On December 31, 1889, the Vancouver Daily World had this to say about book and stationery stores in New Westminster: “There are in the Royal City several handsome and well-appointed fancy-work and book stores, the chief being those of D. Lyall & Co., Z.S. Hall and Morey & Co.; whilst it is doubtful whether the Province… Continue reading Miss Peebles
After a few diversions to show how 19th-century bookstores took part in the festive holiday season, I’ll now pick up the story of Henry Morey in New Westminster. Following the fire that burned out his store on Columbia Street in 1891, Henry Morey steadily rebuilt his book and stationery business. In 1895, he expanded into… Continue reading Carrying and Passing the Bookstore Torch: Henry Morey, Part 3
New Westminster’s Henry Morey was in his fifth year of business as a bookseller and stationer when disaster struck on February 15, 1891 (1). At 5 a.m., live coals in an ash box suddenly flamed up in the rear room of watchmakers and jewellers Stirsky & Son at 715 Columbia Street. A patrolling police constable soon… Continue reading Destroyed by Fire: Henry Morey, Part 2
When twenty-three-year-old Henry Morey established H. Morey & Company in New Westminster in 1886, little did he know that he was starting a bookselling and stationery enterprise that would, through a series of owners, last for more than a century. “Little did [Morey] know that he was starting a bookselling and stationery enterprise that would,… Continue reading Henry Morey: Kicking off a Century+ of Bookselling, Part 1
Now that I’ve introduced John Bowerman Ferguson, Thomas Robson Pearson, and David Robson, three of the founding partners in the British Columbia Stationery and Printing Company (J.A. Hart was the fourth), let’s continue the story about this firm. A Promising Start… Beginning in May 1886 with Pearson’s and Ferguson’s existing book and stationery stores in New… Continue reading British Columbia Stationery and Printing Company
Before I continue the story of the British Columbia Stationery and Printing Company and John Bowerman Ferguson, let’s meet the other bookselling partner in the venture: Thomas Robson Pearson. Establishing T.R. Pearson & Co., New Westminster Born in 1858 in Oshawa, Ontario, Pearson came to Victoria in 1877, and then to New Westminster in 1879… Continue reading Thomas Robson Pearson: New Westminster and Vancouver Bookselling Pioneer
After Seth Tilley sold his Colonial Bookstore in New Westminster to Victoria’s Hibben & Carswell in 1863, they took on a local partner named George Cubitt Clarkson, who operated the store as Clarkson & Co. Born in Ontario Born in 1843 in Ontario (or Upper Canada, as it was then called), George was the eldest child… Continue reading George Clarkson of Clarkson & Co., New Westminster Bookseller
Chambers’s Information for the People, one of the volume sets featured in an 1861 ad for Seth Tilley’s Colonial Book Store in New Westminster, offered everything “that is requisite for a generally well-informed man in the less highly educated portions of society”—or so claimed the book’s preface. “Designed in an especial manner for the People, though adapted… Continue reading At the Bookstore, 1861: Chambers’s Information for the People
When Seth Thorne Tilley opened the Colonial Bookstore on Columbia Street in April 1860, New Westminster was little more than a rough clearing hacked out of the towering cedars and hemlocks, a scattering of wooden residential and commercial dwellings lining the Fraser River. Born a world away, in Gagetown, New Brunswick, in August 1836 to a… Continue reading The Colonial Bookstore: First in New Westminster
“What was the first bookstore in Vancouver?” This was the question that started the journey that has become this blog, A Most Agreeable Place. As it turned out, it was not an easy question to answer. Some of the resources that I regularly turn to when writing family history books either were silent on the question… Continue reading Seth Thorne Tilley: The First Bookseller in the BC Lower Mainland
