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April 2001 West Vancouver Historical Society Page 7 AN INTERESTING BIT OF INFORMATION By: Dave Barker For those of you who may have attended West Van High at any time between 1950 and 1985, you probably ran into Mr. Jim Thomson, the Woodworking teacher. As a member of the WVHS he has shared many a story of that era at West Van High. One of them has to do with the old Shop and Home Ec wing at Inglewood. Have you ever wondered why it is situated below grade from the rest of the site? You have to go down a ramp to get into the building. It seems that when they were building the wing in the late 40's, somebody took the elevation above sea level incorrectly when they were surveying. The result was that the fonns for the building were set 5 feet lower than they were supposed to be. Nobody seemed to notice until it was too late. The result is that the whole building is 5 feet below grade. I would like to make this "An Interesting Bit of Information" column a regular in "History-Onics". But it will only work if you contribute the information. If you have a little bit of interesting information about West Vancouver, send it along to me: Dave Barker, C/o West Vancouver Historical Society 680 - 17th Street, West Vancouver, BC V7V 3T2 And more from Dave - West Van High 76th Anniversary Coming Up On October 28,1927, West Van High opened at 1735 Inglewood Avenue, the school still occupies that site even though the binding is gone. To commemorate this event, the school is planning a major celebration in October 2002, the 75th anniversary of West Van High at its present location. A committee will be struck this fall to organize this event and will be looking for volunteers and ideas. Keep an eye on this space for further information. A nostalgic voyage to a better time Hugh Johnston sent us this cutting of an article by Denny Boyd which appeared in the Sun edition of June 6, 1981. We publish a few extracts from it dealing with the old ferries. "IT DroN'T REQUIRE EVEN A mild Mayday on the marine distress band, but a boatload of 200 people disappeared into a better time Saturday. They emerged three hours later, glowingly happy, but curiously sad. The M.V. Hollybum took them over the rainbow and into the mists, to a time when there was no housing crunch in West Vancouver because there was much land and few houses, there was no Upper Levels Highway, filled with roaring Porsch turbos and menacing black vans, there was no Lions Gate Bridge, that car-strangled spanner that is our cross to bear and a bear to cross." ____there was no Upper Levels Highway.... "But in 1909, you didn’t go from Vancouver to West Vancouver on a whim. {Peppi's wasn’t even open). There was nothing much there but if you did have business or pleasure, you drove your car around the horn via the old Second Narrows Bridge. Or you went to the foot of Columbia Street, you paid 10 cents and you boarded a smokey little ferry named West Van 1 and you took a 22-minute trip through the Narrows to a pier at the foot of 14th Street in West Vancouver. It was another dime to come back, unless you were thrifty and bought a weekly pass, in which case you averaged about eight cents per trip. INITIALLY THE FERRY WAS privately owned, but West Vancouver, feeling the first twitch of urban growth bought the rights and expanded the service. Between 1909 and 1947, the West Vancouver ferry service had five boats on the line at any one time. Service was every 30 minutes in slack time and every 20 minutes in what they perceived then as rush hour. The old-timers say they were lovely little ferries. Early every Friday evening the departure dock at Columbia Street would be packed with young people and city businessmen, carrying huge back packs. They’d ferry over to West 14th and then hike up Hollybum. Sunday nights they’d come down again and you could follow their progress down the 22nd Street trail by their "bug lanterns", candles stuck inside tin cans and carried by hand. Anyone missing the last ferry Sunday night slept on the beach and got to work late Monday morning, wrinkled and unshaven. It was a different time." mill******* Many thanks to Hugh Johnston for sending this item in to us and to Denny Boyd for painting such a charming picture of West Vancouver in years gone by.