We’re on the corner of West Georgia and Hornby, looking north, and on the right the HSBC Bank (Canada) headquarters that’s there today is possibly being sold to the Royal Bank of Canada, so the bank and office tenants may change in future. In 1981 there was a cleared site, following the implosion using 136 kg of dynamite of the Devonshire Hotel. It had stood here for 57 years, and took 12 seconds to demolish. (These days that method of demolition isn’t allowed, due to health and safety concerns about the potentially toxic dust that can be generated). We discovered that Coley Hall, who owned the hotel at one time, was also a director of the bank that would replace it.
Designed by Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, Housden and Partners, and completed in 1986, it was built as the the head office of the Bank of British Columbia. Intended by Premier W A C Bennet to allow more local control for making decisions on loans to BC businesses, it was first proposed in 1964, and granted a charter in 1968. Original plans called for the skyscraper to be in the block behind the courthouse, on a site owned by the City of Vancouver, for a new Civic Centre, before those plans were dropped, (where the new court was later built). When the federal government refused to allow the Province to hold shares in the new bank, the skyscraper was dropped and a more modest new home initially identified at 999 West Pender. As the bank grew, it moved into leased offices in the Bentall Centre.
Following the collapse of two Alberta Banks, in 1986 a CBC program alleged serious management problems, and that in turn led to the bank being taken over by the Hong Kong Bank of Canada in the same year the new headquarters was completed.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 779-W05.17
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Changing Vancouver 