Leisure and the Steveston to Vancouver Tram Line
Celebrate BC Heritage Week from February 17 to 23, 2025 — a time to highlight and showcase local heritage across the province. This year’s Heritage Week theme is “Pastimes in Past Times.”
Looking back at our local history, the Steveston to Vancouver Interurban tram line played a notable role in the leisure activities of passengers, both for locals and visitors from afar.
The BC Electric Railway Company operated this tram system, which included five Interurban lines connecting towns across the Lower Mainland. It also ran streetcar lines, making it easier for people to travel between Vancouver, North Vancouver, and New Westminster.
Tips for Tourists
Even though the BC Electric Railway (BCER) was already transporting millions of passengers each year, the company was always looking for ways to attract new types of riders. In 1913, they produced a pamphlet aimed at out-of-province visitors, with the lengthy title “Tips for Tourists: Interurban Trips Over BC Electric Railway System, in vicinity of Vancouver, British Columbia.”
The pamphlet encouraged tourists to take a round-trip journey from Vancouver to Steveston for 70 cents (about $18.50 today). It described “The Trip to the Fraser River Salmon Fishing Grounds” as one of the most “interesting and instructive excursions” visitors to BC could experience. Passengers were told they could travel comfortably on the Lulu Island line and “literally follow the sockeye” from its natural habitat in the river to its canned form, ready for shipment around the world.
The pamphlet explains how “the traveler” could watch salmon being caught, brought to shore, and processed in the canneries. It highlighted how the finished product would then be shipped off to make life easier for the “housewife in the far-off land,” so she could enjoy the “well-known taste of the B.C. Sockeye brand.” It concludes that “All this and much more will the traveler see on the trip to Steveston, the journey being one which will be both educational and interesting.”
You can read a reproduction of this pamphlet – along with other vintage materials – while sitting in the comfort of Tram Car 1220 at the Steveston Tram museum.
Celebrate Pastimes in Past Times with a visit to the Steveston Tram museum, open Tuesdays to Sundays 10am to 4pm (winter hours), and step aboard the beautifully restored Tram Car 1220 to be transported back in time, and imagine what may have been like to travel the historic rails of the BCER.
