Launching History: The Saga of Burrard Dry Dock

Gordon Turner is the author of Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific’s
Greatest Ship and the editor of SeaFare, a quarterly newsletter on sea
travel.

Although nominally a dry-dock company, Burrard’s major business was
building ships of all kinds, from fishing boats to ferries to
freighters. Its greatest achievements were during World War II when it
turned out nearly 100 large freighters that played an important role in
carrying war supplies on worldwide routes. At peak capacity, the
company’s North Vancouver shipyard employed 14,000 people, a far cry
from the day in 1894 when Alfred Wallace, an English immigrant, founded
a small shipyard in Vancouver with two partners and eight employees.
After World War II, business tapered off. In the next half century,
occasional spurts of activity alternated with periods when the yard
scrambled desperately for orders. Its final vessel was launched in 1994,
and by the time 2002 arrived the once-flourishing company, now under a
different name, was no more than part owner of a dry dock. The Wallace
family had severed its connections with the company nearly three decades
earlier.

The author is an accomplished writer who gives the reader an honest and
compelling history of the rise and decline of what was once one of
British Columbia’s leading industrial concerns. Many business
histories are little more than promotional pieces for company ownership,
but Launching History does not fall into this category. Instead, it
provides an unvarnished account of the company’s failures as well as
its successes: skilled craftsmen, but union featherbedding; able
executives, but boardroom squabbles; economic considerations, but
political realities. All are skilfully woven into the text. The book
contains numerous well-chosen photographs, all reproduced to high
standards.