The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

- 5 - • "In 1905# twenty acres of the S.il.of District Lot 554 was bought for o>2,000; sold in 1906 for 34*000; then 3.62 acres of this was sold for 3724 and later bought by the original owner for S9»500; who again sold this 3.62 acres for 320,000." Th® price of this same land in 1927 was about 315,000. Although there was an ever increasing demand for land in West Vancouver from 1905 to 1913, it became obvious that the ability to sell land and the value of that land depended on transportation to Vancouver city. The usual method of travel from the city to the Capilano District was via the North Vancouver ferry's and Keith Road. This route proved tedious as it was a five mile Journey from the ferry terminal to the settled areas at Ambleside and Hollybum. The impetus to create a new transportation system came from real estate speculators. The permanent popiilation of the area was still small and a majority of this population found employment on the north shore. The political position as a district of the Kunicipality of North Vancouver allowed little persuasion for the creation of a public transportation system. Before 1909 speculative land in West Vauicouver was held in large blocks often by a single Individual. One major speculator who held a great deal of land in the area was John Lawson who with his brother-in-law V/.C. Thompson started the West Vancouver Transportation Company in 1909 providing ferry service between a pier at Hollybum {Seventeenth Street,) and Columbia Stteet in Vancouver. Lawson had been a resident of West Vancouver since the begin- ning of the boom years and was Joined by Thompson in the spring of 1909* Although both Thompson and Lawson had considerable private holdings they also dealt in land on a Joint basis. Prior to the creation of the ferry It Frederick James Patterson, A Financial History of the Corporation of..West Vancouver. Vancouver, University of British Columbia. Unpublished ri.A. Thesis, p.29. 12 Syndicates were only prevalent after 1910. 13 W.C. Thompson was a wealthy contractor in Inglewoodp Ontario wno desired A.oild climate. I • a6«