Background
Amid the hullaballoo of the Klondike Gold Rush were schemes to build a railway from Vancouver to the Dawson gold fields. Of course the first stage in this would be to bridge Burrard Inlet and then build a railway north. John Hendry floated the Vancouver, Westminster, and Yukon Railway which built a line from Ladner to Westminster and then to Vancouver via Burnaby Lake. This line was paired with the Great Northern Railway who also wanted trackage into Vancouver.
In the process, various other railroads all became involved in the bridging scheme: the Canadian Northern Railway, Milwaukee Road, and the Pacific Great Eastern Railway. The bridge itself would be owned by the Federal Government as they had control of harbours and shipping, and would lease access to the railways as they did with the rail bridge in New Westminster. One of the main reasons was that there was very little space on the south shore for wharves, thus railways wanted to develop the North Shore. The south side was occupied by another railway. A company was floated, the Burrard Inlet Bridge and Tunnel Company, and contracts were issued to span the tidal bore. A one point, a causeway was planned to dam the narrows and create bridges and wharves that way.
Alas, World War I intervened, as did the bankruptcy of all the interested railways. With it went dreams of the bridge and rails up Indian Arm, Capilano, or Howe Sound. However, the predecessor railways did sign contracts to build a bridge and a new Hotel Vancouver. Only after the war with huge increase in funding to improve harbours around the British Empire, partly due to problems associated with wartime shipping, did funds appear for the completion of the 1925 bridge. And so the north shore port became an amalgam of operations with Canadian National, Pacific Great Eastern and Harbour and Wharves Commission all using the bridge when it was not out of service. North Vancouver ferries operated at this time as well.
The essential wartime shipyards in North Vancouver, underscored the need for reliable industrial access. Further, the expansion of Lynnterm, Wheat elevators, coal and the sulphur port in the 1960s indicated the growing use of the North Shore.
Read more about this topic: Second Narrows Bridge
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