I thought I’d end the year with a fun little story from my book Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History. Thanks for following my sporadic posts this year and here’s to surviving 2025. Happy New Year!
At 6:00 am on Sunday January 1, 1922, Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island switched from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right, and thus became one of the last areas in Canada to change over. The rest of the province had switched on July 15, 1920, but the BC Electric Railway had needed more time to switch over its streetcars, interurbans and tracks. There was a “walk right, drive right” movement and ads in the Province and Vancouver Sun, while the World ran a competition to help citizens escape becoming roadkill.
The Province newspaper predicted there would be “wild confusion at all the great nerve centres of the traffic system,” but except for a few drunks from the night before who took the streetcar in the wrong direction, it was as anticlimactic as the Y2K fears at the turn of the year 2000.
Copies of my new book, Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck, are now available to preorder through my publisher Arsenal Pulp Press, from online retailers, and through independent bookstores across Canada
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6 comments on “We Drove on the Left Side of the Road”
Unknown to most people today, Vancouver once drove on the left side of the road. Of course, back in 1922, that didn’t matter too much as there weren’t that many cars on the road.
It did matter to the BC Electric Railway, which had hundreds of city streetcars to convert. It took months of preparation to outshop every streetcar that was to continue in service. Doors were cut into the right side of each car, air hoses were prepared, and panels were prepared for rapid change.
Amazingly, it all went off without a hitch. Old streetcars had their last hurrah in the days preceding the changeover, after which they were dismantled for useable parts or became service vehicles.
Gradually, the whole fleet was outshopped again, this time to remove temporary panels placed over the left-side doors, and a program of modernization was undertaken. The final stage of the process started in 1925, when the livery was changed from dark green to tomato red and cream, which many of us would recognize from colour photographs.
What about the automobiles? Apparently, there was only one reported fender-bender.
One story I heard while leading a history walk was that there was a collision involving a horse, who died because it had not read the memo. While I have yet to verify that story, the fact that it is told at all strongly suggests the concerns of everyday people, and I think that is admirable.
This is great information Peter, thanks so much for giving my story a bit more context! I just hope you’re wrong about the horse. Happy New Year!
Thanks for the good read, it is funny when I recall the number of times that I brought this topic up in Pub conversation with friends, some of them doubted me and hadn’t a clue that we once drove on the other side, I will be certain to forward your article to them.
Thanks Brett, glad you enjoyed the read!
I knew about the change over in driving but I hadn’t thought about the whole change of habit in keeping to the right rather than the left. I’ve been to Australia and the UK among others and I know how confusing that can be!
Having just come back from a few months in Australia, I’m spending a lot of time pulling out of my driveway going “right, right, right”