Our picture shows Scougale Dry Goods on the north-east corner of Hastings and Richards in 1900. To the right was a stationer’s store. The 1901 insurance map says that the Terminal City Club was upstairs. Vancouver records show there was more than one Scougale involved in the business – in 1900 Scougale Brothers donated $5 of goods to the Street Railway Worker’s Picnic and Sports Day. The building was new, having apparently been completed a year earlier and it was the only corner at this intersection that wasn’t a bank building. We haven’t been able to pin down a developer or architect, although W T Dalton did design a “Richards Block” on Hastings in 1897.
There are very few Scougales in Canada – and only one recorded in BC in 1901 – James A Scougale, merchant, born in Ontario, was living in Vancouver and leased a room to Edward Mills, a miner also from Ontario. (Edward may well be the miner who later in 1901 was President of the Blue Bird Consolidated Mining Company of Darrington in Snohomish County in Washington State – a mine that failed to live up to its promise of valuable minerals). The family name was recorded in all sorts of variations; Scongale, Scougal and Scaugall amongst them.
James Andrew Scougale born on Colborne, Ontario in 1866. His father, also called James died in 1890 in Colborne, Northumberland, Ontario, and had been born in Scotland. There’s no sign of any other Scougale brother in the 1901 census, but both James and Adam Scougale were living at 416 Richards in 1902 . Family records show there was a third, younger, Scougale brother in BC as well, Andrew, All three brothers were living in Colborne in 1891; Adam was the olderest, aged 32 and was retailing dry goods as was his brother, James, aged 24 and Adam, 21, was a book keeper.
It doesn’t seem that the Scougales stayed in the city for long. While the company are still operating in 1902, they have gone by 1903 and in 1905 Adam is back in Colborne, listed as a witness at a wedding. He died there in 1922 aged 62, and James obviously also returned there eventually as he died there in 1927, aged 60. Neither men married.
It seems as if James (like his lodger) headed to the Yukon and sought mining wealth. A James A Scougale was involved in two mining claims; Rainy Day no, 11545 in 1909 and Hunker no. 10605 in 1910. In around 1914 James Scougale was diamond drilling the Silver King Mine in the Yukon using a drill owned by the Territorial Government. (there’s a Scougale Creek in the Yukon as well). In 1923 he owned the mining rights to the Mt Cameron Property with Jack Alverson, but the value of that claim wasn’t clear. Alverson had previously netted $5,000 in a single season of mining at the Silver King Mine in 1913, before Scougale drilled it.
The Scougale’s apparently did well in BC: they returned to Colborne and opened two stores, one for hats and another for apparel. None of the three brothers ever married so the Scougale family ended when their grand niece died,having no children. The family name will live on despite this as their home for over 100 years in Colborne is about to become a heritage home known as “The Scougale Residence” built in 1820.
In 1916 the World Publishing Company were owners of the Richards building, getting Dominion Construction to repair and alter the basement. However, the building only lasted for about 40 years. In 1938 Gardiner and Mercer designed a replacement building for F W Woolworth that was still operating in this 1974 picture. While Woolworth’s have been gone for many years, the 1938 building is still there today.
Image Source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA LGN 709 and CVA 778-143
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Changing Vancouver 