Vancouver's Scavengers
Before Vancouver, B.C. had "Garbage Collectors"- or as we said when I was a kid: "Garbage Men" - they had "Scavangers". Private companies used to remove trash for people, apparently not only being paid, but also scavenging through materials for sellable garbage as the name suggests. The 1896 Vancouver City Directory has a list of 4 scavenger companies in Vancouver - also three in Victoria and one in New West: These scavengers would dump the garbage they could not salvage. False Creek was used for such dumping events, and there are likely many dump areas underneath a lot of beautiful apartment buildings and parks in the city. But one of those dumping areas seems to have been accepted as the consolidated dump at the south end of the Cambie Street Bridge. In 1907 an incinerator (a Heenan Froude) was installed at 120 Barnard St. (Union St.). The city was getting more involved in garbage collection around this time and bought out the largest private scavengin