Photo: The Frances Street Remnants

Vancouver in the early twentieth century was, like many North American cities, a streetcar town. Also like many other North American cities, after the war Vancouver removed the streetcar infrastructure it did not repurpose for the trolleybus routes, and today there's not much evidence streetcars ever rumbled there - but there still is some.

Frances Street is an ordinary residential street in East Van, unremarkable save for the cobblestones that run through its median west of Commercial Drive. Seventy years ago, Frances Street was part of a British Columbia Electric Railway line that took streetcars into downtown - now, of course, there are no streetcars here anymore. In two years, this is the only remaining piece of the original Vancouver streetcar system that I've encountered. Just cobblestones.


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