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January 1995 WEST VANCOUVER HISTORICAL SOCIETY Pages AND THIS IS THE WAY IT WAS West Vancouver Characters Many unusual characters lived in West Van in the early days - some sheltering from curious eyes, many living cheaply “squatting” in old shacks in the woods on the hillside. As a small child I remember visiting strange old gentlemen in their cabins and being invited in for coffee and cookies. The coffee was strong enough to stand the spoon upright. I had to pretend to like the drink but it brought tears to my eyes. Mother would invite theses lonely old gents for Christmas dinner every year. I don’t remember even one of them being anything but kindly toward me. The one I recall best was Mr. Christie, who lived in an old cabin at the bottom of our garden at 11th and Jefferson Avenue. He had been a pianist and Mum asked him to give my brother and me piano lessons. This arrangement was shortlived. Mr. Christie arrived one day a little under the influence of the liquor he had imbibed. That was enough for my teetotal Mum. Below Inglewood Avenue on 11th Street the area was almost solid heavy woods, branches overhung the narrow road, and near Fulton Avenue was a small shack. Often, in my memory, an old woman would appear on her porch, always dressed in black. ‘The witch, the witch!” we would scream as soon as we saw her. The poor woman would brandish a stick at us, and we would mn. The fear was only in our imagination I’m sure. Through many years a very small man, well under five feet, kept Marine Drive well-swept, from Capilano River to West bay. With his pushcart and broom he could be seen faithfully gathering up debris in his cart. A strange sight in West Van was “Nature Boy”. This young man walked from North Van in bare feet. Shorts and a sleeveless shirt were his only attire. He never seemed to notice either the heat or the winter’s cold. And he always looked the picture of good health. Many remember the piper of the North Shore. He sharpened knives for his living, and he played his bagpipes when the mood struck him, even when the police tried to quieten him. A religious nut of some sect lived for some years in his shack above the B.C. Hydro substation above the Highway. Here he lived with a series of wives, sometimes several at a time. Some of them were gorgeous girls. The remains of his cabin still stand, almost taken over by the hillside growth. Our Chinese fish man was a character. Across his shoulders balanced a five-foot yoke of wood, and dangling from each end was a basket of fish on a chain. I can still hear his cry of “Flesh fish!” as he almost hopped across the bridge over our creek. He ran with his load, the weight bouncing in rhythm as he went. This lightened the burden, I guess. By: Barbara Johnson Our wedding present from my parents was a gift of a piece of property at 25th and Nelson Avenue. On this lot was a half-built three-room shack. It was roofed, had tarpaper on the outside. No walls inside. No plumbing or electricity. Butin those depression days of little money it was a life-enhancing start toward a home of our own. The best part of it all was that it was situated on a fast-flowing creek, Marr Creek. To reach the house from 25th street you would have to cross the sometimes roaring torrent on a “walk-on” bridge. We put in plumbing and electricity, blanketed off the bathroom and moved in. Due to the history of our place we might have thought the house haunted, but fortunately we were not thinking of evil spirits. Mr. Church, who had built the house to its present point was an old bachelor whose chief claim to fame was the “still” in the house. It was “still” standing in what would eventually be our living room. Mr. Church, poor gentleman, had apparently imbibed too much of his own product one evening and had fallen off the bridge. His head collided with a sharp rock on landing. This had precipitated his death by drowning. Neighbours had found him. We never knew the old man and we never used his still. It was taken apart and consigned to the dump. It took us seven years to finish our house, doing all the work ourselves with material from Dad’s lumber business, but we did it. As I lay on the ground last summer during our camping trip, looking up at the sky, 1 wished that I had listened to the wonderful lesson on astronomy when I was a young teenager. During one fall a Mr. Porter had volunteered to teach our C.G.I.T. group a bit about -in his words- the wonders of the firmament Every Friday evening we would set off with Mr. Porter to walk the beach front at Dundarave. We had been alerted by our elders to listen carefully, that his man was a fund of information on his subject Our intentions were good but Mr. Porter, a small grey-bearded man of what seemed to us very senior years, was very deaf. To enable himself to hear he had equipped himself with a hearing apparatus, not the modest unseen aids of today, but a huge black funnel about eighteen inches at the mouth, attached to a long piece of one-inch mbber hose. This end he would put to his best ear, while extending the funnel in front of each of our faces in turn, awaiting our speech. You can imagine the results. I don’t think any one of us managed a coherent remark. We were consumed by helpless uncontrollable giggles. No doubt it’s true that education is wasted on the young. ‘ Characters seem to be lost in the crowd in these modem days of dense population. In those days we enjoyed the unusual people in our village and remember them with affection.