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About 1925, the owners of towboats in the Vancouver area first organized as a section of the recently formed Vancouver Merchants Exchange. In 1930, the section was reconstituted as the British Columbia Towboat Owners' Association. The main functions of the Association have been to establish and maintain a common standard of operating practice both ashore and afloat for the tug and barge industry, to study and offer solutions to problems related to the towboat industry and to promote a high degree of operating efficiency amongst its member firms, to promote sound labour management relations, to maintain liaison with Provincial and Federal government authorities, and to maintain an interest in technical developments which may concern the membership.

The British Columbia Wharf Operators' Association was formed prior to World War II by wharf owners throughout the province. The Association later became a member of the Vancouver Merchants' Exchange. The Association promotes cooperation among members and the interests of persons and corporations in British Columbia who own and operate wharves, acts as an exchange for information on the industry for members, studies problems related to the business of wharf operation, assists governments in the development, protection and preservation of harbour facilities and installations, conducts labour relations for the industry, assists members to secure an adequate supply of labour, and promotes standards of business ethics among persons and corporations engaged in the business of wharf operations.

The Vancouver Committee of the British Empire and Commonwealth Games (B.E. & C.G.) Association of Canada was formally organized in 1951 and was responsible for the organization of the British Empire and Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver in 1954.

Brock House Society (BHS) is a non-profit organization located in West Point Grey, which is in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Society was incorporated under the B.C. Societies Act in 1974. The purpose of the Society is to provide a social, intellectual, recreational, and cultural centre, and through a program of activities, enable senior citizens to achieve a more satisfying life. The Society is also responsible for preserving and restoring Brock House, as a Heritage House. Brock House was officially opened by Provincial Secretary Grace McCarthy, on December 3, 1977.

Founding members of the Society are William T. Begg, David Freeman, Q.C., Dr. George Halpern, Dr. Ida Halpern, John Keith-King, Dr. Robert Munn, Dr. Gordon Shrum, Koula Bradley, Pam Glass, Ted Afflect, Judy Aldritt, and Frank Low-Beer.

The Past President, President, Treasurer, Secretary, 1st Vice President, and 2nd Vice President form the Executive Board. Honorary Presidents and Directors can also be nominated to serve a term. The Board of Directors is responsible for policies and programs. Members of the Board chair the following committees: Care and Conservation, Community Outreach, Finance, Food Services, Greeters, House, Library, Membership, Music, Program-Instructional, Program-Recreational, Property Management, Socials, Special Events and Volunteer Resources. Every year in March, an Annual General Meeting is held so members can elect the governing body of Brock House.

Members of Brock House Society are involved in fundraising campaigns. The funds come from corporations, private donors, Foundations, membership fees, interest and income from the Endowment Trust Fund, rental income from Brock House Restaurant and special events, such as New-To-You Boutiques, Christmas Bazaars and Garden Fairs. The Garden Fairs have been promoted, as either Summer Fairs or Garden Parties.

The first capital expenditure came in 1976, when members had to secure renovation funds and operating funds, as part of a lease agreement with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation. One and a half million dollars had to be raised, but later on, the amount was reduced to $250,000. The second major capital expenditure came in 1986, in the form of the Space Programme, a renovation project, which cost well over $600,000. Renovations were made to the conservatory, cafeteria, activity room, workshop area, and kitchen.

The Society has sponsored the B.C. Senior Award, since 1984. Dr. James Stuart Keate, a publisher at the Vancouver Sun and member of Brock House Society had suggested creating an award for senior citizens. Soon afterwards, Brock House Society established the B.C. Senior Award. The purpose of the award is to create public awareness of the contributions senior citizens have been making in Canadian society, and to recognize their accomplishments. The Bank of Montreal has acted as co-sponsors, but sponsorship had changed after Maurice Mourton, a former employee from BMO transferred to the Hongkong Bank of Canada (HKBC). Recipients of the award receive a gold medal, from the Society, and a monetary tax-free grant of $5,000 from the participating bank. Later on the amount was increased to $10,000. The Selection Committee acts as an independent body, with full decision making powers, in selecting the award recipient. Harry LeFervre (1984), Walter C. Koerner (1985), Mary Gutteridge (1986), Margaret (Polly) Sargent (1987), Chuck Bayley (1988), Gladys Blyth (1989), Evelyn Lett (1990), Joan Greenwood (1991), Mart Kenney (1992), Chief Simon Baker (1993), Peter Wing (1994), Ruth Wolfe (1995), Mervyn Wilkinson (1996), Ann Spicer (1997), Evelyn Atkinson (1998), Prue Cunningham (1999), and John Willison Green (2000) have won the award.

Members also participate in outreach initiatives, such as the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) Seniors Festival and Partners in Education. Partners in Education was established to strengthen public education and to encourage community interest in schools. Through the partnership of the Vancouver School Board (VSB) and organizations, students can learn about the realities of the adult world.

The educational, recreational and social programs offered include: crafts, croquet, billiards, music (including choir and orchestra), films, slides, bus trips, walks, hikes, health, tours, art, woodworking, discussion groups, creative writing, cooking, chess, financial planning, knick knack workshops, literature, play reading, languages (Spanish and French), computers, teas, bridge, chess, line dancing, weight training, tai chi, and mahjong.

The Burrard Literary Club was an early Vancouver debating and public speaking club. Meetings and debates were held once a week, and were conducted according to parliamentary rules.

C.F. Chapman was an employee of a Vancouver stationery firm in 1908.

C.T.W. Piper was a building contractor originally from England who settled in Vancouver in 1898.

The Canadian Club of Vancouver was organized in 1906 by F.C. Wade and others following the establishment of similar clubs in other Canadian cities. The Canadian Club Movement, which began in Hamilton, was designed to foster patriotism and a a sense of Canadian identity. The Club held meetings and luncheons at which speakers addressed the membership on topics of local, national and international interest. The Club also sponsored community service projects and special events, and assisted the Citizenship Court in Vancouver by welcoming new citizens. The Canadian Club was divided into the Men's Canadian Club and the Women's Canadian Club in 1908 and 1909; the two Clubs were merged in 1980.

Norman Caple came to Vancouver from Bristol, England, in 1888. He established a photography studio with his partner, Richard Trueman, and their studio produced many images of early Vancouver. In 1893, they dissolved their partnership and Norman Caple opened a stationery store on Hastings Street. Mr. Caple and his wife, Florence, had four sons: Leonard, who was killed overseas during World War One; Montague, a lawyer; Harold, a doctor; and Kenneth, who was the director of the C.B.C.'s operations in B.C.

The Cariboo Hydraulic Mining Company was the predecessor in title to the Cariboo Gold Mining Company. The company had mining rights to certain gold bearing lands on the South Fork of the Quesnelle River, which was granted between 15th May 1894 and 17 April 1920.

Charles Broadbridge was born in Vancouver July 11, 1912. He was the son of Richard Broadbridge, a pioneer Vancouver photographer, and he had an avid interest in Vancouver history. He worked in machinery sales. He died April 2, 1981.

Charles J. Christopherson, a Vancouver resident, was born in 1920. He was involved with the New School when it first began in 1962 and where his daughter was a student for two years. Beginning in the 1970s Christopherson was a member of the William Morris Society. He was also active in the Mount Pleasant community participating as a chairman in the Mount Pleasant Area Council, the Mount Pleasant Citizens' Committee, and the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood Association. He was later to become president of the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood Association.

The Reverend Charles Montgomery Tate (1832-1933) was a Methodist minister who was involved in work with the First Nations of the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island.
He was born in Northumberland, and arrived in Victoria, intending to go to the Cariboo gold fields. Instead, he went to Nanaimo and taught English to the Native Indians of the area. In 1879 he was ordained at the first Methodist Conference in Victoria. He went on to publish portions of the Scriptures in Chinook, and established the Coqualeetza Residential School in Sardis. He retired in Victoria in 1910.

The Vancouver architectural firm C.B.K. Van Norman, Architect was founded by its principal, C.B.K. Van Norman, in 1930. The firm expanded to include further partners in 1955, at the time that it was renamed C.B.K. Van Norman and Associates. The firm operated until Van Norman's death in 1975.

Charles Van Norman graduated from the architecture program at the University of Manitoba in 1928, the year that he came to Vancouver. He worked briefly at Townley and Matheson before starting his own architectural practice in 1930. Over the course of the 1930s, Van Norman's work increasingly was of the West Coast Modern style, and consisted of residential, commercial and small light industrial buildings.

In the late 1930s, Van Norman became interested in the potential of prefabrication as a means of facilitating quicker and more economical construction. In the early 1940s he designed a series of modest homes, dormitories and mill site buildings, the company store and the Bridge River Pump House for the Powell River Company, many of which entailed use of prefabricated components to some degree. He designed a variety of prefabricated buildings using the "Loxtave" hexagonal unit system for Prefabricated Buildings Ltd., a Burnaby manufacturer, and for Precision Housing Company Ltd., owned by Van Norman himself. Clients included departments of the Canadian government, predominantly the Indian Affairs Branch, Foreign Affairs and the Veterans Land Act administration. He also designed buildings for a number of overseas projects in Scotland, Ireland, England and Israel.

In the years after World War II, Van Norman focused on residential and commercial projects, including a number of houses for British Pacific Properties Ltd. (the developer of the British Properties neighbourhood in West Vancouver) and the BPPL-developed Park Royal Shopping Centre, including more than two dozen stores in the interior.

Van Norman's most prominent Greater Vancouver buildings were the residences for Walter Koerner (Matthews Avenue), M. McLeod (Newton Wynd, West Vancouver), Cecil Budd (Belmont Street), and for himself (West 61st Avenue); the B.C. Electric substation (King Edward Avenue @ Maple Street); Canada Customs Building (West Pender Street), Burrard Building (Burrard at West Georgia Streets) and the Beach Towers residential complex on English Bay.

In 1922 a Crippled Children's Fund was established by the Women's Institutes of British Columbia to aid a child on Hornby Island. Several subsequent and successful treatments of pediatric cases with the fund at Vancouver General Hospital inspired the Women's Institutes to incorporate the Women's Institute Hospital Association for Crippled Children in 1925. A rented house Marpole, converted to a 16-bed facility, served as the first hospital from 1927 to 1933. By 1933, successful fundraising and lobbying provided for the establishment of the 25-bed Crippled Children's Hospital (reflecting a name change of the association in 1932) on West 59th Avenue. In 1947, the hospital was renamed Children's Hospital, reflecting its evolution from a rehabilitative orthopedic facility into an acute care and general pediatric hospital. Significant developments in medical and surgical care, ambulatory services, and other programmes resulted in constant physical expansion of the hospital into a 100 bed facility by 1950. A growing lobby for a new Children's Hospital, aided by the efforts of the New Children's Hospital Society and the medical community culminated in the completion of the present Britiish Columbia's Children's Hospital (B.C. Children's Hospital) on Oak Street (1980). Throughout the years, the Women's Institutes have continued to give support to a hospital which has adapted to, and, in some cases pioneered the profound changes in the medical care of infants and children over the past 50 years.

The Citizen's Council on Civic Development was formed in January 1968 to encourage coordinated citizen action regarding urban development in Vancouver.

Clare (Clarence) Rhead was born in Vancouver and attended Templeton Junior High School, which published a history of Vancouver for the Jubilee Year 1936. Rhead joined the R.C.A.F. in the war and later became a purchasing agent at Park and Tilford, North Vancouver.

The British Columbia Division of the Community Planning Association of Canada was founded in 1947 to promote public interest and involvement in community, urban and regional planning. The Division was involved in many issues over the years, such as the Shaughnessy "Save Our Parkland" campaign, the Green Urban Land Policy and the Neighbourhood Improvement program. The Division had several branches in Richmond, Victoria and Vancouver. As well as carrying out lobbying on various planning issues, the association coordinated education programs, held regional and national conferences and published reports and a newsletter. In 1977, the association, both nationally and locally, was disbanded.

Cornelius Bryant was born in Netherton, Worcestershire and worked as a clerk for the Thorold Railway Company at Station Round Oak, Brierly Hill. He came to Nanaimo in 1857 and was a schoolmaster there for several years. He became interested in church work and was eventually ordained in the Canadian Methodist Church ca.1875. He preached first at Nanaimo, then was transferred to Granville on Burrard Inlet in 1878. He returned to Nanaimo in 1881and retired in Vancouver.

Cpl. W.E. Roonie served in the first World War and apparently was wounded in 1918. No further information on Cpl. Roonie is available.

David Mitchell was an architect in Vancouver who worked on the old Vancouver Courthouse. He left Vancouver in 1893 to go prospecting.

Dominion Day Celebrations were held in Vancouver each July 1st and 2nd, with a committee composed of interested citizens, including the Mayor as chairman, organizing the celebration. George Bartley (1867-1943) at times served as Secretary of the committee.

Donald Charleson was born in Quebec and came to Vancouver in 1885. He worked in the shipping and lumber industries. In 1889 he was awarded a contract to clear the south side of False Creek by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. He continued to do contract work for the CPR for the next seventeen years. Charleson was a Trustee on the first Vancouver School Board from 1886 to 1887 and a founder of the Vancouver Club.

Donald Gutstein is a graduate architect, a teacher and an author on Vancouver politics.

The Dunbar History Project began as a committee of the Dunbar Residents Association in early 1999. The original name of the committee was, Documenting Dunbar, and its goal was to document the history of Dunbar and perhaps publish the results of their labour. The first meeting of the Dunbar History Project committee set the standards and ambitions high for the project as a whole. At that meeting much was accomplished; a timeline was sketched for the project, it was decided what to study, the boundaries of Dunbar were defined, Chapter Team Leaders and their projects were determined, the tone of the publication was decided on, and plans for acquiring funding were made.
Over the years many dedicated volunteers laboured to ensure the completion of a product they, and the Dunbar Residents Association, would be proud of. Original research was carried out through interviews with Dunbar residence, in local libraries, institutions, and archives.
May 1, 2007 the book launch for "The Story of Dunbar: Voices of a Vancouver Neighbourhood" was held at the Dunbar Community Centre. The initial print run was for 5000 copies instead of the originally planned 2000; the book was an overall success.

E. H. Lukin Johnston was a reporter for the Vancouver Province. In 1923, he was assigned, as the only non-American reporter, to report on the tour of Alaska by U.S. President, Warren G. Harding, who visited Vancouver en route.

Edward Alexander Wilson was born August 27, 1906, in Liverpool England. He came to Canada in 1931 at the age of 25, and after making short stays in Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto, and the Yukon, eventually made his way to B.C. After travelling across Canada by train in 1935, Wilson worked at a variety of temporary labouring jobs, including fruit picking in the Okanagan, before eventually settling in Vancouver. During the 1930's, he supported himself by doing a wide variety of odd jobs and casual labour, including gardening, painting, wood cutting, hauling, etc., and secured temporary lodgings wherever he could afford. During the 1940's he did some work for Sun Directories, and starting about 1950 was employed by Canada Permanent Trust, retiring around 1972. Wilson never married, but in his later years, was active as a volunteer grandfather with the Volunteer Grandparents Association of Vancouver. Mr. Wilson died July 18, 1985.

Baron Lytton was Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1858-1859, and was also a well-known novelist whose works include The Last Days of Pompeii and Richelieu.

Elizabeth Dewar was a deaconess at Christ Church Cathedral in 1942.

Elizabeth Ursula Malkin was born June 6, 1908 in Vancouver. She completed her ATCM in piano in 1928 and from 1930 to 1932 studied in Vienna. Ursula's conception of musical tradition and her interest in contemporary works were determined by her years in Austria. In the 1930s she toured British Columbia and made appearances and broadcasts in Australia. Until 1954 she was frequently a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. She began teaching in 1945 and continued until the mid-1970s. She was deeply involved in setting up the School of Music at the University of British Columbia, where she completed a B Mus in 1964, and in establishing the Vancouver Academy of Music. From 1949 to 1951 she was president of the Vancouver Women's Musical Club, music committee chairman of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver from 1955 to 1958 and president of the Vancouver Junior Symphony from 1956 to 1958.

She lived with Jean McD Russell from 1945 until her death September 29, 1996.

Elizabeth Walker is a member and past president of the Vancouver Historical Society, and formerly the head of the local history collection at the Vancouver Public Library. She wrote "Street Names of Vancouver" (Vancouver Historical Society, 1999) as a result of the numerous inquiries about street histories she received at the library.

Miss Emily E. Edwardes was in training in 1902 in Vancouver City Hospital, corner of Pender and Cambie Street. She served in the 1914-1918 war with No. 5 Canadian General Hospital. In 1920 she married Major J.S. Matthews. She died in 1948.

Emma Cripps was a Hamilton, Ontario poet who wrote during the last quarter of the 19th century. Her poetry was submitted to local newspapers and as far as can be determined was never published in book form.

Frank Appelbe worked for Boeing Aircraft, MacMillan-Bloedel, Mitchell Press and B.C. Hydro on publications and in public relations.