DEVELOPING STORIES

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Daniel Pender pictured in Esquimalt in the 1860’s (BC Archives Photo)

west Pender street

Pender Street was named by surveyor L.A. Hamilton after Pender Island, which in turn was named for Captain Daniel Pender who surveyed the B.C. coast in aboard several vessels from 1857 to 1870.

Pender was recorded as the second master of the admiralty survey vessel, HMS Plumper, in 1857 when he arrived at Esquimalt. He was promoted as the ship's master in 1860 and was transferred to HMS Hecate a year later after the Plumper was deemed too small and unsuitable for the coast's waters. When the British government commissioned the Hudson Bay Company to continue the hydraulic survey of the coast, Pender was given command of the company's Beaver, replacing Captain George Henry Richards (not the namesake of Richards Street) who was recalled to Britain after he was appointed as the Hydrographer of the Royal Navy.

After his 1871 return to London Pender continued as a hydrographer, mapping waterways in England for the London Hydrographic office until he retired in 1874.

As a note of interest, the portion of East Pender that runs through Chinatown was originally named Dupont after Major Charles T. Dupont, a member of the Vancouver Improvement Company. There is some speculation that because that strip of Dupont Street was known as a red-light district, also housing gambling and opium dens, renaming it Pender in 1907 may have been an attempt to clean up the street’s image. Regardless, the West End’s share of Pender Street has always been Pender.