Introduction to Victoria-Fraserview

This area stretches from Knight Street to Vivian Street and from 41st Avenue to the North Arm of the Fraser River. It has a long history of redevelopment. Its Fraser River waterfront changed from an industrial area to a residential area. On the southwest corner of 41st and Victoria was once the Vancouver Drive Theatre. It opened in 1926 and its first show was the Charlie Chaplin movie, "The Gold Rush." In the 1950s, Fraserview was known as "diaper town" because there were so many children living in the new subdivisions of Fraserview.

History and Heritage

Victoria-Fraserview was an enormous forest before. Its first non-native settlers entered in 1860s. There was a small village near the southern ends of Main and Fraser Streets. This area became part of the Municipality of South Vancouver in 1891.

It was undeveloped until the end of World War II, when there was a shortage of housing for returning war veterans. Construction began in 1940s and finished in 1950s. 450 acres were expropriated by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation to accommodate 1100 new homes but was unwelcomed by its residents.

Industrialism was present here at one time, but in the late 1980s, there was in a decline in the industrial sector and a new trend of converting industrial land to residential development started. As a result, the industrial waterfront was cleaned up to be Vancouver's newest waterfront neighbourhood.

The heritage of the Victoria-Fraserview area was a rural community of homes and scattered farms. Two heritage buildings can be found on Wales Street. The Avalon Dairy is B.C.'s oldest continuously operating dairy outlet. It is located at 5805 Wales Street and are still owned and operated by the Crowley family. The second building is the Cooper House, built in 1919, a semi-rural counterpoint to the dairy, built in a Craftsman design with projecting bays and half-timbering. It is located on 5872 Wales Street and its looks exactly the same as it did then-even the plantings have been maintained.