Part of the Port facilities. With the completion of fhe Panama Canal in 1914, there were optimistic projections for Vancouver's gateway role. Vancouver's representative in Parliament, H.H. Stevens, encouraged the Dominion government to build the first grain elevator to handle the expected traffic. The outbreak of hostilities in World War I slowed global trade, and so for several years the facility was derided as "Stevens' Folly." Once global trade recovered after the war, however, the facility quickly paid for itself many times over.