Louis Denison Taylor (July 22, 1857 – June 4, 1946) was elected the 14th mayor of

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, British Columbia. He was elected eight times between 1910 and 1934, serving a total of 11 years.

Biography

Born in

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, Taylor lived in Chicago before coming to

on September 8, 1896. He briefly participated in the Klondike Gold Rush before beginning his political career. L. D. Taylor championed the issue of amalgamating South Vancouver and

Point Grey Point Grey ( Squamish: Elḵsn) is a headland marking the southern entrance to English Bay and Burrard Inlet. The headland is the site of Wreck Beach, Tower Beach, Point Grey Beach and most notably, since 1925, on its top is the Point Grey Campu ...

with Vancouver, and oversaw a variety of public works projects in the rapidly developing city, including the opening of the airport at Sea Island and the Burrard Street Bridge. Amalgamation would take place in 1929 but not under Taylor, because he lost the 1928 election to W. H. Malkin. Taylor was a

Georgist Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including ...

, locally known as ' Single-Tax Taylor' for his belief in the economic teaching of

Henry George Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the eco ...

. Taylor ran as a friend of organized labour, although he opposed labour militancy and Communists. Mayor Taylor's political career immeasurably benefited from his other role as a newspaperman. He began in the trade working for the

Vancouver Daily Province ''The Province'' is a daily newspaper published in tabloid format in British Columbia by Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network, alongside the ''Vancouver Sun'' broadsheet newspaper. Together, they are British Columbia's only ...

before buying the

Vancouver World ''The Vancouver Daily World'' (also known as ''The Vancouver World'' or simply ''The World'') was a newspaper once published in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was founded in 1888 by John McLagan, the editor of the paper. In 1901, when John McLaga ...

. The building he had constructed for his newspaper was later taken over by the

Vancouver Sun The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published s ...

and remains a landmark building in the city, known today as the

Sun Tower The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. Taylor eventually was forced to sell the paper, but not before using it as a political platform from which he railed against Chinese immigration, big business, and other issues of the day that helped establish his reputation as a populist leader. Despite his popularity at the polls, Taylor often found himself mired in controversy. In particular, an exhaustive 1928 inquiry into allegations of corruption in the police department and city hall revealed that he had associations with known vice operators in the city. Although he was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, the inquiry blamed his "open town" policy on the proliferation of vice and crime in Vancouver. Mayor Taylor claimed that he had no intention of running a "Sunday School town" and argued that police resources should be spent on major crimes, not victimless vice crimes. This was the basis for Gerry McGeer's 1934 electoral campaign, which obliterated Taylor's political career with the largest electoral defeat Vancouver had ever seen. McGeer was an old adversary of Taylor, having been the lead attorney prosecuting the 1928 police inquiry, and claimed in his campaign that he would eliminate the crime and corruption that flourished under Taylor's civic administration. Taylor unsuccessfully contested several more elections, but spent the rest of his life bitter about the 1934 election. He died in poverty. Taylor Manor, a senior citizens' home in East Vancouver, was named for him in 1946. It was renovated and re-opened in 2015 as a supportive-housing complex for people living on the street with mental health and addiction problems.

References

* * * Marquis, Greg, "Vancouver Vice: The Police and the Negotiation of Morality, 1904–1935," Essays in the History of Canadian Law: Volume VI British Columbia and the Yukon. Hamar Foster and John McLaren, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

External links

Daniel Francis, excerpt from "L. D.: Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver," ''Vancouver Courier'', 5 August 2004.
Retrieved November 15, 2006.

Retrieved August 24, 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Louis Denison 1857 births 1946 deaths Mayors of Vancouver Politicians from Ann Arbor, Michigan American emigrants to Canada Canadian newspaper publishers (people) 20th-century Canadian politicians

Biography

See also

References

External links