“Morrow Coal and Ice. Co.” first appear at this location (initially 1027 and then 1025 Main Street) in 1924 . Their motto, over the entrance was the punning ‘Phone TO MORROW For Your COAL TO-DAY’. The yard in 1922 was owned by Alberta Pacific Coals Ltd and Kirk & Co’s Yard #2, with A L Amiel at 1029 Main.
Alfred Amiel emigrated to Vancouver from Deal, Kent, England in 1902. He worked as a teamster for Vancouver Ice and Cold Storage Company c. 1908-1910, before becoming the manager of the Almond Ice Company, manufacturers of ice. The company history says that by 1914, Amiel was the proprietor of the company. In 1915, he opened the Amiel Ice & Fuel Company at 406 E Pender Street. The following year, the company moved to 1024 Main Street next to the Almond Ice Company. This part of the story isn’t quite accurate; in 1915 the street directory shows the Almond Ice Co on West Pender (at #406) next to the Almond Ice Cream Co, owned by H E Almond (at 400). Mr. Amiel was the owner of the Almond Ice Co at 1025 Main. In 1917 the company became a coal and ice company, run by A L Amiel. Before Amiel’s move here the site was home to the Main Horse Repository.
The company history says William Morrow purchased the Amiel Ice & Fuel Company in 1922 after original owner Alfred Lewis Amiel went bankrupt. That year the street directory shows Morrow Ice Co and the Alberta Coal Co (owned by William Morrow) sharing this yard. (However, in 1923 Amiel was still shown in business at 1029 Main St, although that might be an error, as he actually stayed on working for Morrow as retail manager of the ice company). William Morrow was the manager until his death in 1930 when G.A. Strickland took over, and Myldred Morrow, William’s widow, was president. By 1935, William and Myldred’s son William J.T. Morrow was the manager and his mother remained the company president. In 1967 William became the president and the business moved to 1251 Charles St. In 1978 a second location is given at 745 W. 54th Ave which then was no longer listed after 1985. Wm Jorgensen became president in 1988 and the business closed the same year.
We can find Myldred Morrow’s death certificate from 1970, so we know she was born in Melborne, Australia, in 1885, and that her father was James Tyrell. He husband was William Bradshaw Morrow, born in Ireland and dying in 1930, aged only 47. In the 1911 census he was lodging in Vancouver Mansions, and a year later in the St James Rooms on Granville Street, working at a sheet metal works. Just before he took over the Alberta Coal Co he was running the Alberta Woodyard.
By 1931, when this Stuart Thomson image was taken, they had ’15 Trucks to Serve You’, and their yard was on a finger of filled land with a wharf to the west. Today you can buy a laser-cut HO scale model of their coal dock, built by Fairbanks Co. The company specialized in lifting bucket mechanisms used to empty the hoppers. The coal dock was used to fill coal sacks for delivery to retail customers, usually on flat bed trucks. Coal was unloaded into the hopper type building, then dispensed through a number of chutes.
The truck seen here is a pre-1927 Stewart, built in Buffalo, New York, by a company that existed from 1912 to 1941. Morrow’s also owned at least one Ford truck, shot in almost exactly the same image configuration as this one, also in 1931.
Today this is the retail and non-market housing component of Citygate, the high-density housing project built over twenty years from the early 1990s.
Image source City of Vancouver Archives CVA 99-4147
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Changing Vancouver 