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Page 4 WEST VANCOUVER HISTORICAL SOCIETY November 1995 AND THIS IS THE WAY rr WAS The Hadwins on Mathers By Barbara Johnson, Contributions Editor The Hadwin family moved to West Vancouver in late 1914. They landed on these shores, debarking from the Doncella, one of the ferry boats in the early days of West Vancouver’s ferry fleet Why West Vancouver? They left Winnipeg because of Fred’s desire for a new life in the West Perhaps he inherited the pioneer spirit from his English parents. After selling their comfortable home, he loaded his wife and three children on to the C.P.R. and ventured, with the security of a job in Vancouver, to the coast. He had been to B.C. years before on a holiday and had fallen in love with the sea and the green forests and the possibility of an improved life style there. Janet had grown up as a farm girl in Manitoba, the youngest of ten children. It must have been difficult to leave her large family connections and friends to start life anew in an unfamiliar world. They spent time in Burnaby while Fred searched for his dream property. And he found it! A business acquaintance brought him to West Vancouver to see acreage at 11th and Mathers and he lost his heart forever to this wooded hillside. This was “The Place”. Weekends he would bring his son, Tom, and his small daughter, Barbara, to the property to work at clearing a space for a house. Then he found a house to rent at 11th and Inglewood, on the spot where St. Christopher’s Church now stands. All this to be near his spare-time preoccupation. How rustic West Vancouver must have seemed to city eyes. When they got off the Doncella, they had to walk up 14th Street, nine blocks to Inglewood Avenue. Here a planked wooden street led to 11th Street, then up the hill again to Mathers Avenue and acres of fir, cedar, hemlock, and alder. An intimidating prospect to tame and clear this wilderness. They moved to the rented house on Inglewood in time for the birth of their youngest child, Betty. Betty could not digest her mother’s milk or cows’ milk so they bought a goat, Minnie, and Betty thrived on this new nourishment. A few months later, a small home on Mathers and 11th, adjacent to their acreage, became available. They bought that and moved in â€" on their own land at last! Minnie was not needed as Betty grew so they bought a cow, Klondyke Olive â€" a black and white beauty much loved by the children. Janet milked that cow and the children delivered the extra milk to the neighbours. There were fruit trees of all kinds on the acquired land and room for a wonderful garden of raspberries, strawberries, loganberries, gooseberries, potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, and spinach. The apple, pear, cherry and plum trees kept healthful food on the table. Janet canned fruit and vegetables and made jams, jellies and pickles to store for winter use. Fred worked long hours at his lumber business while Janet did much of the farm work with the help of only her son, Tom. Much wood had to be piled for year-round use â€" trees chopped down, sawed into lengths, split and stacked in a woodshed. The wood range in the kitchen was the only heat in the house and needed much stoking, especially when the wood was wet, to keep the family warm and dry in this rainy climate. Janet and Fred resided here in West Vancouver to the end of their lives, at 87 and 95 years of age, never regretting their choice of home.