfzCT.webp\")
The ceremonies were never meant to come first. On 29 September 1938, when Major Curry announced the tolls, The Province’s front page said the bridge would probably open “without any ceremony”, and that “a dedication ceremony may be held in the spring”. On 10 November, two days before the first walkers, the trade magazine Engineering News-Record told its engineer readers that the bridge would open to traffic “this month”, and that the formal dedication would be put off until the next summer. The plan was public before the first footstep: use the bridge first, celebrate it later.
\nIn Vancouver it was common knowledge. On 9 November The Province’s film columnist, Stu Keate, wrote: “Those good citizens who decided to let the Lions Gate bridge open quietly must have started something.”
\nThe celebration came on Friday 26 May 1939. It was also the Board of Trade’s Harbor and Port Day. The day’s programme, printed in The Province, sent a harbour cruise out with a “Salute to Lions Gate Bridge dedication en route”. The Sun’s headline put “Open” in quotation marks: “Lions Gate Bridge ‘Open’ After Six Months of Use”. The bridge, the report reminded its readers, had been open for more than six months, and was taking in about $20,000 a month in tolls.
\n![\"Newspaper](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/sun-headline.DskSd2O5_4VI5X.webp\")
That afternoon a line of cars drove from the Stanley Park pavilion over the bridge, “with all the official dignity of a slow march”, in the Sun’s words. About seventy guests went on to the Capilano Golf and Country Club. There Allan Gentles, for the two steel contractors, handed A.J.T. Taylor a certificate signed by the consulting engineer P. L. Pratley: the bridge was finished and ready for its owners. Taylor said that his work was done and that he was leaving the company.
\n\n\n“This bridge, like a lusty child has been born, richly endowed in capacity to render service for long years ahead.”
\nA.J.T. Taylor, 26 May 1939, as printed in The Vancouver Sun
\n
![\"Two](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/certificate.BQTrCEwt_Z1dXM5O.webp\")
Parks Canada and BC Magazine both give 26 May 1939 as the official opening.
\nMany people wanted them to. In October 1938, a month before the bridge opened to the public, The Province reported two plans. On 11 October, Reeve J. B. Leyland of West Vancouver meant to ask the British backers to invite Their Majesties to the ceremony. On 17 October, Mayor George C. Miller said the city would invite the King to open both the bridge and the new Hotel Vancouver. If the royal couple came in June, he said, every effort would be made to time both openings to their visit. The bridge did not wait. It opened to people on foot on 12 November.
\nThree days after the company’s ceremony, on Monday 29 May 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth drove across. A Canadian Press report, printed the next day in Victoria’s Daily Colonist, traced their route. They crossed the Second Narrows Bridge, drove through North Vancouver and West Vancouver, then came over the Lions Gate Bridge to the steamer for Victoria. The Lions Gate Bridge was closed to everyone else from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., The Sun had warned. The Province estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 people lined the North Shore route, from one bridge to the other. MONOVA, the museum and archives of North Vancouver, says the couple “honoured” the new bridge by crossing it. Our museum has the day’s timetable.
\n![\"Hand-drawn](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/route-map.D7nfBcT9_Z20CkeN.webp\")
The Canadian Encyclopedia goes further and calls 29 May the official opening, with the royal couple presiding. Some web pages put the King and Queen at the 26 May ceremony instead. The documents are simpler. The ceremony was the company’s, on 26 May. The royal drive came three days later, on the way to a boat. The bronze tablet put up on the bridge that day says only that Their Majesties “crossed” it.
\n![\"A](\"https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/motorcade.BSHPoTEj_23GEWM.webp\")
Look at the records and the four dates sort themselves out. They are not four errors; they are four answers to four different questions. When could people walk across? Saturday 12 November 1938. When could cars? Monday 14 November. When did the company mark the completion? Friday 26 May 1939. When did the King and Queen drive over? Monday 29 May.
\nWe keep the bridge’s birthday on 12 November. It is the day the bridge opened for public use. The Sun said so that day, and the bridge’s own film and a 1939 booklet about the bridge agree.
\n\n\nIf someone asks you: The Lions Gate Bridge opened for public use on Saturday 12 November 1938, to people on foot. Cars followed on 14 November. The company’s ceremony was on 26 May 1939; the royal drive, on 29 May.
\n
First came the walkers, in the sleet. Then the cars, then the ceremony, then the King and Queen.
\nWhen did the Lions Gate Bridge open?\nThe Lions Gate Bridge opened for public use on Saturday 12 November 1938, when people on foot crossed in a sleet storm. Cars were allowed two days later.
\nWhen could the public first drive across the Lions Gate Bridge?\nOn Monday 14 November 1938, the day car tolls began. The bridge company kept cars off until then because the pavement on the North Shore approach needed time to set.
\nWhy do some sources give 14 November 1938 as the opening date?\nIt was the first day for cars and car tolls. BC’s transportation ministry and The Canadian Encyclopedia use it, and a 1939 booklet about the bridge dates the company’s franchise from that day.
\nDid King George VI and Queen Elizabeth open the Lions Gate Bridge?\nThey drove across it on Monday 29 May 1939, on their way to the steamer for Victoria. The bridge company’s own official opening ceremony was three days earlier, on 26 May 1939. The Canadian Encyclopedia calls the royal drive the official opening.
\nWhich date does lionsgatebridge.org use as the bridge’s birthday?\n12 November, the day the bridge opened for public use. The Vancouver Sun reported it that day, and the bridge’s own construction film and a 1939 booklet about the bridge give the same date.
\nWhat we read from 1938 and 1939
\nWhich date other sources use
\nSpotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@lionsgatebridge.org. We correct the page and note the date.
\n", "image": "https://lionsgatebridge.org/_astro/hero.C0DJuu8k_Z11ajaC.webp", "date_published": "2026-10-29T00:00:00.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-11-11T00:00:00.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Lions Gate Bridge Museum", "url": "https://lionsgatebridge.org" } ], "tags": [ "Opening day", "Royal visit 1939", "A.J.T. Taylor" ], "language": "en" } ] }