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Page 4 West Vancouver Historical Society June 1999 SOCIETY NEWS CURRENT AFFAIRS AND NEWS OF GENERAL INTEREST TO MEMBERS Special Events Activities By: Laureen Jones Director, Special Events A special event is coming to Klee Wyck. This year's West Vancouver Harmony Arts Festival will feature a 2 day event celebrating the life of Dr. Ethlyn Trapp and Klee Wyck the house which she bequeathed to West Vancouver. The event consists of an exhibition of photographs and memorabilia from 1:00-4:00 pm and staged readings of the play "Water Under The Bridge" from 4:00- 5:00 pm on the weekend of August 7th and Sth.The play is set in the Capilano area during the early 1940's and features Ethlyn Trapp, Nan Cheyney, Ira Dilworth and Emily Carr. Reservations should be made early as seating is limited. Call Peggy Stortz at 921-7585 for reservations and further information. Our National Historic Site: Point Atkinson Lighthouse By: Don Graham When Edwin and Ann Woodward came ashore to take charge of the lighthouse at Point Atkinson in the autumn of1875 there were only a few human enclaves across the inlet. On the night watch they could see fires over at Khatsilano's village, and some time later smoke going up from the mill at the foot of Hastings Street, which gave Skid Row its name. From the lightstation today it seems as if everything yet nothing has changed. The forest, which Ottawa vouchsafed for a daymark and ready supply of firewood for the steam boilers, remains. The trees are an isolated memorial now that clear cutting up on Caulfeild has severed their last connection to the vast wilderness Captain Vancouver marvelled at when he rowed past in Discovery's yawl back in 1792, and named the point "Atkinson" for "a particular friend". Thanks to this marvellous happenstance of history, Lighthouse Park draws people by the thousands from all over the world back to nature. Our Society is determined to offer a chance to go back in time as well. We began by commemorating the work of all Membership Report By: Joan Skipper Membership Chair Welcome to the following new members of the West Vancouver Historical Society -Elsie Skidmore and David Barker of West Vancouver and Kjerstin Redden of Victoria. (Cont'd. from previous col.) Point Atkinson's keepers in 1994. Laureen Jones, one of our Directors, designed a plaque, now etched in stone and mounted on the granite portals of the station. In September that year. Society members, former lightkeepers, MPs, MLAs, the Mayor, Coast Guard brass and history buffs gathered at the fogbound station to celebrate Point Atkinson's designation as a National Historic Site. All the speeches were interrupted once a minute by the blast and grunt of the airchime horns. The last day of work for lightkeepers was April 30, 1996, bringing 120 years of continuous life-saving service to an end. Since then, a special project group was formed, headed by former and present Historical Society directors Helen Davies, Ian Macdonald, Peter Hall, Hugh Johnston, Don Graham and Gerry Kidd. They have been joined by James Delgado, Director of Vancouver's Maritime Museum, Dr. Murray Newman, founder and former Director of the Vancouver Public Aquarium, and Rod Day, Professor of History at Simon Fraser and long-serving West Vancouver Councillor. Our purpose is to restore, upgrade and improve the station, converting it to the definitive interpretive centre for the history of British Columbia's lighthouses and their keepers. Vic Stevenson, historian of the 15th Field Artillery Regiment is working with us to promote awareness of Point Atkinson's key role in Canada's coastal defense network in WWII. The Society for the Preservation of Antique Radio in Canada (SPARC) has offered to refit the abandoned radio room with period radio equipment. The University of British Columbia's Architecture Department assigned Elaine Naisby, a landscape architecture student to produce a landscape scheme for the site. (Cont'd. on page 5)