Kitsilano Beach

This guide to Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver opens in September 1891, when a deputy sheriff named Tom Armstrong arrives with police and hired muscle to evict Sam Greer, a former Union soldier who had farmed this shoreline for a decade. It follows what happened when Greer refused to leave, the public sympathy that turned against the railway company backing the eviction, and the decade locals kept calling this stretch Greer's Beach. A saltwater pool later opened along the same shore, filled straight from English Bay.