Sites: brighouse
The Brighouse Station once stood here, near the northeast intersection of Granville Avenue and No.3 Road. The station was a key stop on the Interurban tram line which connected Richmond to Vancouver, and beyond to Chilliwack. On race days, trams known as “Specials” ran from downtown Vancouver across the Fraser River and directly to the […]
This McDonald’s was the first to open outside the United States on June 1, 1967. The original restaurant at this site was a reproduction of the hundreds of similar futurist-style McDonald’s drive-ins that could be found across the United States. When it opened, customers lined up to order 18-cent hamburgers at the small drive-in and […]
General Currie School was named after General Sir Arthur Currie, the first commander of the Canadian Corps in World War I, and opened as a one- room school in 1919. Built in a Tudor style with Craftsman Influences it is the only protected heritage school in Richmond and is still in its original location. The […]
Brighouse Park was a gift from Richmond’s Agricultural and Industrial Society. The Society, formed in 1891 and within a decade began organizing agricultural fairs and May Day celebrations for the citizens of Richmond. In 1923, they purchased this six-acre parcel of land to use as an athletic field, later donating it to the municipality in […]
Richmond’s first town hall was a one-room building on Sam Brighouse’s property near the corner of Cambie and River Roads, which he donated to the municipality for this use. Later, Brighouse swapped the original town hall property for another site in his vast land holdings, at No. 3 Road and Granville Avenue. The second town […]
Minoru Park–called Centennial Park till 1960–was home to a number of aviation ‘firsts’ long before the Vancouver Civic Airport was built on Sea Island. The flat, open landscape here made it an ideal place for early planes to take-off and land. In 1910, Charles Hamilton piloted the first powered flight in western Canada from Centennial […]
You are currently standing in Minoru Park among some the original trees that surrounded Minoru Racetrack, planted around 1925. These include a mixture of elms and oaks. Building on the existing Centennial Park, Minoru Park was established with the adoption of a planning study and dedication of sixty acres in the mid-1950s. Upon completion, Minoru […]
In 1922, a public meeting of the Brighouse-Garden City area residents was held with the purpose of forming a volunteer fire department. Three days later this became a reality. In 1923, the Brighouse Volunteer Fire Department moved into the modern age, installing a police telephone for emergency calls and racing to emergency scenes in two […]
On opening day August 21, 1909, over 7,000 horseracing fans packed the Minoru Racetrack’s grandstands and clubhouses, arriving from all over the Lower Mainland in vehicles and on special Interurban trams. Named after King Edward VII’s 1909 Epsom Derby winning horse, Minoru, the one-mile oval track was known as the best thoroughbred horse racetrack on […]