What might this vague-looking document be hiding within its pages? What matter did James Ripley have to discuss with the City of Vernon in 1912? Despite its somewhat unassuming cover, this document — in actuality a set of letters and one all-important contract — laid the foundation for a service our city requires to function: garbage disposal.
Thanks to the dedicated work of our waste collectors, we are able to enjoy clear streets and fresh homes, and many of us often depend on their work without really sparing it a second thought. It turns out that Vernon’s garbage disposal beginnings similarly received little attention and relied heavily on the initiative of just a handful of individuals. One of the first was the aforementioned James Ripley.
On March 25, 1912, Ripley sent a letter to the mayor and aldermen of Vernon applying to scavenge and remove the city’s garbage for twelve months in exchange for $3300. It seems this initial offer was not accepted, as there appears a following letter (sent on the same day) which proposed a six-month work period instead and a salary of $1700. He was accepted upon these slightly altered terms, and the subsequent contract between the eager (or perhaps exasperated) Mr. Ripley and the City of Vernon explained his duties in plain terms.
He was to conduct sweeps every two weeks around houses and once a week around hotels, the hospital, and other businesses. Any refuge he found belonged in designated “nuisance grounds.” He was also obligated to clean privies and privy boxes between midnight and 5:00am, with specific instructions to close lids and doors afterwards. All wagons and other necessary tools were deemed Ripley’s own responsibility. The Vernon News announced his employment in a slightly demeaning phrase: that his “tender for scavenging was accepted.”
In 1917, another individual took over the job. Tommy Arnold was equipped with a team of horses and a drop-bottom wagon to clear the city, and although he bore the responsibility alone for a while, it eventually became a two-person job. The team dumped their waste near the windrows of Old Kamloops Road. Similarly to Ripley, they also dealt with human excrement (dubbed “night soil”), which was collected by hand until 1948 when new regulations required that every house be hooked up to the sewage system.
The hard-working team remained small even after the horses were retired to the BX district in 1930. Ten years later still, it was comprised merely of two trucks and four men in total, not to mention the fact that neither truck was closed-in until 1946. That year saw a major uptick in house construction due to returning soldiers, and the waste disposal team was thus reinforced with the generous addition of a single worker. The employee count increased at a snail’s pace until 1972, when the Vernon Sanitary Landfill opened for business on the east end of Pottery Road.
The history of our city’s waste collection revolves around a humble team of overlooked and outnumbered workers; there are few available resources about these individuals who took care of our community for so long. We can only guess at what their everyday life resembled, whether they took joy in their work, or how they felt about their role in the community. One thing is for certain: without them, Vernon would not look, smell, or function how it does today.
Rebeka Beganova, Museum Ambassador