Making Vancouver is about the people of Vancouver, British Columbia. It traces the social transformation of the city and points out how Shaughnessy Heights lumber barons, Mount Pleasant trades people, and East End labourers were part of a complex society whose members exhibited sharp differences in attitudes and behaviour.

In Making Vancouver, Robert McDonald depicts a western city that was neither egalitarian nor closed to opportunity. Vancouver up to the crash of 1913 was a dynamic centre. The rapidity of growth, easy access to resources, a narrow industrial base, and the homogeneous nature of its population, the majority of which was of British birth, softened the thrust towards class division inherent in capitalism.

By distinguishing between two types of identity - class and social status - McDonald shows how middle and upper working-class residents formed a broad group of 'respectable' citizens that straddled class lines.

By contrast, those at the top of the social structure constituted a self-conscious upper class, and those at the bottom, the 'immigrants,' the transient workers, and the poor, were regarded as 'outsiders.' Collective biographies of four groups of residents - business leaders, social leaders, civic politicians, and labour activists - illustrate the nature of the social relationships.