Vancouver

===Incorporation===
[[File:First Vancouver Council Meeting after fire.jpg|thumb|left|The first [[Vancouver City Council]] meeting following the [[Great Vancouver Fire]] in 1886]]
The City of Vancouver was incorporated on April 6, 1886, the same year that the first transcontinental train arrived. CPR president [[William Cornelius Van Horne|William Van Horne]] arrived in Port Moody to establish the CPR terminus recommended by [[Henry John Cambie]] and gave the city its name in honour of [[George Vancouver]].<ref name="Horizons" /> The [[Great Vancouver Fire]] on June 13, 1886, razed the entire city. The [[Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services|Vancouver Fire Department]] was established that year and the city quickly rebuilt.<ref name="GVB" /> Vancouver's population grew from a settlement of 1,000 people in 1881 to over 20,000 by the turn of the century and 100,000 by 1911.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Chuck |first2=Richard |last2=von Kleist |title=Greater Vancouver Book: An Urban Encyclopaedia |publisher=Linkman Press |year=1997 |location=Surrey, BC |page=780 |isbn=978-1-896846-00-2}}</ref>

Vancouver merchants outfitted prospectors bound for the [[Klondike Gold Rush]] in 1898.<ref name="Vancouver's past" /> One of those merchants, Charles Woodward, had opened the first [[Woodward's]] store at Abbott and Cordova Streets in 1892 and, along with [[Spencer's (department store)|Spencer's]] and the [[Hudson's Bay Company|Hudson's Bay]] department stores, formed the core of the city's retail sector for decades.<ref>{{cite web |title=Our History: Acquisitions, Retail, Woodward's Stores Limited |publisher=Hudson's Bay Company |url=http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/acquisitions/retail/woodwards.asp |access-date=June 9, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070227013354/http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/acquisitions/retail/woodwards.asp |archive-date=February 27, 2007}}</ref>

The economy of early Vancouver was dominated by large companies such as the CPR, which fuelled economic activity and led to the rapid development of the new city;<ref>{{cite web |title=British Columbia facts – economic history |url=http://www.britishcolumbia.name/facts.htm |access-date=June 12, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110911062907/http://www.britishcolumbia.name/facts.htm |archive-date=September 11, 2011}}</ref> in fact, the CPR was the main real estate owner and housing developer in the city. While some manufacturing did develop, including the establishment of the British Columbia Sugar Refinery by [[Benjamin Tingley Rogers]] in 1890,<ref>{{cite web |title=BC Sugar |url=http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_bcSugar.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104205132/http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_bcSugar.htm |archive-date=January 4, 2015 |access-date=May 29, 2014 |work=The History of Metropolitan Vancouver |quote=The dream had become reality: B.C. Sugar was incorporated March 26, 1890. Its president, Benjamin Tingley Rogers, was 24.}}</ref> natural resources became the basis for Vancouver's economy. The resource sector was initially based on logging and later on exports moving through the seaport, where commercial traffic constituted the largest economic sector in Vancouver by the 1930s.<ref>{{cite journal |last=McCandless |first=R. C. |title=Vancouver's 'Red Menace' of 1935: The Waterfront Situation |journal=BC Studies |issue=22 |page=68 |year=1974}}</ref>