In 1965, Vancouver put together a committee to look at proposals for the city’s 1967 national centennial project.
On May 1, 1965, it made its recommendation: a “landmark by the sea” that would shoot a beacon into the sky visible for 60 miles.
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“It involves construction of a half-mile causeway into the water at Spanish Banks,” the Province reported. “At the end would be a planetarium, 230-foot-high modernistic beacon, restaurant, parking for 80 cars and other facilities. The beacon would be a towering symbol to ships entering the harbour, as well as a navigation aid.”
A John Fulker photo in the Province archives shows a futuristic design that looks like something out of an old pulp science fiction magazine.
The complex would have been located on a man-made island at the end of the causeway, with the domed planetarium at the end. The 23-storey tower was in the middle of the island, and was incredibly elegant, starting as three pieces and blending into one as it soared toward the heavens.
“The causeway would create a mile of new beach,” said the Province. “Cost of the causeway is estimated at $600,000. The island and facilities located on it could cost $750,000, and there would be about $50,000 needed for landscaping.”
The scheme was dreamed up by architect Gerald Hamilton, who told the committee the beacon would provide “a striking entrance” to Vancouver, akin to the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The entrance to the causeway was to be outside Vancouver’s city limits on the University Endowment Lands. It was to start on Marine Drive and jut out into English Bay, where it would serve as a breakwater for beach areas along Spanish Banks.
It was a last-minute entry in the competition, seen only on the day it won “a final showdown vote on nine project submissions.” But it won by a two-to-one margin over the runner-up, a waterfront walkway in Kitsilano.
Tied for third were a “park board complex atop the Little Mountain reservoir and a centennial museum.”
The choice of the beacon quickly came under attack from supporters of the other projects.
On May 4, The Sun said the Vancouver park board “threatened to huff and puff and blow out Vancouver’s hopes for a seashore centennial beacon.”
The park board managed the area where the proposed causeway was to be built, under a 99-year lease from the province. And park board chair George Wainborn said, “The proposed scheme is inappropriate to the board’s long range plans for this area.”
Since Vancouver’s pioneer days there had been schemes to develop it with causeways/breakwaters, an industrial port and an airport. But Wainborn said the park board fought to keep it natural.
“The park board has jealousy guarded the Spanish Banks waterfront lands from suggested encroachments many times in the past,” he said. “The magnificent natural beauty of the Spanish Banks waterfront is due to the uncluttered open expanse of tide lands and sweep of sea, which is completely free from man-made causeways, towers, structures, etc.”
For her part, park board commissioner Grace McCarthy was “disappointed” the centennial committee hadn’t given more consideration for the park board’s Little Mountain complex.
On May 21, the backers of a centennial museum fought back with a plan for a $5-million complex on the former Kitsilano Indian Reserve, which had been an air force base during the Second World War.
The 41-page brief was put together by Theodore Heinrich of Regina.
“Heinrich called for both the city museum and art gallery to be moved to a five-acre site at Kitsilano,” Jes Odam wrote in The Sun. “He said the complex should be built in a swinging arc sweeping towards Burrard Bridge and should include the Matthews (City) Archives, a lecture theatre, a city casino for civic entertaining, and possibly a commercially-operated planetarium.”
On June 9, Vancouver council unanimously voted to make the museum its centennial project. Gerald Hamilton’s beacon was deep-sixed, but he got a consolation prize, designing the new museum, which opened in 1968.
H.R. MacMillan put up the money for a new planetarium beside the museum. His longtime business partner Prentice Bloedel donated $1 million to build the park board’s complex atop Little Mountain, which opened in 1969 as the Bloedel Conservatory.