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September 2001 West Vancouver Historical Society Page 3 AND THIS IS THE WAY IT WAS By: Barbara Johnston Our dear friend and and former colleague, Barbara Johnston, has not forgotten us. She and husband Hal are regular attendees at the Society general meetings and usually have interesting questions and contributions to make after our various speakers have given their presentations. At our Annual General Meeting Barbara gave the editor the following story from her long-time friend and West Vancouver resident. Marge Illingworth. Written in beautiful caligraphic script, we are delighted to share Marg's "Dream" with you all. I Had A Dream In the year 1920, my parents, 6 months old brother and I, aged 4-1/2, left Sussex, England for the long journey to Canada. My mother's parents had gone aliead in 1912 and settled in Vancouver, B.C. My grandparents were living in a house on Alberni Street near Stanley Park and they had a house close to theirs for us when we arrived. My father got a job in Woodwards. My father had always had an outdoor job in England and his health began to sufler so liis doctor suggested he move across the water to West Vancouver where he would get lots of fresh air on die small ferry as he went back and forth to work. So in 1921 we moved to West Vancouver and lived in a small cottage overlooking the railway tracks on Bellevue just behind where the Library is to-day. I remember one house on Marine Drive which they took down when the Library ... All this time i remembered West Vancouver. . . was first built, a doctor named McKechnie* lived in it when we were there in '22 and '23. There were lots of fields around where 1 remember playing with another little girl. A creek ran under a tresel near our house and one day 1 remember walking over it with my Dad and I dropped a kewpie doll I was carrying. It washed out to sea in a lovely green outfit my mother had made for it. Along the bank where we lived there were a lot of tents where people lived during the summer. 1 remember seeing men hanging min'ors on tree branches and shaving before going to work. 1 started to Pauline Johnson School in 1922. Tliere were wooden sidewalks then. My mother was expecting her 3rd child so she got two older girls to take me to the first day of school. I was scared stiff and the poor girls had to drag me kicking and screaming along the wooden sidewalk. I arrived at the school with a few splinters in my behind and a few bruises. * Barbara's Note: Dr Sainsby, not Dr McKechnie, lived in the house near the Library. 1 only went to the school for a week because I became ill with rheumatic fever and had to lay around for the next 3 years. In the meantime my father who rode the small ferry twice a day suffered greatly from seasickness and his doctor said move to Nortli Vancouver and so we left dear West Vancouver and moved close to the boulevard in North Vancouver. All I remember of North Vancouver was sitting on a swing on the boulevard and my father reading to me a lot. My Dad even got sick on the big ferries so back we moved to the same house on Alberni that we had lived in before. By this time it was 1924 and my mother had her 3rd daughter. I was 9 years old and in better health and was enrolled in Lord Roberts School. My father got an outside job driving a Cowans bread wagon with a dear horse called Fred. We moved a couple more times and I went to Van Home School and Beconsfield. Our neighbours in tlie last house were the Hitchcock family and Frank (Grace's husband), was in my room in school and liis sister Frances was my dear friend. In 1928 my Mum had her 5th child, another girl and my father got a good job offer in Chilliwack, so we moved there. PHOTO: Marge & Ken Illingworth Marge’s Dream House In the '80s: It has since been upgraded All this time I remembered West Vancouver and the sea, seagulls and ships and in my heart I had a dream that I might someday go back. (Contd. on page 5)