This Day in History, 1892: Vancouver’s first spa and a Cosmopolitan Hotel of vice and moral depravity
Percy Venables went from working at a refined restaurant to a notorious hotel
By John Mackie
Last updated 12 hours ago
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In 1892, the City of Vancouver was only six years old, and had a population of 16,000.
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Not bad, given that the city had started off with approximately 500 people on April 6, 1886.
Entrepreneurs flooded into the Terminal City to make their fortune. One was Percy Venables, who opened Vancouver’s first spa on June 11, 1892.
Well, it wasn’t a “spa” spa, it was The Spa Cafe. But it did sound like it was supposed to be a place of relaxation and refinement in the rough-and-tumble streets of Gastown.
“TO THE LADIES OF VANCOUVER,” read an ad in several editions of the Vancouver World. “I have the pleasure of announcing to you that THE SPA CAFE will opened for business about June 11th. Our style is something new and original in Vancouver and will surely please you.”
To wit, “afternoon teas” were a specialty of the cafe, along with “delicious ice cream, ice cream soda, water ices, fresh French candies and frozen oysters.”
There was to be “cut flowers in great profusion,” and a “private parlour for ladies.”
The ad also promised there was “no water in our milk.” And it played to the anti-Asian racism of the time — it had “no Chinese employed.”
The address was 168 Cordova, at the southeast corner of Cambie, where the Cambie Hotel is today. You could telephone 426 and get “a quart of our delicious French Ice Cream for dinner, if you haven’t time to come.”
The “delicious French Ice Cream” was advertised at 60 cents per quart before the Spa Cafe opened. But by June 11 the price had risen to 75 cents.
The Spa Cafe seemed to do well for a time. On Dec, 26, 1892, the Daily News Advertiser reported that the cafe “has gained a reputation for serving dainty diners,” and had put on a Christmas dinner for 60 patrons with a large menu that ranged from exotica like boiled ox tongue, fried smelts and grape pie to normal fare such as baked halibut, roast turkey and prime of beef.
But on March 9, 1894, the World reported that Venables had moved over to the Cosmopolitan Hotel dining room and closed the Spa.
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The Cosmo was at 77 Cordova, at the northeast corner of Abbott. It was somewhat infamous among early Vancouverites because the two-storey building was owned by Jackson T. Abray, who was Vancouver’s first police constable in 1886.
Before he became a cop, though, he had run the Palace Hotel, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of June 13, 1886.
In 1907, Abray told The Province that he had talked Malcolm MacLean into running for mayor in 1886, and helped him win what many considered a stolen election. When Abray’s hotel went up in flames, MacLean hired him as a police constable. He lasted until 1889, when he took over the Cosmopolitan, which sounds like more of a saloon than a hotel.
On May 9, 1906, The Province reported that “moral reformers” led by future Conservative MP H.H. Stephens objected to Abray being granted a liquor license because the Cosmopolitan was known as a centre of “vice and moral depravity.”
“This place (is) known as the rendezvous of thugs, thieves and rogues, and the resort of women ill-fame,” Stephens alleged in a petition.
Stephens pointed out that the Cosmopolitan had lost its license in 1905 after police found the bar was serving liquor at “prohibited hours,” 1 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 24, 1905.
Abray “enlivened the proceedings” at the liquor license meeting by testifying that a policeman had “slept quietly and peacefully in the old hotel while he was ‘officially’ on duty,” and that the policeman had since risen to sergeant.
An inspector testified he had caught Abray himself serving liquor at a prohibited hour “by the light of a candle.” But Abray’s lawyer, future B.C, premier William Bowser, was able to get the Cosmopolitan’s liquor license back.
Abray died in 1944 at 88. Venables (who was not related to the man the street was named after) lived until 1959, when he died at 91.
