Photo: My firs home [3575 West 26th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., CANADA]

There were five of them, 1947 — March 30, 1957:

1. Upper St. Georges in North Vancouver, a basement suite
2. 3575 West 26th Avenue, Vancouver, in Dunbar neighbourhood
3. The Mays Road farmhouse in the Cowichan Valley.
4. The White House in Chemainus, just inside town limits
5. The Green House in Chemainus, less than a mile South, outside town limits

Then we moved to North Vancouver in Marlborough Heights, where Mom and Dad lived from March 31, 1957 to some time in 1995.

The basement suite was in a white house on a northeast corner on St. Georges above Rockland Street. Mom told me they had to live there after they were first married because there were few places to rent at that time after World War II. This was my first home but only inside Mom’s womb. Mom and Dad eloped and married on October 3, 1947 in Bellingham, Washington State, after picking up two men on the street to serve as witnesses. Mom told me they couldn’t live together at first for lack of rental apartments. And it was sometime in November they found that place.

My grandparents (we calle them Nannie and Grandpa) moved back to Vancouver not long after the end of the war. Grandpa wanted to go back to work again. But he had become hard of hearing and found he could not succeed. They had lived at 47th & Marguerite from the early 1920s till Uncle George joined up and went off to war. At that time they moved to Cobble Hill, a quaint neighbourhood in Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. That is where Grandpa received the notice of Uncle George’s citation for the Silver Cross. Uncle George had joined up on his birthday, October 30, 1942; and was killed in action on October 22, 1944, 8 days before his twentieth birthday. Their new house in Vancouver was at 3575 West 26th Avenue. It has recently become in a state of disrepair and sold by whoever was living there most recently. Mom had told me the address and I started walking by from time to time to take current pictures.

Some time in 1947 / 1948, when Grandpa had concluded he couldn’t return to work, he asked Uncle Don, Mom’s younger brother, what he wanted to do. And Uncle Don said, farming. So, Grandpa bought the 365-acre Mays Road farm, and Nannie, Grandpa, and Uncle Don moved into the farmhouse. And they offered the house in Dunbar to my Mom and Dad to stay in. I was born in Vancouver General Hospital July 3, 1948, 9 months to the day after Mom and Dad married… so Mom and Dad must have been living on West 26th by that time. There is a hospital in North Vancouver where I could have been born if Mom and Dad were still living in Upper St. Georges. They lived there for less than a year.

When I was about a year old, Dad became sick and had to miss one day of work. And his employer, Pappas Furs, did not pay him for that day. While he was supporting a wife and young child, me. That made Dad angry, so he quit. And Mom and Dad moved into the farmhouse with the others. Dad would help Uncle Don to some extent. But at the same time he tried his luck at real estate, selling houses. He has told me he didn’t sell one house in that time, mid-1949 to mid-1950.

Then Dad started working in the sawmill in Chemainus, eight miles North. And they moved into the white brick house just inside town limits. It was small. But it had two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Adequate cupboard space. And a laundry room under which was an oil-fuelled furnace. On the driveway on the North side of the house was an oil tank. Dad built a white picket fence around the yard. He built a garage for the car. Mom and Dad made a vegetable garden in the back yard. Across the picket fence on the South side, and therefore not in town limits, was an orchard. And I was not allowed to climb on the fence and thus on the apple tree on the other side. I have many photos Dad took of us and various relatives who visited from time to time when we lived there.

Meanwhile, Dad started to build the green house about a kilometre South. In 1954 I turned 6 and was about to start Grade 1 and we were able to move in Summer 1954. By that time Mom and Dad were expecting their fourth child and we needed more space. We needed the bigger house: 3 bedrooms, unfinished basement, kitchen, living / dining room, kitchen nook where we ate most usually all of our meals. Wood furnace in the basement, carport, outside deck. LARGE field, small wood. Dad started a henhouse for eggs, but then a friend at work in the mill suggested he apply for a job in head office in Vancouver. In 1956 he had won the lumber grading exam in B.C.; and he got the job. We moved to North Vancouver on the March 30 / 31 weekend, 1957 while I was in Grade 3. My first day of school, of course, was Monday, April 1. April Fool! Some Grade 6 boy had pointed down at my foot and said, your shoelace is untied.

We shall see if I add more biographical memoir as the future unfolds. ThanQ.