This Day In History, 1946: Vancouver's longest-serving mayor dies at 88

Mayor L.D. Taylor greeting actress Marian Davies, circa 1931-34. Stuart Thomson Vancouver Archives

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When L.D. Taylor died on June 4, 1946, The Vancouver Sun lamented how the public had ignored the former mayor in his “dreary closing years.”

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“Feeble, lonely and slightly embittered, he dragged out his days on the scene of many a forgotten triumph,” said an editorial.

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“The warmth of the tributes which will be spoken today would have been appreciated during his lifetime. For L.D.’s slow decline was chilled by what he thought, with reason, was ingratitude.

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“The hurrying world passed by his door. Few tarried to talk with him of the times when he was the first citizen and the city looked to him for guidance.”

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It was a sad end for someone who been elected mayor a record eight times, serving 11 years between 1910 and 1934. Taylor had also once been one of Vancouver’s top newspapermen, the editor and owner of the Vancouver World between 1905 and 1915.

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“With L.D.’s death passed an era of robust and sometimes boisterous civic expansion,” said The Sun. “For he was a symbol of the spirit that saw Vancouver grow from a shack town to a great metropolis in 60 years.”

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Louis Denison Taylor was born July 22, 1857 in Ann Arbor, Mich., which made him 88 years old when he died at St. Paul’s Hospital.

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Louis Taylor in 1933 during his final term as mayor of Vancouver. He is wearing his trademark red tie and clutching another of his trademarks, the ubiquitous cigar. Vancouver Public Library photo PNG

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According to a Daniel Francis biography, L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor And The Rise Of Vancouver, he grew up poor. But young Louis was industrious, and rose to partner in a small bank in Chicago.

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Alas, the bank floundered, and Taylor skipped town with the depositors and creditors on his heels. He arrived in Vancouver by train on Sept. 8, 1896, when the city was just 10 years old.

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He didn’t have immediate success, and went back to the U.S. for a spell. He returned for good in 1898, thriving as the circulation manager of the Daily Province.

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In 1905, he bought the Vancouver World with some partners for $65,000. Taylor jazzed up the paper with a striking logo, giant headlines, flashy stories, and lots of illustrations and photos.

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Under Taylor, the paper’s mottos were “The Paper That Prints The Facts” and “The People’s Paper.” The World was flooded with ads during a giant boom that preceded the First World War, and claimed to be the biggest paper in western Canada.

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Flushed with success, in 1910 Taylor announced plans to build the World Tower, a landmark now known as The Sun Tower. But it was a financial bust, and he lost both the building and newspaper to creditors by 1915.

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An artists conception postcard of the World Tower at Pender and Beatty in Vancouver, 1912. The 17-storey building supplanted the Dominion Trust building as the tallest building in the British Empire when it opened in 1912. Vancouver Sun

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“L.D. claimed he would have been a newspaperman until his death if World War I had not broken out,” said his Sun obituary. “In the resultant bad times, bond holders took over the building and the paper.”

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A champion of the working class, he wasn’t as popular with what Taylor dubbed “powerful interests.” When he first ran for mayor in 1909, he lost to incumbent C.S. Douglas. But he thrashed Douglas in 1910 and was re-elected in 1911.