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Page 7 An abridgment of the May 21, 1980 interview of the late Jack A. Cruickshank by Rupert A. Harrison. *'H: In your story that you have written, you make mention of the formation of the West Vancouver Amateur Swimming Club. You were one of the charter members in that group? J: Right. H; Could you tell me something about the formation of that and some of the other people who were involved? J: Yes, a group of us campers, after we went to work and raised money to have the floats for the tank built, got the idea to form a swimming club. Dick Clarke was one of the residents and Gordy Vance and there was a fellow by the name of Charlie Reid that lived out at West Bay. There was a couple of the Alpha Gammas and then our group. Herb Ballantyne and myself and Wally Hunter. So, that was how we got the West Van Swimming Club started. Dick Clarke was elected president of the club. He was president for two years and then I followed him the third year. H: When this club was formed, I understand that the group was instrumental in raising money by donations from various businesses in the Dundar-ave area and you managed to have some floats constructed to make a proper floating tank? J; Right. We got the idea because the Dundarave Pier was so popular with the residents and campers and children. So, we decided to try to improve the facilities. Jimmy Duncan, the Municipal Engineer at that time was a big help to us. We went to work and canvassed all the residents and campers and business people in the area for donations. We gathered up quite a bit of money. Jimmy knew someone who could build the floats so we turned the money over to him. What we collected was a little short of what we required and I think that Jimmy got the Municipality to foot the rest of the bill. H: Then, from that time on, the floats were considered to be the property of the Club or the Municipality? J; Municipality. H: That's why then every winter the Municipality would tow them around to Fishermans Cove for storage? J: That's right. Jimmy Duncan, every year, arranged to pull them up to Fishermans Cove. And then, I think latterly, they were eventually towed down to the slough. H: The Dundarave Regatta existed over what period of time? J: I think it was from 1921 to 1924. It was four summers. H: Oh, it was more than that because I can remember coming away from the Dundarave Regatta in 1927 - the day that Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. So, it went until at least 1927 and it was a very, very popular event. J; Oh, it sure was popular. The first year we put it on, it was really a big success. We had seats built up all along the pier and on the "L". Then Allan Clampitt, captain of the tugboat "Progressive", arranged to bring in a scow and anchor it on the outside and we built seats on that. The place was just crowded. Oh, the first one was a big success - so that's why we carried on for several years. H: Could you describe some of the events that were part of the Regatta? J: Yes, we had swimming events for all ages from the youngsters -oh, eight to ten years old and twelve to fifteen and then older children and then adults. Then we had diving events. We built a one metre spring board diving platform on the north end of the floats and when we held the Regatta, we used to build a platform on the south end for three metre and five metre diving. We had contestants from the Vancouver Swimming Club, the White Rock Swimming Club and the Crescent Beach Swimmming Club and some of them were really expert swimmers and divers and they used to put on a beautiful exhibition. H: But, as I recall, there was a number of local people who did pretty well. Especially, I can remember in diving, Molly and Kathleen Edwards. J: Right. They were always competition for those other clubs. I think Molly won several prizes. H; There was one other event that always drew a great deal of interest. It was a comedy kind of thing. The greasy pole. J: Yes, we had a greasy pole. It seems to me that we built it on the north float towards the Clachan. I think the Chapman boys always took part in that. ‘ H; I know the pole was greased to make it pretty slippery. I recall that two fellows would get on the pole and wouldn't they try to batter each other with a pillow or something to overbalance each other into the water? J: Yes, something of that kind."