History

“Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord.”(Ephesians 2:21)

White settlers were drawn to this area by the 1858 Cariboo Gold Rush. The West End was an out-of-the-way place and of little value compared with the Fraser Valley. It was not until 1862 that three young Englishmen, John Morton, William Hailstone and Samuel Brighouse decided to buy a piece of land in the area. For that action they were dubbed the “Three Greenhorns”. The Greenhorns’ land, now known as the West End, was officially called that in 1887 when the Vancouver School Board built and named the West End school.

With the Canadian Pacific Railway Company’s plans for a terminus beside the Greenhorns’ acreage, the settlement of Georgia and Robson Streets and the establishment of Stanley Park, the West End’s southern boundary became known and populated as a relaxing beach resort.

Eventually the area, along with the west side of Bute Street, formed the setting for Guardian Angels Parish. It took another Gold Rush in 1898 to swell the West End population and to bring homes, the provision of tram-way transportation along Robson Streen and unpaved Davie Street, and resulting businesses

There were subsequent upheavals caused by two world wars, some people moving out of the West End and others, from Canada and other parts of the world, moving in. A core of residents, some born int he West End, remained. From all of those folk came the diversity that formed the ;congregation of Guardian Angels Church.

When the number of Catholic parishioners in the West End grew large enough, the Archdiocese of Vancouver appointed one of its priests to conduct services there on a regular basis. This saved the parishioners the long walk to Holy Rosary Cathedral for Mass. Not yet having a church building, the priest celebrated Masses in the small building already purchased by the Archdiocese for future use.