While baseball contests had thrived above the border in Vancouver since the 1880's… it wasn't until 1905 when baseball became a paying professional sport as two businessmen named A.E. Tulk and W.D. Haywood created the first baseball franchise known as the Vancouver Veterans (or as the fans and press liked to call them… the Vancouver Horse Doctors). The new B.C. based baseball team would play in the newly built Recreation Park… a rather large wooden facility on the corners of Homer and Smithe (see the Recreation Park Gallery for photos of that ballpark).