DR HENRI LANGIS “Go West young man”! On July 15, 1884, Dr. Henri Evariste Langis reaches Victoria, British Columbia. He is 27 years old, strong in health and more than ready to face his new life. He is to contribute to this province a great deal in building the foundations of the medical system in B.C. He had obtained the previous year his doctorate in medicine, and was subsequently hired by the Canadian Pacific Railway company (CPR) as the company’s surgeon at the Port Arthur* work site in Ontario. The men there probably “fed” the doctor with some of those western legends where “Sun and Gold shine year long,” as he explains in a later interview in 1935 accorded to Major J.S. Matthews, then Vancouver Archivist, that the reason for his coming west was Le “_.. Just adventure, that’s why I came West; you know in those days, it was ‘Go West Young Man’.”? Le chronographe Volume III no. 1-2, Printemps-Eté 1986 His origins He is born Henri Evariste Levraux Langis, on October 25th, 1857 at Bic, Rimouski County, Province of Quebec, son of Joseph Langis and Mélanie Lepage. “. . . Among his ancestors, members of a noble family of Poitiers, France, were distinguished officers in the armies of Louis XIV, and Louis XV. Under Montcalm they fought the English at the siege of Québec in 1759. A maternal ancestor was the first seigneur of Rimouski, A.D. 1610.”? As it was customary then among the well-to-do families, Henri was provided with a thorough education, i.e. classical studies at the Séminaire de Québec, followed by a university degree at l'Université Laval de Québec, the whole polished with his doctorate (Ph.D.) in medicine obtained from |’Ecole de Médecine de Montréal in 1883. In Vancouver Once in B.C., Dr. Langis encounters no difficulty in getting the position of the CPR surgeon, having had the practical experience in Ontario. From July 1884 to October 1885, he will be stationed as the company’s doctor at Port Moody and Yale respectively.? And, in April 1885, he establishes his practice in Vancouver (then named Granville), opening a small office on the upper floor of McCartney’s Drug Store, at the corner of Water and Abbott streets. He furnishes this with his surgical equipment and also, with his precious medical library containing some very valuable books from the unique collec- tion of the renowned Dr. Beaubien of Montréal. He further orna- ments a little alcove curtained off from the visitors with an articulated skeleton he names “Jimmy.” wo .My skeleton was that of a Swede who had hanged himself... . He was buried on Deadmans Island; that was where I got the skeleton. . .in April 1886.” VANCOUVER 1882-1886 The citizens of Granville village The site of Granville village where Dr. Langis establishes himself in business has.nothing of the grandiose contemporary Vancouver. Registered in the Burrard Inlet Directory of Granville 1882-1883, are 145 names: 44 loggers, 1 physician and surgeon, 1 constable, 1 clerk (at the Hastings Mill store), the rest: mill men, stevedores, fishermen and merchants.? Men make up most of the population. Granville village's topography In 1884, Granville consists of a long street (Water from Carrall to Abbott St.) sided by wooden walks, bordered on the south side by “...@ single row of whitewashed buildings. . .,”3 and on the north side by raw beach. “. . . To the rear lay six blocks of logged-off forest landscaped by blackberry bushes and skunk cabbage, ornamentally pooled by swamp, and providing accommodation for large conven- tions of mosquitoes. Beyond this jardin sauvage lay the forest.”? * Today Thunder Bay, Ontario.