L. D. Taylor

Louis Denison Taylor (July 22, 1857 – June 4, 1946) was elected the 14th mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia. He was elected eight times between 1910 and 1934, serving a total of 11 years.

Biography Born in Michigan, Taylor lived in Chicago before coming to Vancouver on September 8, 1896. He briefly participated in the Klondike Gold Rush before beginning his political career.

L. D. Taylor championed the issue of amalgamating South Vancouver and Point Grey with Vancouver, and oversaw a variety of public works projects in the rapidly developing city, including the opening of the airport at Sea Island and the Burrard Street Bridge. Amalgamation would take place in 1929 but not under Taylor, because he lost the 1928 election to W. H. Malkin.

Taylor was a Georgist, locally known as 'Single-Tax Taylor' for his belief in the economic teaching of Henry George. Taylor ran as a friend of organized labour, although he opposed labour militancy and Communists.

The Sun Tower at Pender and Beatty Streets, erected by L. D. Taylor as the headquarters for his Vancouver World newspaper. Mayor Taylor's political career immeasurably benefited from his other role as a newspaperman. He began in the trade working for the Vancouver Daily Province before buying the Vancouver World. The building he had constructed for his newspaper was later taken over by the Vancouver Sun and remains a landmark building in the city, known today as the Sun Tower. Taylor eventually was forced to sell the paper, but not before using it as a political platform from which he railed against Chinese immigration, big business, and other issues of the day that helped establish his reputation as a populist leader.

He had an interest in civil aviation and invited American aviator Charles Lindbergh to visit Vancouver; Lindbergh declined due to the lack of a suitable landing field. On July 23, 1928, Taylor was an invited guest on the inaugural B.C. Airways Limited flight between Victoria, Seattle, and Vancouver. As he disembarked from the Ford Trimotor plane at Minoru Racetrack in Richmond, British Columbia, Taylor accidentally walked into a still-rotating propeller and fractured his skull. an observer remarked that "if he'd had an ounce more brains he'd be dead". The plane itself crashed on August 25 near Port Townsend, Washington, with no survivors among its seven passengers and crew, and the airline folded.

This was the basis for Gerry McGeer's 1934 electoral campaign, which obliterated Taylor's political career with the largest electoral defeat Vancouver had ever seen. McGeer was an old adversary of Taylor, having been the lead attorney prosecuting the 1928 police inquiry, and claimed in his campaign that he would eliminate the crime and corruption that flourished under Taylor's civic administration. Taylor unsuccessfully contested several more elections, but spent the rest of his life bitter about the 1934 election. He died in poverty. Taylor Manor, a senior citizens' home in East Vancouver, was named for him in 1946. It was renovated and re-opened in 2015 as a supportive-housing complex for people living on the street with mental health and addiction problems.