Last year I took on the challenge of the first-ever Local History Advent Calendar! For 24 days in a row, I presented random historical tidbits I’d collected over the previous year and presented them in the form of “treats” for my 2018 Local History Advent Calendar. This year, the “Heart of Mount Pleasant” was number 1 on Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Watch List for 2019.  So I decided to choose Mount Pleasant as the theme for the Vanalogue Local History Advent Calendar for 2019.  Each day you can “open” a new historical treat. Think of them as holiday cocktail party fodder – 24 facts about Mount Pleasant history that can be used as conversation starters at your next social event.

The intersection of Kingsway and Fraser (at 16th Avenue) has been one of the most important junction points in the history of the city.  This area was known as “Junction” or “Pioneer Junction” after the aptly named Junction Inn – a stagecoach roadhouse.

In 1872 the first bridge over False Creek was built, completing land access between Granville (Vancouver) to New Westminster. Soon after, in 1876, at the crossing of today’s Kingsway and Fraser Street was the location of the first “intersection” or junction in the future city outside of Gastown. At that time Kingsway was known as the False Creek Road (later Westminster Road) and Fraser Street was called North Arm Road; developed as a wagon road to connect the farmlands of the Fraser River to the False Creek Trail.

The Junction Inn started serving refreshments to early commuters in around 1876, making it the first commercial building in Mount Pleasant.

There were four public houses along this route from New Westminster to Vancouver where travelers could “wet their whistle” – The Gladstone Inn, The Royal Oak, The Pig & Whistle (later Collingwood Inn), and the Junction Inn – where, according to the city’s first archivist, J.S. Matthews, you could get a “schooner” of beer for a nickel and whiskey was 2 drinks for a quarter.

A residential neighbourhood and small commercial centre developed around the Junction Inn (also called Junction Hotel). Starting in the 1910s, several of the businesses begin to adopt the name “Junction” ( like Junction Barber Shop, Junction Pharmacy, Junction Meat Market) as a nod to the history of this area. Today, this neighbourhood is popularly known by the moniker – Fraserhood.

The Junction Inn was located in District Lot 301 on the south side of 16th, making it technically on the border for the neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant, Kensington – Cedar Cottage, and Riley Park-Little Mountain. Lot 301 has an interesting history because in the late 1800s and early 1900s it was not a part of any of the municipalities that surrounded it. It stood independently and therefore was under the jurisdiction of the Province and not a municipality. This served the various proprietors and customers of the Junction Inn well over the years allowing them, on occasion, to go under the radar of propriety.

Once a place to have a drink outside the city limits in relative obscurity, by the turn of the century the Junction Inn was now well within sight of the growing temperance and morality movement.

The last mention of the Junction Inn as an operating venture is found in a newspaper article from November 1920. The article suggested that the Junction Inn was attempting to circumvent their lack of a ‘near-beer’ license (prohibition had just been rejected voters) by operating as a private club called “The Union Jack Club” (private clubs were allowed to serve alcohol). It is unclear how long this scheme worked.