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LIONS GATE BRIDGE CXL/ytJ\n u (Uf-A._. n /I^ n eJ n . 19 3 9 ISTORY records that it was on June 13, 1792, that the first white men sailed through the First Narrows into what today is known as Burrard Inlet, the mighty natural harbour of the bustling Port of Vancouver. British seamen they were, from H.M.S. Chatham and H.M.S. Discoveryy under command of Capt. George Vancouver, R.N., who not many years before had sailed with Capt. James Cook-, and was now following in the tradition of that bold seadog, the intrepid tradition of Anson, of Frobisher, and of Drake. Today, 147 years after, were the ghosts of George Vancouver and his men to come this way again, their astonished eyes would behold a transformation beyond their wildest imaginings. On that June day in 1 792 they camped on the edge of the primeval forest where today stands a great and gracious city. The towering cedars and the hemlocks have been supplanted by skyscraping buildingsj the rocky, shelving beach by the piers, wharves and jetties of a modern seaport j and the tiny canoes of the welcoming Indians by the port’s busy traffic. Most amazing of all, this web of steel spanning the narrow fairway, stately as a cathedral, enduring as the hills above it, yet delicate and airy as a song. The hearts of these old-time naval men would leap in salute to the noble skyward sweep of its cables, to the daring of its twin 360-foot towers, the slim, straight roadway of its span, 1550 feet between the towers. When they had done with admiring it they would then have agreed that it is a fitting portal to an Empire City, a fit bridge to span one of the largest natural harbours in the world, a harbour with a total shoreline of 98 miles, a total area of 48 square miles. That harbour is the harbour of Vancouver, named for this same explorer-sailor, George Vancouver. The bridge is the Lions Gate Bridge, named after the popular title of these First Narrowsâ€"Lions Gate. the men of faith and foresight who made its construction possible. These men include, besides prophets and leaders of opinion in Vancouver who strug- gled long years to attain their ideal of a bridge to connect the City of Vancouver on the south side of this harbour with its North Shore suburbs, and the group of British capitalists whose financial backing made the ideal at last attainable. That ideal took form in the longest suspension bridge in the British Empire, the longest suspension bridge of stranded type in the world. The history of the bridge, as an idea, goes back to 1890, when G. G. Mackay, a bridge builder and dreamer of dreams, foresaw the possibilities of a span across the Lions Gate and made bold to predict its building. Lions Gate Bridge is a symbol and a Vancouver, as a city, was then four years memorial: Symbol of Empire, memorial to old, too busy bursting from its swaddling