Vancouver British Columbia - Sam Greer was one of the great larger-than-life characters in early Vancouver, and also one of the great storytellers.
 
How much of it was true is a matter for debate.
 
But they were definitely interesting stories.
 
When Greer died at age 81 on 5 Apr 1925, The Vancouver Sun reported in his obituary that "he was a Civil War veteran, enlisting in New York at the age of 16, and fighting two years on the Mississippi River."
 
It's unclear where The Sun's reporter got this nugget of information.
 
But it was probably bunk, part of the myth/legend that was Samuel Greer.
 
Greer was born just outside Londonderry in what is now Northern Ireland about 1844.
 
He left his homeland when he was 20 for Quebec, then set out for the California gold fields by ship, crossing Central America through Nicaragua and the Isthmus of Panama before hopping on-board another ship and arriving in San Francisco.
 
How do we know?
 
Because a writer named Noel Robinson interviewed Greer for a five-part series on his life in The Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser in March, April, and May 1915.
 
It's pretty wild stuff, detailing Greer's years in rough-and-tumble mining towns like Hangtown, "so named because the vigilantes had hung quite a number of people there."
 
In the late 1860s, he came to colonial B.C., arriving in Victoria when it "was more like a First Nations' trading town than anything else."
 
He then set out to make his fortune in the Cariboo gold fields.
 
In Greer's obituary in The Daily Province, it said he found a one-inch "pay streak" at Williams Creek near Barkerville and "recovered $8,000 of gold from it."
 
In 1870 he was one of the first white settlers in the Chilliwack area.
 
But he still had gold fever, leaving his farm to chase the latest "excitement" in the Peace River, Omenica, and Cassiar gold rushes of the 1870s.
 
Back in the 'Wack, he claimed to have been on the first passenger train destined for Port Moody.
 
Not the famous one that arrived in Port Moody from Montreal on 4 Jul 1886, an earlier one that had been sent from Yale to Port Moody in 1882.
 
The train had 14 cattle cars and one passenger car, with engines in front and back.
 
About five miles out of Port Moody, the train passed over a 75 foot high 500 foot long trestle bridge.
 
The cattle cars made it across, but the rear engine "pushed too hard and lifted the passenger car" just before it reached safety.
 
"The rear engine jumped the track and fell down the ravine for about 75 feet," Greer told Robinson.
 
"The passenger car, just as she reached the first point of land on the other side, rolled over, turned two complete somersaults, and then caught on a powerful stump, 50 feet above the Fraser River."
 
Incredibly no one was killed.
 
Greer wound up moving to the shores of Burrard Inlet and buying 200 acres of land off four indigenous people for a dollar an acre in Kitsilano Point in 1884.
 
Or so he claimed.
 
The provincial government gave the land to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) as part of a 6,000 acre grant in 1885 that brought the CP terminus to what became Vancouver in 1886.
 
Greer fought the CP's claim to the land, arguing he had a signed contract witnessed by the "Indian agent" for the nearby Kitsilano Indian Reserve.
 
But the provincial government refused to recognize Greer's claim to "Greer's Beach," today's Kitsilano Beach.
 
Greer set up a farm on the disputed land and planted fruit trees.
 
In 1891 the CP sent out crews to run telegraph and rail lines over the property, but Greer cut them down and ripped them up.
 
On 26 Sep 1891 Deputy Sheriff Armstrong was dispatched to evict Greer.
 
Greer ran to his house and locked the door, telling Armstrong, "Go away from there or I'll make it hot for you."
 
Armstrong announced that he had a writ to serve upon him.
 
Greer responded by firing a shot through the door with a double-barrelled shotgun.
 
Armstrong was wounded, and Greer was arrested and sentenced to 27 months in jail.
 
But he had a lot of public sympathy, and was released after a couple of months.
 
He fought the CP for the land for the rest of his life, to no avail.
 
Oddly, The Sun reported that when Greer died, "the bulk of his estate was in CP and Union Pacific railway shares."
 
John Mackie.