Welcome to the Transcribimus Homepage. Transcribimus is a network of volunteer transcribers who take hand written documents of our early Vancouver history and transcribe them into a searchable state available for free to the general public and researchers.
This entire initiative would not be possible without our volunteer transcribers and our sponsors who are also critical to the success of the project. We thank them!

What’s New?

August 2021:

New sponsor Bill Boultbee/Boultbee Realty has sponsored the transcription of all the 1887 Vancouver City Council minutes

Gerald Soon has transcribed Vancouver City Council minutes from 1895:

• November 22, 1895 – City Lighting Contract Still Under Consideration
• November 25, 1895 – Beattie Must Give Up Lease on Market
• November 27, 1895 – Meeting Postponed to Next Day
• November 28, 1895 – Mayor Authorized to Sign Light Bill

Krystyna Richards has transcribed Vancouver City Council minutes from 1895:

• September 23, 1895 – Improvements Voted for Granville Street

Darrin Pezer / Proactive Building Maintenance has transcribed Vancouver City Council minutes from 1895:

• September 16, 1895 – Council Accepts Consolidated Railway & Light’s $250 Offer For Robson Street

Anonymous has transcribed Vancouver City Council minutes from 1895:

• August 26, 1895 – Granville Street Car Service to Run Every Twenty Minutes
• September 30, 1895 – Vancouver Asks Victoria for Deadman’s Island

June / July 2021:

Gerald Soon has transcribed Vancouver City Council minutes from 1895:

• October 14, 1895 – “Not Legal” for Vancouverites to Trade Work for Taxes
• October 21, 1895 – Hospital Verandahs Need Repair
• October 23, 1895 – Special Meeting
• October 28 1895 – City Sidewalk Labour Free: Materials Must Be Found
• November 4, 1895 – City Solicitor Hamersley Resigns
• November 8, 1895 – Special Meeting to Settle Market Lease
• second meeting on November 8 – Second Meeting on Market Lease Yields No Results
• November 11, 1895 – False Creek Filling Up Fast
• November 18 1895 – Special Meeting to Discuss Street Lighting Contract
• November 19, 1895 at 10:00 am – Second Meeting to Review Lighting Contract
• another meeting later the same day November 19 at 7:30 pm – Discussion Continues on Lighting Contract

Hal Bell-Irving has transcribed Vancouver City Council meeting minutes from

• October 7, 1895 – City Council Declares Holiday to Attend New Westminster Fair

Joanne McCormick has transcribed Vancouver City Council meeting minutes from 1897:

• November 1, 1897 – Mount Pleasant, Fairview Need Sewerage Systems 
• November 8, 1897 – Pender Street in Unsafe Condition
• November 15 1897 – City Council Spends $2,000 on Klondike Advertising
• November 19, 1897 – McKinnon Block’s Roof to be Altered
• November 22, 1897 – Linton’s Cabins Now Rebuilt
• November 24, 1897 – CPR Asks for Tax Exemption

To see more recently published sets of Vancouver City Council Minutes click here to check them out

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Media

We are so pleased to have been featured in the following media:

• front page of the Jewish Independent (January 19, 2019) by Cynthia Ramsay
• front page of the Vancouver Sun article by John Mackie
• Spacing: Canadian urbanism uncovered article by Yuri Artibise
• CBC Radio “On the Coast” interview with volunteer Chris Stephenson
• Gordon Price‘s Price Tags blog
• Metro Vancouver article by Teresa Verenca

We hope you will enjoy exploring your history through our website. There is so much more to do. We hope to expand our service to other handwritten documents of our history.

Sponsors

Since 2012, many people have contributed to the work of transcribing the minutes of early Vancouver City Council meetings.  We have had donations of labour and technical advice, as well as cash donations.  These have helped to keep our web site going and to keep track of our thousands of photographs and nearly 600 transcripts produced so far.

Sam Sullivan and the Global Civic Policy Society founded our project and continue to help us get the word out.  Christopher Stephenson and Margaret Sutherland contributed foundational work.  Bruce Macdonald (author of Vancouver: a Visual History), Darrin Pezer of Proactive Building Maintenance and Negar Khatami at Katami Designs have helped to keep us going.  Our wonderful volunteers look at photographs of the original handwritten pages and contribue a draft they type in from the handwriting.

Others, such as The Oppenheimer Group, Shirley Barnett, Bill Boultbee, Arnold Silber, Kip Woodward, and Bruno Wall have generously sponsored the transcription and publication of one year of Vancouver City Council minutes.

Sponsorship opportunities

We would like to invite you to consider sponsoring one year of Vancouver’s history; perhaps in honour of an ancestor or current family member.  Your name (and the name of the person you are sponsoring in honour of) would appear at the top of every document for the year and go into the permanent record. 

Get in touch here for more information.

Sponsors for a year of City Council minutes transcription

1887 – sponsored by Bill Boultbee

1888 – sponsored by The Oppenheimer Group

1889 – sponsored by Shirley Barnett

1890 – sponsored by Arnold Silber

1891 – sponsored by Shirley Barnett

1892 – sponsored by Kip Woodward

1900 – sponsored by Bruno Wall

Volunteer Transcribers

Perhaps you might consider becoming a volunteer yourself. Together our remarkable volunteers have contributed 575 transcriptions of early Vancouver City Council minutes, as follows:

Master Scribes (more than 50 sets of minutes):
Darrin Pezer/Proactive Building Maintenance (59)
Gerald Soon (69) achieved Master Scribe rank December 2019
Anonymous (55)

Journeyman Scribes (25-50 sets of minutes):
Chris Stephenson, MLIS (45)
Donna Kynaston (26)
Krystyna Richards (27)
Joanne McCormick (28) achieved Journeyman Scribe status September 2020

Working Scribes (5-24 sets of minutes):
Martha Hazevoet (12)
L. Ellema (10)
Christine Cathcart (7)
David Laing (5)
Linda Evans (9)
Leah Minuk (8)
Cathy Harmer (5)
Susan Willows (5)
Chris Mizzoni (5) of Nitzy’s Hockey Den
YVR Mike (5)

Apprentice Scribes (1-4 sets of minutes):
Rachel Tsui (4)
Bronwen Cripps (4)
Judy Lam Maxwell (4) of Historical Chinatown Tours
Leesa Poffenroth (4)
Sue Bryant (3)
Mary-Ann Capistrano (4)
Sharon Mowat (3)
Hal Bell-Irving (2) new transcriber as at June 2021
Alan Hart (2)
Gent Ng (2)
Jenn Ashton (1) Jenn’s website
Brenda Chapman (2)
John Belshaw (1) https://www.vancouver-historical-society.ca/
Jordan Cripps (1)
Siobhan Devlin (1)
Anita Dos Santos (2)
Karen Gillespie (1)
Alannah Hall (1)
Devon Harlos (1)
Glen Hodges (1) manager of Mountain View Cemetery
Tegbir Kaur (1)
Sara Keay (1)
Maria Klukova (1)
Andrew S. Liebman (1)
Andrea Mitchell (1)
Mary Eleanor Norris (1)
Michelle C (1)