Vancouver
If you look up "Vancouver" in Nordisk Familjebok (the classical 1898 edition of the Swedish encyclopedia with the owls on the back) you won’t find anything. If you, however, read up on Nanaimo, the small city situated across the Strait of Georgia on Vancouver Island, you will find a reference to a logging camp on the mainland by the name of Vancouver. A hundred years ago, that was all there was so say about Vancouver. Today the city is described as one of the world’s most beautiful, and forecast to be the largest city in Canada by the year 2050.
Vancouver has always drawn a lot of Scandinavians. "-Today it is especially young Swedes who come here for our spectacular outdoors" says Honorary Consul Magnus Ericson. "But sadly few stay on because it is hard to find work and sponsors".
A Swedish visitor to Vancouver may notice Swedish names in the news here and there. Mathias Öhlund is the ice hockey team Canuck latest Swedish import. Margareta and Wayne Nystrom (of the NLK pulp and paper consultant company) were recently in the news when they bought one of the most expensive properties ever sold in the city on West Vancouver’s waterfront from the former owners of the Canucks. Lukas Lundin of the Swedish oil sheik dynasty does not care for publicity but he lives in Kerrisdale to be close to the Vancouver Stock Exchange that has underwritten many of the companies' exploration ventures around the world. Actor Bo Svenson was sometimes seen in the city when he was not ferry-logged on the Sunshine Coast. Ex-skating star Karen Magnuson can be spotted at her Maggie’s Muffins outlets. Judge and lawyer Peter Berger used to create almost as much attention in the past as does local NDP member of parliament Svend Robinson today.
The best-known local Swedish name is that of architect Arthur Eriksson who designed the spectacular downtown courthouse complex and the renovated old court house that is now the Vancouver Art Gallery. He has also designed the world-famous Museum of Anthropology and the science fiction-like Simon Fraser University and campus.
At the entrance of Van Dusen Gardens you will find one of the city’s most beautiful sculptures. It is a black cast iron fence surrounding a small fountain designed by Swedish sculptor Per Nilsson-Öst and donated by the Swedish community here. Many of the professions most common among the immigrants are depicted on the iron grid. There is an almost identical replica of the sculpture in the city of Söderhamn in Sweden. Inside the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1775) is honored with a bust. In nearby Queen Elizabeth Park another famous Swede, Raoul Wallenberg, is honoured with a plaque and a fountain. If you pass a runestone in Vanier Park (close to the Maritime Museum) it’s not the real thing. The stone was transported here from Sweden and carved on site in 1986 to commemorate a Scandinavian Midsummer Festival in the park.
Skytrain is Vancouver’s rapid transit system that takes you to Surrey via delightful New Westminster - without a driver. The above-ground rail system was inaugurated in connection with Expo, the world transportation exhibition held during Vancouver’s centennial year 1986 - but the idea was first hatched in the 50s by the flamboyant Swedish Electrolux millionaire Axel Wenner-Gren. He had extensive plans to help the province of British Columbia exploit its natural resources, but the plans were never realized. Neither was his first Alweg monorail train planned for Vancouver. You have to go to Seattle or Disneyland to experience that.
The city of Vancouver rose to prominence when it, in 1886, snatched the honor of becoming the CPR railway station and end point from the nearby city of New Westminster. The man who built the welcome arch for the first train’s arrival was a second generation Swede by the name of Frank William Hart (1857-1935). Born in Illinois where he attended a Swedish school until he was ten, he "was certainly the first merchant to establish himself in the infant city of Vancouver." A furniture manufacturer, crockery importer, owner of the Hart’s Opera House, and the town’s only undertaker, he left for the Klondyke gold rush where he made and lost two fortunes.
William Hart was the first Swede of prominence in Vancouver, but there were plenty of Swedes who preceded him in what we now call Greater Vancouver. There was a whole band of fishermen from the Lomma seaside resort on the southern tip of Sweden who settled in Ladner and New Westminster in the 1870s. The most famous of them changed his name to Ben Young and was known as the "salmon king" of British Columbia. Together with another Swede called Gust Holmes he ran canaries on the Skeena and Fraser Rivers each employing some 175 Chinese "splitters" to clean the fish and as many native Indians to fish salmon. Ben married Christina Swenson of the pioneer Swedish land-owning family in Delta whose Roberts Bank farm was eventually expropriated by the B.C. government for the Vancouver super-port. Ben’s and Christina’s own house in the city of Astoria in Oregon state is now a historical site with many visitors.
Another Swede, Pete Larson had jumped ship in Victoria and settled in Vancouver, where he opened his first hotel "Norden" on Cordova Street to be followed by the Union Hotel on Abbot Street. In 1902 he moved across the Inlet and pioneered North Vancouver with his posh waterfront hotel that had broad lawns, a pavilion and a bandstand. He later constructed a hotel on the site of the Cleveland Dam and bought up large parcels of North Shore waterfront. A leading citizen who was famous for his generous Dominion Day festivities with fireworks, balloon ascensions and whole steers on the barbeque, he lend his name to several places but today only the Larson Elementary School on Larson Road remains.
At the corner of Pender and Princess Street in Chinatown there is an impressive church now belonging to the Chinese congregation. This was the second Swedish Lutheran church in the city to be built by the Swedes. It housed the congregation between 1910 and 1945, when it was sold to construct a new church at the corner of King Edward and Ontario. This church is today also Chinese. There is now no Swedish Lutheran congregation in town but the Swedish pastor in Toronto comes over to Vancouver to hold a service in Swedish twice a year. At Christmas there is always a julotta at the quaint Danish Church in Burnaby led by Sven Söderlund who is an Estonian-Swede and a religion historian at the University of British Columbia.
When you have crossed the Second Narrows bridge to North Vancouver you see a large building in the middle of the traffic roundabout. That is the original "Swedish Home for the Aged" built on land adjacent to the waterfront Swedish Park that was expropriated in the early 1970s to make room for the bridge. Since 1926 the park had been the center for midsummer celebrations, Swedish Press summer camps and other popular events. There was an octagonal dance pavilion, restaurant and beautiful grounds at the mouth of the Seymour Creek. The 50-room Resthome opened in 1949 after years of fund-raising. Eight years later the resthome moved to its new site in Burnaby where there is now also the 63-unit Manor, the 80-suite Gustav Vasa and the private 27-suite Valhalla buildings. The late Prince Bertil of Sweden proclaimed that "this is the nicest resthome I have ever seen" when he visited many years ago. The actual resthome building has been closed for the last couple of years in anticipation of a change of status to "congregate housing" for couples and singles over 55 years of age. The plan is to provide room and board including three meals a day, weekly maid service and laundry for less than a thousand dollars a month. The 60 units come with nice common areas and social director Ulla Jönsson, who for many years has made sure that the "home" has provided a really nice Swedish atmosphere. Many organizations use the auditorium for their activities where Ulla and her ladies auxiliary members always organizes Christmas fairs, white elephant sales and midsummer celebrations.
For many years there was a Swedish community hall on East Hastings Street. Built in 1922, it was a popular dance place and bingo hall until it was sold a few years ago to the Korean community. Most of the money from the sale was used as the Sweden House Society investment in the Scandinavian Center in Burnaby. Originally built as a recreational home for visiting Norwegian seamen on three acres of grounds, the Roald Amundsen Center was purchased from the Norwegian state in 1996 by the local Norwegians, Swedes and Finns. Now the Danes are fund-raising to become co-owners of the center and it is hoped that the Icelanders who join in for the larger festivities such as the Midsummer Festival, will eventually join in too. The participating countries all have cozy clubrooms that are used for club meetings. There are large common facilities for larger events. The Swedish School conducts its classes here where some 40 kids spend two hours a week learning Swedish, the geography and history of Sweden and above all about Swedish traditions. In November the Swedish Cultural Society holds its Christmas fair here.
When it comes to winter sports there are few cities more blessed than Vancouver. With the world-famous Whistler resort an hour and a half’s drive away and three local ski slopes, there is something for every type of skier. But few know that it was a bunch of Swedes who started it all.
If you go cross-country skiing at Cypress Bowl you pass a number of log cabins at First Lake, ten minutes from the parking lot. Here you can still see the ski jump built by Nels Nelson, who became one of Canada’s top jumpers, and "the shoulder" where downhill was first practiced on the Pacific Coast. There is also the Hollyburn Lodge that is still in use, seventy years after it was constructed by Swedish skiing enthusiasts.
In the early 1920s there were only a few local Scandinavians who knew how to ski. There was no skiing equipment available, so enthusiasts used their leather hiking boots and skis that they made out of planks.
In 1922 a Swede from Alberta was hired as an instructor at the Vancouver Connaught Skating Club. Rudolph Verne immediately saw the skiing potential and started a ski factory and the Olympic Sport Shop.
Verne participated in Vancouver’s first ski race around Stanley Park with seven Norwegians, drawing a crowd of fifteen hundred surprised spectators. Shortly afterwards he started the Hollyburn Pacific Ski Club and the enormous job of constructing the lodge began.
In those days there was no road up to Cypress Bowl. Vancouverites paid ten cents to be ferried over to West Vancouver and then hiked up to 22nd Street where they joined a gruesome trail up to Hollyburn Ridge. All the lumber, beds, stoves and sinks needed for the lodge and the cabins had to be carried up this trail. It took 19 men to carry up a piano.
The lodge itself was constructed by three Swedes from the province of Dalarna by the names of Oscar Persson, Olle Andersson and Anders Israel. The lodge soon became a popular gathering place for skiers.
"They had a bottomless urn on their stove on which they poured endless gallons of water and pounds of coffee and egg shells. This was Swedish coffee at its best, possibly its strongest any way. Skiers crowded gratefully into the lodge. The coffee warmed their insides and the big fireplace warmed their outsides".
Today it is Sigge Björklund who is the local cross country ski guru and "Sigge’s Sportvilla" that his son runs on West 4th is one of the largest local retailer of ski equipment, proving that people from the Nordic countries still play an important role in winter sports on the West Coast.
When Swedish Press started as a weekly in 1928, it had its own printing press in its own building at Victory Square. For ever playing a central role in the community, but always in financial trouble, it has moved around Vancouver many times. At one time Svenska Pressen was even sold to the much larger Svenska Posten in Seattle, only to reappear as Nya Svenska Pressen a year later. Many remember legendary editor Matt Lindfors who ran Swedish language courses, radio programs and an ambulatory cinema with Swedish films. He also started the Swedish Cultural Society, and the bingo fund-raising to keep the paper alive. This eventually led to the formation of the Swedish Charitable Association that has been the financial backbone of the community. Sture Wermee took over as editor after Lindfors and when his successor, Jan Fränberg called its quits in 1985, Anders Neumueller was talked into saving the broadsheet that he later re-designed into a monthly magazine.
If you want to keep up your Swedish in Vancouver you should contact the Swedish Cultural Society. If you are a Swedish-speaking woman there is SWEA and if you are a ditto man there is 77:an that meets for dinner and snaps every month. For those who do not speak Swedish there is the Swedish Canadian Club and two Vasa lodges. For many years singers got together in the Bellman Choir but today it is the Runeberg Choir that takes care of the musically inclined. Many Swedish businessmen network each month in the Scandinavian Businessmen’s Club and the Scandinavian Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
For those who want to improve their Swedish, there are courses available at the Scandinavian Center. For more than a quarter century Swedish has been taught at the University of British Columbia. Since 1984, the Swedish-language instructor has come from Sweden thanks to a unique co-operation between the Swedish community that pays for the basic salary of the lecturer, the Swedish Institute that contributes that takes care of the recruitment and pays travel and incidental expenses, and the university that supplies the support structure plus the literature courses taught by German Studies professors. Since 1990, UBC has exchange agreements with the universities in Uppsala, Lund and Umeå, which allows UBC students to spend an academic year in Sweden.
Vancouver is said to have the highest density of restaurants in North America, but not a single one is completely Swedish. There are meatballs at the IKEA restaurant and gravlax and many other delicacies at the Tivoli Restaurant. Scanwich, that was once started by a Swede, now mostly does catering but has a few tables for open-faced sandwiches. If you want to experience a real Swedish tradition you go to Liberty’s and sample baker Gunnar Gustafson’s delicacies. If you long for a Filé Oscar or a kalvstek med gräddsås or other Swedish gourmet food, you can pre-book at Bianco Nero. Chef and owner Gildo Casadei, who is famous for his "Tortellini a la Nonna" and his risotto with Absolut vodka and strawberries and cream, has spent many many years in the restaurant world of Sweden. His Swedish-speaking sons Marco and Dario take care of the show outside the kitchen and they also take credit for this trendy-looking restaurant’s award-winning wine list.
If you are looking for Swedish design in Vancouver, you don’t have to look far. You will find the biggest selection at the continent’s first IKEA store. New Look Interiors, Inform and Instant Furnishings also have a lot of good designs. At Touch of Sweden you not only find wonderful Swedish gift items but also owner Louise Persson who is a well of local information. Georg Jensen and Scandinavia are also well-stocked with Swedish gift items. You can make real finds at Uno Langmann Antiques. Margareta Termarsson brings great fashions to her Margareta stores but thrifty Swedes enroll in her club and buy at a discount in her factory outlets. For food items you visit IKEA, Jolly Foods or the two La Charcuterie outlets. Before Christmas you can also sneak into Dovre Import & Export Ltd that has imported Scandinavian delicacies to Vancouver for 40 years. Whether you are looking for a Swedish mechanic (Scan Automotive) or a prinsesstårta, Vancouver has it.