BEACON OF VANCOUVER ALIGHT FOR FIFTY YEARS TO BE EXTINGUISHED

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6808, 11 January 1929, Page 8

BEACON OF VANCOUVER ALIGHT FOR FIFTY YEARS TO BE EXTINGUISHED

A fire that has been burning for 50 years in Vancouver will bo extinguished this year. It is tho old sawmill waste heap. It was first ignited in 1879. and has never gone completely out,’ Winter rain and the occasional lallfall of snow have no effect on it. Several times it seemed to be extinct, the black and sodden crust showing no sign of fire. But when the rain jeeased the wind gave it life agaife, and after a few days the internal tire broko through, burning like some light gas. When night came the old sawmill dust heap glowed as of old. Storms from the bay and the Pacific rolled up and over it, but the fire has never gone put. The sawmill feeds it continuously. I: is the beacon of Vancouver. Many who saw its first fires, when the Pacific port of Canada was but a tiny logging port, have passed away. Mr Robert Davis, a veteran New York journalist, when passing this way recently, observed: “When the railway takes the site next year and the old mill dies it is the duty of Vancouver to build a memorial beacon over the spot where the old signal beamed for half a century. It would be a sentimental recognition of Vancouver’s first home fire.”