This year's theme for Heritage BC Week (Feb. 16 to 22) is "Main Street: At the Heart of the Community." The city of Port Coquitlam is unique in that it has had two so-called main streets in its history: Dewdney Trunk Road (now called Kingsway Avenue) and Shaughnessy Street.
Prior to its incorporation in 1913, Port Coquitlam was part of the District of Coquitlam, and a small rural community called Westminster Junction surrounded the local Canadian Pacific Rail station built in the rail junction beside Dewdney Trunk Road. Like many other towns across B.C. and the prairies, the railway station was the centre of economic growth in the community, with passengers and goods arriving and departing daily.
At one time, the downtown area along the Dewdney had four hotels (the Central, Myrtle, Coquitlam and Junction hotels), several blacksmiths and stables, a barbershop and even a jitney service run by Arthur Smith.
Early photos show a young, vibrant city on the verge of great things, with a future that seemed bright and full of opportunity.
The boom days of 1912 turned to bust by around 1921: A devastating world war, a down-turned economy and the Spanish flu epidemic coincided with a major fire (1920) and flood (1921) along the downtown business section of the Dewdney Trunk Road in successive years.
As early as 1913, there was a gradual migration of businesses from the Dewdney area eastward, across the Coquitlam River to a small road running north/south called Shaughnessy Street.
The Shearer Brothers had operated a hardware store in the old downtown since 1909 and theirs was one of the first businesses on Shaughnessy when they built their new store there in 1913. This building survives today as the Masonic Lodge, located near the underpass, which was built in 1962.
The importance of Shaughnessy Street in the future development of Port Coquitlam was never more evident when the new city hall was built "way out in the bush" east of the old downtown in 1914.
By the middle of the 20th century, the business section along Dewdney Trunk Road on both sides of the Coquitlam River was slowly fading away, with tired, old, decrepit buildings falling to disrepair and abandonment.
The 1950s were a decade that forever changed Port Coquitlam as it rapidly grew post-Second World War from a small town to modern city in those 10 years. The future destiny of Shaughnessy Street as the Main Street and Heart of the Community was about to be fulfilled.
Your History is a column in which representatives of the Tri-Cities' heritage groups write about local history. Bryan Ness is with the Port Coquitlam Heritage Society.
