Signs and Portents

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On the first Wednesday of October in 1909, a pedes­trian in Vancouver was run over and killed by the new city ambu­lance, at a down­town inter­sec­tion halfway between the City Hospital on Cambie Street and Hanna’s Funeral Rooms on Georgia. The ambu­lance was a gift to the city from a com­mit­tee of influ­en­tial wives, one of whom, a Mrs. Bonallie, inter­rupted her­self dur­ing an inter­view in 1931 to say: “Oh I will tell you a queer thing. I helped to beg for the first motor ambu­lance in Vancouver; it was hard work get­ting the money. And the first day it was taken out on a trial run, it ran over a man and killed him, in front of old Fader’s gro­cery store, on Granville Street, Pender and Granville where the Bank of Montreal build­ing is now. There was no iode or any­thing; we just begged, indi­vid­u­ally, for the ambu­lance; we were a sort of hos­pi­tal auxiliary.” 

A new motor ambu­lance in 1909 was a rare thing. The price of the Model 740 Ambulance from Jas Cunningham, Son & Co., of Rochester, New York, was $4,000, more than $100,000 in today’s money. The Cunningham 740 was the first mass-produced motor ambu­lance in North America; it was pow­ered by a 30-horsepower motor and, accord­ing to the Carriage Monthly of May 1909, “equipped with a leather-faced cone clutch and a selec­tive type 3-speed and reverse speed change gear, a shaft drive and two sets of brakes on the rear hubs, and a wind shield which, in case of storm, may be thrown about 12 inches for­ward so one can see between two plates of glass, and in fair weather can be swung up against the front roof.” The Cunningham 740 weighed 3,740 pounds.

Mrs. Bonallie’s com­mit­tee was assid­u­ous in its beg­ging cam­paign: they were able to place an order in time for deliv­ery in early October. When their Model 740 rolled off a box­car in the Great Northern Railyards, it had trav­elled some three thou­sand miles: around the Great Lakes on the New York Central from Rochester to Chicago, over the Great Plains and through the Rocky Mountains on the Northern Pacific to Seattle, and finally on the new Great Northern line to Vancouver, which had been run­ning for only a few months. The Cunningham Model 740 appeared at the inter­sec­tion of Granville and Pender near the end of its first test drive from the hos­pi­tal on Cambie Street, hav­ing most likely swung around to Smithe Street in order to take on fuel at the only fill­ing sta­tion in the city, a cor­ru­gated iron shed hous­ing a thirteen-gallon kitchen boiler to which ten feet of gar­den hose had been attached by J.C. Rollston, an inven­tive night watch­man for Imperial Oil. In his youth, Mr. Rollston had been “an artist of some note,” and now he directed fill­ing sta­tion oper­a­tions from a bar­room chair posi­tioned on the sidewalk. 

The remain­der of the test drive can be summed up briefly: a few blocks along Smithe, a right turn onto Pender and the final leg straight back to the City Hospital. As the ambu­lance advanced into the inter­sec­tion at Granville Street, the num­ber 9 street­car south­bound crept into its path, and the ambu­lance lunged for­ward to avoid a col­li­sion. At that moment a man with a suit­case on his shoul­der stepped into the street. The dri­ver of the ambu­lance, “an expe­ri­enced autoist” named C.C. Cocking, tes­ti­fied at the inquest that he had sounded the horn and applied the brakes, but the ambu­lance struck the man nev­er­the­less, and knocked him down and drew him under the vehi­cle. The suit­case flew from the man’s grasp and shat­tered the lower wind­shield. Mrs. Bonallie sum­ma­rized the facts in the sim­plest of terms: “It killed him out­right. So the first pas­sen­ger for the ambu­lance went to the morgue.”

An account of the acci­dent printed the next morn­ing on page 3 of the News-Advertiser pro­vides a more detailed state­ment and at the same time, in a sin­gle sen­tence, invests it with myth­i­cal over­tones of a ren­dezvous with des­tiny — per­haps even a prophecy fulfilled:

Mr. C.F. Keiss, a wealthy American vis­i­tor from Bucyrus, Ohio, met death with tragic sud­den­ness under the wheels of the new City auto ambu­lance at the cor­ner of Pender and Granville Streets yes­ter­day afternoon.

A for­eign vis­i­tor, pos­si­bly high-born, cer­tainly attain­ing the heroic stature of the suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man (heroes in their time) on a jour­ney far from his home in Bucyrus suf­fers death in a chance mishap: he will never be seen in Bucyrus again. Can this be an exam­ple of Fate at work? What signs, what por­tents might draw a wealthy vis­i­tor on a jour­ney to the west and to the north, from Bucyrus, a small city in Ohio, home of the heavy earth-moving machines to which it has given its name (the Bucyrus does its work today in the tar sands of Alberta)?

Ohio, the state that claims to have birthed more pres­i­dents than any other, calls itself the Mother of Presidents; President Taft, elected in March 1909, is the sev­enth Ohioan pres­i­dent. In Seattle, Washington, ninety miles south of Vancouver, the Alaska-Pacific-Yukon Exposition, a world’s fair that has been run­ning since June, has drawn three mil­lion vis­i­tors. September 30 has been named President Taft Day; October 5 is Ohio Day: an aus­pi­cious time for wealthy vis­i­tors from Ohio to visit Seattle. In pho­tographs taken on the grounds of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, President Taft can be seen exam­in­ing horses in the com­pany of plain­clothes detec­tives in bowler hats, mil­i­tary men in uni­form, gov­er­nors and sev­eral uniden­ti­fied wealthy busi­ness­men in top hats and bowlers — might one of them be Mr. C.F. Keiss? In other pho­tographs, the pres­i­dent exam­ines large machines in the com­pany of busi­ness­men in three-piece suits; more men sur­round him at the Tethered Balloon — but the Tethered Balloon is not for pres­i­dents: wealthy busi­ness­men, how­ever, can take their chances for a view, from a great height, of the city, the ocean and the north­west pas­sage to Vancouver.

The city of Bucyrus lies three hun­dred miles west of Rochester, New York, and the fac­tory belong­ing to Jas Cun­ning­ham, Son & Co. Bucyrians wish­ing to attend the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle would take the Baltimore and Ohio line first to Chicago, where the trans­fer to the Northern Pacific could be made. The first class obser­va­tion car on the Northern Pacific was equipped with rat­tan loung­ing chairs, chan­de­liers, long tables cov­ered in vel­vet — a good van­tage point from which to observe the Great Plains of North Dakota, Nebraska and Montana along the Yellowstone River. This was the leg­endary land­scape of the Sioux, the Oglala and the Brulé, and Custer’s van­quished army, recalled as liv­ing his­tory of the time when C.F. Keiss had been a young man ris­ing in his career; from the first class obser­va­tion car all of his­tory is sub­li­mated into the end­lessly flow­ing scenery pass­ing by on the other side of the plate glass.

Mr. Keiss was not alone on his jour­ney: the account of his death at the inter­sec­tion of Pender and Granville pub­lished in the News-Advertiser includes the fur­ther infor­ma­tion that he had arrived in the city with two com­pan­ions, who had crossed Pender Street before him; only when they turned around did they see that their friend had been hit by the ambu­lance, “and dragged under the machine,” in the words of the anony­mous reporter, “the rear wheels going over his head.” The three men “had resolved to leave today on a hunt­ing trip to Powell River. They were return­ing from the Game Warden’s office, where they had secured their licences, when the acci­dent occurred.” We imag­ine the two com­pan­ions rush­ing back to their friend; the ambu­lance dri­ver leaps to the side­walk from his open seat; pedes­tri­ans crowd round the scene. “The unfor­tu­nate man was raised as soon as pos­si­ble, but expired in a few minutes.”

The Game Warden’s office was a few doors away from the scene of the acci­dent, next door to the Free Information Bureau at 439 Gran­ville, a ser­vice oper­ated by the Vancouver Tourist Association, “a vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tion of busi­ness­men for the pur­pose of mak­ing the attrac­tions of Vancouver known to those in search of health and plea­sure.” The Free Information Bureau is adver­tised in the pages of Vancouver: Sunset to the Dominion, an ele­gant vol­ume wrapped in an art nou­veau cover, pub­lished by the Vancouver Tourist Association in an edi­tion of 70,000 copies and dis­trib­uted in major cities across the usa and Canada. Its pur­pose was to attract vis­i­tors attend­ing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition north to Vancouver with descrip­tions of an exotic and wild land. Wealthy tourists, as they browsed its pages, might feel the promise of adven­ture in the autumn, in a land “where the paths are sere-leaved, and the gold­en­rod faded, but there is an exhil­a­rat­ing fresh­ness in the air. The whirring grouse flies on thun­der­ing wing, the sur­prised duck hur­riedly departs for safer sloughs, and the timid deer crack­les the brush.” Here too were to be found “bears, black, cin­na­mon and ­griz­zly; pheas­ants, geese and sil­very salmon, mon­ster stur­geon and gamey trout.” A visitor’s hunt­ing licence allowed the catch to “no more than five cari­bou, ten deer, two bull moose, two bull wapiti, five moun­tain goats or three moun­tain sheep (rams), and not more than 250 ducks.”

Interior of pas­sen­ger train, Northern Pacific line, early 1900s.

The jour­ney from Seattle to Vancouver by Princess steamer was only a few hours; the party of three had arrived that morn­ing or per­haps the night before and gone to the Free Information Bureau to arrange for their hunt­ing expe­di­tion and then to the Game Warden’s office, where they would have paid fifty dol­lars each for hunt­ing licences. At some point before step­ping into the inter­sec­tion at Pender and Granville, Mr. Keiss paused to hoist a suit­case onto his shoulder. 

We can imag­ine three well-dressed men in three-piece suits and expen­sive fedo­ras, indis­tin­guish­able from each other at a dis­tance; although we who look back at them apply our atten­tion more closely to Mr. Keiss, whose fate is known to us as a death fore­told. The two oth­ers are less dis­tinct; their names are Gallinger and Ziegler; they remain “com­pan­ions.” Looking out over the har­bour from Granville Street, they would have been able to con­firm the appear­ance of “snow-capped moun­tains whose shaggy sides, vary­ing in hue with every hour, slope towards the blue waters of the inlet, broad and placid,” as described in the pages of Sunset Doorway, where also were given the direc­tions to China Town a few blocks along Pender from Granville Street, where tourists might observe “another and a strange peo­ple,” iden­ti­fi­able by plain robes worn in pub­lic with “pic­turesque shoes and stock­ings,” and who, despite their strange­ness, remain amenable to “obser­va­tion and study at close range.” Later in the day they may have planned to take in the spec­ta­cle of the epony­mous sun­set, as rec­om­mended by Sunset Doorway, from the shore at English Bay, “where it is good to see the far-glinting waters, to feel the free sweep of the wind, and to hear the noise of the break­ers, as they ride gal­lantly in, like foam-flecked steeds, and fling them­selves, spent, upon the shore.” In the event, this is mere spec­u­la­tion; nar­ra­tive deter­min­ism leaves no alter­na­tive to what we know is about to hap­pen. Mr. Keiss and his two com­pan­ions had com­pleted a jour­ney of some 2,500 miles, much of the way along the same tracks that car­ried the Cunning­ham Model 740 that by now was rolling along Pender Street at a speed that Mr. C.C. Cocking esti­mated at the inquest to be no more than  six miles per hour: a hunt­ing adven­ture and even­tual home­com­ing lay still before them. 

Included among the tri­umphal dis­plays listed on the itin­er­ary for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition are the new Baby Incubator, the Dance-hall Girls of the Alaska Theater of Sensations, a Tokio Cafe, a Cairo Street, an Oriental Village, Prince Albert the Talking Horse, the new Model T Ford weigh­ing 1,200 pounds with a 20-horsepower engine, Machinery Hall filled with the great motors and tur­bines of indus­try, the Historic Battle of Gettysburg, and an authen­tic Nez Perce fam­ily prepar­ing a meal in a real­is­tic camp setting.

It was now the sad duty of Mr. C.C. Cocking and his dri­ving assis­tant, and per­haps Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Gallinger, to lift the body of Mr. C.F. Keiss into the brand-new ambu­lance and place it on the sus­pended cot listed in the spec­i­fi­ca­tions pub­lished five months ear­lier in Carriage Monthly, along with the two atten­dants’ seats, on which Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Gallinger may have posi­tioned them­selves for the drive to Hanna’s Funeral Rooms. How the deci­sion was made to drive straight to the funeral par­lour and not to the hos­pi­tal is not recorded; nei­ther is there a record of the route taken by Mr. C.C. Cocking: did he make a u–turn on Pender and head back to Burrard? — or did he go around the block? 

The coronor’s jury con­vened in Hanna’s Funeral Rooms, hav­ing “deemed fit to extend their deep­est sym­pa­thy to the rel­a­tives of the deceased,” and deliv­ered a find­ing of “death by mis­ad­ven­ture.” Editorials in the News-Advertiser com­plained of “the dan­ger to pedes­tri­ans result­ing from reck­less dri­ving of vehi­cles of the auto­mo­bile order,” and called for police offi­cers to be sta­tioned at busy inter­sections. “Vancouver dri­vers of vehi­cles fol­low the British prac­tise of keep­ing to the left side of the street, a prac­tise apt to prove con­fus­ing if not dan­ger­ous to vis­i­tors from the other side of the Boundary line.” (Mr. Keiss, hav­ing put his suit­case on his right shoul­der, had unwit­tingly blocked his view of the oncom­ing traf­fic.) No fur­ther report is given of Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Gallinger; of Mr. Keiss, one men­tion in the press notes that the “remains are at Hanna’s Rooms and will be shipped East for inter­ment,” pre­sum­ably on box­cars belong­ing to the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific and the Baltimore and Ohio lines.

A cou­ple of months ago I walked over to Pender Street and along to Granville. A siren sounded in the dis­tance; an ambu­lance was approach­ing along Pender. I paused to wait for it to pass before cross­ing the street. Pender was partly blocked by machin­ery, wire fenc­ing and con­struc­tion work­ers in flu­o­res­cent vests; as the ambu­lance approached, a small car crossed into the right of way and stalled. The ambu­lance pulled out to the left and entered the inter­sec­tion in the wrong lane; a flag­woman jumped out of its path and the ambu­lance shot past. For a moment no one moved. Then I remem­bered Keiss at this inter­sec­tion, and the ambu­lance that had killed him, dri­ving on the left.