Why was the Stanley Park 9 O’Clock Gun silent? A misfire, says city

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A small crowd gathered at Brockton Point on a recent warm Vancouver summer evening, ready to brace themselves for a big bang that has been echoing across Burrard Inlet since the late 1800s.

The Stanley Park Nine O’Clock Gun has been a reliable timekeeper in the city nearly every night for 130 years.

It has been a signal to kids back in the day that it was time to head home. It’s been the target of vandalism by UBC’s notorious engineering department pranksters, who painted it red one year.

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It also went silent for a time during the pandemic, when supply chain shortages led to difficulty getting the gunpowder needed to set off its nightly charge.

It even went off two hours early for a time to coincide with the 7 p.m. salutes to health-care workers in the early days of COVID.

Those gathered near the venerable old gun last Thursday were all set to cover their ears and leap out of their skins at 9 p.m.

Chuck Mackenzie was there with his grandkids, hoping they too could experience the jump-scare of a sound he remembers while growing up in Vancouver. So were several dozen tourists who had heard about the historic landmark.

“At 8:59 p.m., the buzzer sounded to warn the crowd that the cannon was about to blast off,” Mackenzie recalled. “The crowd was absolutely silent while waiting for the lights to flash letting us know that there was only seconds left to wait.”

And then … nothing.

At 9:03 p.m., when all they got was the sound of silence, Mackenzie and his family packed up and headed home, disappointed. He worried it had gone dark for good, echoing other recent breakdowns in Stanley Park such as the miniature train and the fountain in Lost Lagoon.

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“I was told that the gun was broken and there were no plans to fix it.”

Not so, says the city. “This is the first time in the past few years that staff have been alerted to a malfunction,” said a City of Vancouver spokesperson in response to emails this week. “While it is possible that other malfunctions have happened, although we haven’t received any reports on the matter, it’s likely quite rare.”

Despite the misfire scare — or is that non-scare? — the city says there are no plans to discontinue the Nine O’Clock Gun anytime soon.

“Since the pandemic, the Nine O’Clock Gun has been firing again,” assured the city.

Here are 10 things to know about the Nine O’Clock Gun and its history.

• The gun is a muzzle-loaded naval cannon capable of firing a 12-pound ball. It was cast in Woolwich, England, in 1816.

• It was installed at Stanley Park’s Brockton Point in 1894 and was intended to help mariners synchronize their chronometers. For many years after, it was a reliable way for Vancouverites to check and reset their clocks.

• The cannon was moved to its current location, near Hallelujah Point around the corner from the Brockton Point lighthouse, in 1954.

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• It was silenced during the Second World War, and again for a short time in 1969 when it was stolen by — you guessed it — UBC engineering students as a prank.

• The pandemic-induced silencing ended in early 2022 after the city tracked down a new supplier for gunpowder — although federal rules restrict the amount of black powder that can be stored at one time, so a steady supply is a bit of a juggling act.

• The cannon also went quiet in October 2021, not due to supply issues but because a tree fell during a storm and damaged its shed. It resumed firing following month of repairs.

• The first lighthouse keeper at Brockton Point said the gun was originally pointed at City Hall of the day. He confessed he sometimes thought about adding “a good-sized rock” to the powder.

• In 1964, someone actually did add ammunition to the nightly load, with reports saying it ripped through the sign on the Texaco marina in the inlet.

• After the 2008 UBC painting prank, repairs were made and the restoration was praised by groundskeeper Dennis Dooley. “It’s the best it’s looked since I’ve been here,” he crowed of the bronze beauty.

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• Before the cannon was installed, the Brockton Point lightkeeper had to mark 9 p.m. by setting off a stick of dynamite at the end of a long pole.

And finally, what’s a historic landmark without a tall tale? Frank Rance, a longtime groundskeeper, told the possibly apocryphal story for many years of meeting a glum widower one night as he prepared to scatter his wife’s ashes.

As Shane McCune wrote for The Vancouver Sun in 1998, Rance “invited the stranger into his shack for a drink, and another. … Soon two men and a gun were loaded, and at 9 p.m. the bride’s remains were scattered halfway across Coal Harbour.”

— with files from Carolyn Soltau, Stephanie Ip, Lena Sin and Encyclopedia of B.C.

jruttle@postmedia.com

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