Vancouver at the Dawn: A Turn-of-the-Century Portrait

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Attorney and history aficionado John Cherrington wanted to produce a
“snapshot” view of Vancouver at the turn of the century. At the same
time, he says in his preface, he became interested in the life of Sara
McLagan, “who in 1901 became owner and editor of the Vancouver Daily
World.” Feeling that there was insufficient material on McLagan (the
first woman publisher of a Canadian daily newspaper) for a full-fledged
biography, Cherrington decided to combine his two ideas by capturing
“Vancouver at century’s turn through Sara’s eyes.”

Cherrington acknowledges the danger of writing history as an imagined
memoir. The approach necessarily involves much speculation and educated
guess. Although he combed through McLagan’s personal diaries and
through the microfilmed pages of the Daily World in researching the
book, he describes it as “a work of historical fiction.”

There are a few factual errors: the relative ages of Vancouver’s
Christ Church Cathedral and St. Andrew’s Church are incorrect; and
General Gordon did not, contrary to Cherrington’s claim, lead troops
in the Boer War. But such mistakes do not seriously detract from the
book. It is not easy for a man to tell a story in a woman’s voice,
particularly a woman as socially and politically aware as McLagan. But
Cherrington has acquitted himself quite well, and, in the bargain,
unearthed some fascinating photographs of Vancouver at the birth of the
century. Recommended for public libraries.