In Vancouver, we play a rough game when it comes to politics. So, it’s no real surprise that the city’s first civic election, in May of 1886 was a savage mess of electoral fraud, voter intimidation, poll-rigging, racism, and, as fantastic coincidence would have it, also went hand-in-hand with Vancouver’s first political smear campaign.

The Vancouver of 1886 was an uncultured place, an industry town with a frontier sensibility; saloons operated 24 hours per day, the city’s first brothel had opened the same year as its first elementary school, and, as ample photographic evidence suggests, local children were regularly encouraged to spend their playtime with bears. The largest employer in the area was the Hastings Mill, and the city - a rude assemblage of shacks and businesses built along a single, thin strip of road - was populated by loggers, prospectors, saloonkeepers, and families from surprisingly diverse backgrounds. However, thanks to some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by a quiet syndicate of landowners, the CPR was convinced to extend their western rail terminus from the proposed site at Port Moody, triggering explosive growth within the tiny townsite of Granville (as it was then called), and, in the process, making everyone in the syndicate fantastically rich.

Vancouver was incorporated on April 6, 1886, and elections were scheduled to take place less than a month later. A notice was nailed to the trunk of the Maple Tree outside the home of Jonathan Miller - also the city’s courthouse, jail, and customhouse, with political hopefuls encouraged to submit their names. The election was, at first glance, an incredibly one-sided competition; on one side: Richard Alexander, city pioneer, entrepreneur, manager of the Hastings Mill, and one of the men who had delivered the original Incorporation Petition to Victoria. On the other, Malcolm MacLean, a real estate agent who had lost his fortune in a Winnipeg Real Estate bust, and who had lived in Vancouver for less than three months. Alexander had a lofty social position, and excellent connections. MacLean couldn’t even afford to run a campaign. At first, Alexander’s ascent to the mayoralty seemed certain, due in large part to the fact that he was the only candidate intending to run. But Alexander had grown out-of-touch and pompous during his time running Hastings Mill, and, in the weeks prior to the election, his employees, frustrated by exceedingly long hours and poor treatment, set out to challenge his candidacy.

“The loggers were sore on Alexander—not a little bit either,” recalls city pioneer and early constable J.T. Abray, in conversation with archivist J.S. Mathews. “Well, as they were going to run Richard Alexander for mayor, I thought we ought to have someone to oppose him; the arrangements had all been made for him to run for mayor. So I saw Angus Fraser, and Simon, his brother; both these men were loggers, and the loggers did not have much use for Alexander; very little use. So the two Frasers and myself went around to Abbott Street. The three of us went around to Abbott Street where MacLean had a little real estate office, and interviewed him. I made him acquainted with the two Frasers and they shook hands, and I asked him if he would run for mayor.”

“MacLean said, ‘Why, I have no dollars for an election.’”

“I replied, ‘We have a few dollars; if you’ll make up your mind to come out.’”

After some consideration, MacLean (known as “Squire” due to his kindly countenance and prematurely white hair) agreed to run, and in the weeks to follow, emerged as a legitimate contender for the mayoralty. At the same time, Alexander’s woes were on the rise when, days before the election, Hastings Mill employees went on strike, demanding an 8 hour workday. Alexander, apparently oblivious to the effect of his actions, refused, and threatened to replace the striking labourers with Asian and First Nations workers.

“The men would have none of it,” city pioneer and strike mediator W.H. Gallagher recalls, “and when we went to Mr. Alexander for our second interview, and gave him the men’s answer, he replied that he would just engage a few extra Indians and Chinamen, and it was then that he made the remark, ‘Canadians are only North American Chinamen anyway.’”

This remark would prove to be catastrophic for Alexander; his rivals, mindful of the anti-asian sentiment that permeated Vancouver at the time, began the political mudslinging almost immediately, and it wasn’t long before the mill-owner’s exasperated remark was well-known all over town.

“You see those opposed to Alexander had nothing ‘on him,’” Captain Jackman insists, “so they had to get something to use as election propaganda; there hadn’t been any Council, so there hadn’t been any ‘misdeeds’; nothing to quarrel about; nothing to hold an investigation on; so they were short on election propaganda; so they worked up the ‘North American Chinaman,’ and the election was fought on that.”

By the time election day arrived, tensions were high. Despite the “North American Chinamen” scandal, the question of who was to become Vancouver’s first mayor was far from answered, and both camps were prepared to do whatever they could to emerge victorious. Adding to the tension was the utter disorganization of it all; there was no voters list. No registration. No way to know if anybody had voted twice. And, as many early citizens would later note, both sides took full advantage.

“Did you ever hear how we got the first vote here?” J.T. Abray asks Mathews, in a 1936 interview. “Everybody who had a lease had a vote; well, everybody that had a lease of $5.[...] I had a restaurant on Columbia Street, where the old City Hotel was. Upstairs I had thirteen boarders—remember, thirteen roomers upstairs. Then I had a shack on Hastings Street, next to the present Woods Hotel—right between it and the present City Hall; it was only one room, but I made it into four leases; so with the four leases in the shack and thirteen roomers at the restaurant I had seventeen leases, and a lease entitled you to a vote. It did not matter who you were; you could not let a day like that pass without voting.”

“One man had a lease to a portion of a building on Cordova Street,” recalls another city pioneer, “and came down to vote with the lease in his hand and voted on it. Mr. MacLean’s committee persuaded him to leave the lease with them; it was drawn up in the usual form with a space for the name, and I think fifty men must have voted on that lease. After one man had voted, the next voter’s name was written on a slip of paper and pasted in the space on the lease where the name appeared, and so continued until there was a tier of slips, and they were removed, and a fresh start was made.”

Midway through the day, a ship arrived from Victoria with a band on board, bearing banners supporting Alexander, and playing “Hail to the Chief”. However, shortly afterward, events began to turn ugly at the voting station, with the arrival of Alexander’s mill employees.

“Soon after that the Hastings Sawmill people collected together their Chinese employees and sent them up to vote,” W.H. Gallagher recalls. “It was perfectly legitimate, they were bona fide residents; there was no law against it; there was nothing you could say why they could not vote; it was open voting too, and mighty little qualification necessary; no voters list. The Chinamen—and their pigtails—came on up Hastings Road, lined on both sides with bushes, came on up in twos and threes, some on the road, some on the two-plank sidewalk. Then someone shouted, ‘Here’s the Chinamen,’ and that started it. There were a lot of navvies around Granville for election day; rough customers from the railroad gangs and bush fellers from the C.P.R. clearing, and they shouted at the approaching Chinamen, and began to move towards them. Then one or two of the Chinamen decided, I suppose, that they did not like the look of things, and that they did not want to vote anyhow, and turned around; then one or two more came to a standstill, the rest came on up, until there was a little crowd of them, standing, and the white men advancing towards them. The white men shouted at the Chinamen and the Chinamen turned tail and ran.”

By the end of the day, 499 citizens (all of them white men - women had not yet been granted the franchise) had cast their ballots, and MacLean, the underdog, stood victorious by only 17 votes. Alexander’s supporters screamed their outrage, and MacLean’s camp jubilantly paraded him around town in a rented vehicle, before retiring to the Sunnyside Hotel to make their respective speeches.

“MacLean spoke first,” recalls pioneer George Schetky, “and made some nice remarks, thanked them, and spoke the usual post-election pleasantries. He was well received, and stood back. Then Alexander appeared, and said bluffly and bluntly, ‘Well, I am defeated; it was a case of might against right.’ Then you should have heard the boos.”

The win was viewed as a decisive victory for the “new” Vancouver, a triumph over the colonial interests that had shaped early Granville townsite, and a step forward for the common people (though, the fact that MacLean, and much of the first council was heavily associated with the CPR seems to have been largely ignored). MacLean went on to serve two terms as Mayor, declining a salary (even after losing his entire fortune a second time in the fire of 1886) and, despite his lack of experience, left the city with all manner of infrastructure and amenities, including sidewalks, bridges, a waterworks system, electric lights, and a fire department (though the fire engine would not arrive in time to save the city from burning to the ground). Embittered, Alexander never again ran for Mayor. However, he remained active on the city’s economic and political landscape, being elected to city council in the election of 1887, and later chairing the campaign to elect his friend David Oppenheimer to the mayoralty. He helped establish the Vancouver Board of Trade, and later held the unusual honour of being appointed Peruvian Consul to Vancouver. Both MacLean and Alexander lived the remainder of their lives in the city they had, in their own ways, helped to build. Alexander died in Seattle in 1915, visiting a son. MacLean died at the age of 50, in 1895, only weeks after being appointed stipendary magistrate for Vancouver. His obituary in the Vancouver Daily World described him as “a warm-hearted, liberal-minded gentleman, and possessed magnetic qualities that compelled affection.”