Ocean

The site on Industrial Island in the heart of Vancouver could not have been more perfect for the newly expanded Ocean Concrete plant to take up its residence in 1957.  Our in-house research team thinks it bought the old Gilley Brothers’ construction company site on the island, and in fact, it may well have been the actual Gilley Brothers’ company that Ocean Concrete bought, along with their reputation which was already 40 years old. 

Industrial Island had been used as such since 1915 and was comprised of manufacturing businesses that made nails, ropes, barrels, and some that made chains.  In its heyday (roughly the 1930s) Industrial Island is said to have employed 1200 people within 40 industrial companies.  In the midst of this, Ocean Concrete was able to locate itself on the northern edge of the island, which made for convenient delivery by barge of the raw materials needed to make concrete.  From there, they were able to easily move, by land or water, any of their products to their builder clients in the burgeoning city and area.

At the time, the 1950s, what passed for Industrial Island had less of a physical footprint than it does today, as we refer to it by its next name, Granville Island.  The city had hopes of filling in all of False Creek, the narrow inlet wedged in between downtown and the rest of Vancouver, and they started with the little area between Granville Island and the southern shore of False Creek.  They must have realized what a monumental task (and bad idea) it was because the project got no further than a ‘neck’ of land connecting the island to the shore, thus doing away with the former bridge.  

By the 1970s, the little island was worn out and had become an eyesore as several of the old original buildings had burnt to the ground and most of the businesses had moved off the island and out to the suburbs.  Ocean Concrete kept its head down and continued the work that it got out of bed every morning to do, and by the time Vancouverites demanded that SOMETHING be done with Granville Island, there was very little industry left on the island other than Ocean Concrete.

Being the 70s, plans were put into motion for an envisioned arts and crafts mecca on the Island, repurposing as many of the former industrial buildings as possible since everyone in town was getting sick of the raze-and-rebuild nonsense that the growing city seemed to be employing.  The island was sculpted as a unique blend of retail, maritime, light industrial, recreational, and touristy areas.  For years there was an art school that anchored part of the island, but it has since had to move itself into larger quarters—on a floodplain, of all things.

Ocean Concrete is Granville Island’s oldest tenant and now also its largest.  As such, there are some rules that are exclusive to them.  The most important being that whenever a truck is on the move after picking up a load of wet concrete at the plant, they have the right of way in traffic. Giving a concrete mixer truck the right of way might not seem like a sensible thing to those who have never visited Granville Island before, but what you need to know is that all traffic on the island moves in a slow-motion counter-clockwise formation.  That was one of the brilliant ideas that were imposed right from opening day of the revitalized Granville Island, and it has worked a charm.  The traffic plods slowly around the island as drivers scan the rows of cars looking for a parking spot—a free spot would be like winning the lottery—while dodging pedestrians who are not relegated to formal sidewalks.  The street is wide so if push came to shove, a truck with a load of time-sensitive concrete is able to blow by a dawdling vehicle and no one other than the dawdler would bat an eyelash.

But let’s be clear—Granville Island is no longer the domain of industry.  Ocean Concrete is squeezed into its cozy little spot on one side by a series of shops that boast silk weavings and locally made soaps, and on the other by the former art college buildings.  It is at the foot of a street that houses a glass blowing studio, an artisanal spirits distillery, and a studio that makes straw brooms by hand (not too unlike the Nimbus 2000, but without the anti-gravity option).

Ocean Concrete found their home on Granville Island and proudly showed that they were part of the GI Team each year by decorating one or more of their cement trucks’ ever-rotating buckets with simple large scale pictorial wraps of the fruits or vegetables that one can buy at the Granville Island Market.  As those trucks drive through the city streets to whatever important construction job they are destined for, they leave a wake of smiling people who now have the urge to pick up some fresh strawberries or asparagus or carrots.

There is Ocean concrete in our iconic downtown Public Library and in our ‘new’ Convention Centre over on Burrard Inlet’s Inner Harbour, and as our Skytrain system whisks us from subway stop to subway stop it’s a comfort to know that Ocean’s fingerprints are all over the walls there too. 

The weird thing is that even as Ocean Concrete has become a recognized part of Vancouver life, it is no longer who we thought it was.  It was bought out a couple of years ago by a worldwide company who was looking for a Canadian partner and found what they were after in our Ocean Concrete.  I guess it was coming for a long time but it’s still not something that the rest of us expected.

The new company doesn’t have a cute little 2 syllable hippie name like “Ocean”, and we haven’t been able to accept this new name that it calls itself by.  The trucks wear the same paint job as before but sport the new company name which we stare at, feeling like we’re not quite getting the joke.  At this point, it’s too early to know whether the new owners are the sort who’d let their silos be brightly painted to amuse the public, or if they’ll continue the tradition of wrapping their truck buckets with giant photos of vegetables, but what we do know is that we will still call them Ocean Concrete for as long as we want.  That’s our right.  Just as it’s theirs to call themselves whatever they want. 

We’ll just agree to disagree.  Subject closed, Mr New Guy In Town.