Gastown and Gassy Jack Deighton

Gastown was Vancouver's first downtown core and is named after "Gassy" Jack Deighton, a Geordie seaman, steamboat captain and barkeep who arrived in 1867 to open the first saloon in the area. The town soon prospered as the site of a sawmill, seaport, and quickly expanded to a centre of trade and commerce on Burrard Inlet as well as a resort for off-work loggers, fishermen, the crews and captains of the many sailing ships which came to Gastown or Moodyville to load logs and timber.

In 1886, the town was incorporated as the City of Vancouver. It lost all the buildings except two in the "Great Vancouver Fire" in that same year. The area was completely rebuilt and continued to thrive as the centre of the city's wholesale produce distribution until the Great Depression in the 1930s. After the Depression, Gastown was a largely-forgotten neighbourhood of the larger city and fell into decline and disrepair until the 1960s.

In the 1960s, citizens became concerned with preserving Gastown's distinctive and historic architecture, which like the nearby Chinatown and Strathcona were planned to be demolished to build a major freeway into the city's downtown. A campaign led by businessmen, property owners, the counterculture and associated political protestors, put pressure on the provincial government to declare the area a historical site in 1971, protecting its heritage buildings to this day.

It is great to the people of Vancouver in 2009 that the Gastown has been designated a national historic site of Canada.