The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

September 2002 West Vancouver Historical Society Page 3 SCRAPBOOK This page contains scraps of West Vancouver's past - from personal memories, nuigazine or lU’wspaper articles, from stories tohi by parents atui grcmciparenls, aisojrom letters or diaries passed down through fcunilies. Local events are not necessarily made by community leaders only, hut by all who have lived and enjoyed being part of our comnumity. We welcome your contributions - an important, way to help preserve our history.. Here is anollier gem from Hugh Johnston. Many thanks, Hugh. Owning Mv Own Home By POLLOVGH POGUE Originally published in the Vancouver Province in the early twenties - from the Rupert Harrison CoHection, West Vancouver Community /Archives. "The site I have picked out for the log cabin I intend 10 build for myself in the mountain woods is a day's trip from a road and an hour's hike from the end of the Hollyburn roao, Tne cabin will be built as the cabin of tlie earliest pioneers were constructed, in a manner exactly as rude and simple. It will be impracticable to bring in, from the outside, any building material, except lime and cement, nails and window glass. These things will have to be backpacked by myself. Tlie woods will have to provide all the material. The sidehills and tlie creek bed will furnish the rocks and stone for the chimney. The tools will be axes, crosscut saw, hatchet, trowel, jackplane and a carpenter's screw auger. In this undertaking there is but one matter that gives me anxiety: I have no title to the land on which I am about to build my cabin. That someone has a rightful title to the land is beyond question. No land survey has been made here. I am sure that the location is still uncontemplated by tlie real estate dealers of West Vancouver. On the southern slopes of Hollyburn Mountain, the signs of the real estate agents are nailed to the trees, offering homesites for sale, blit 1 have seen no signs witliin a considerable distance ol the place where I am going to build. It is my hope that this place wilt escape the acute and penetrative perceptions of real estate dealers for a few years at least. Tliough the .southern slopes of Hollyburn are already subdivided into building lots as far up as die 2500-foot level, my location is on the nordiern slopes of the mountain, and I suppose that in such a remote place Uiere is no danger of real estate activity or homesite development for some years yei. My proposed site is a narrow valley between Hoilyburn and Strachan Mountains. There is a creek of pure cold 'water flowing Uirough meadows and my cabin will be enclosed by primeval forest. There have never been Dush-fires in this district and it is a part of the world uiuouched since the last geological upheaval, or since human history began. 1 might quote from Mr. Bunyan's 'Pilgrim’s Progress" a description of my valley: "Now diis valley is a very solitary piace; die prophet Jeremiali thus described it: "a wilderness, a land ofdesens, a larul that no man (ina a Christian) passeth through, and where no man dwells. " This valley of mine is as silent and lonely as Mr. Bunyan's valley, but there is no suggestion of death about it. It is a valley of green life. Over fifty varieties of wild flowers grow there, to say nodiing of die shrubs, vines, ferns, grasses and great plants we call trees. The birds of the mountain forest, and the larger and smaller mammals of the Coast range, all dwell there unmolested. The bears and the blacktaii deer, die big cats, the whistler (hoary marmot) the pika, the bush rabbit, the sooty grouse, will be my neighbors, the gray jay and the squirrels and chipmunks will come to my doorstep to be fed, luid 1 will hear the best songs of the Alaska hermit thrush and Townsend's Solitaire. I nave, during die last four years, camped in several places on Hollyburn. My camps were not more permanent than the tents which the well-known Arabs folded up in the poem. When my cabin is built, 1 will expect to live in it for the rest of my life. An old-timer of my acquaintance, who interjects Chinook words into his talk, advised me not to build my cabin so far back. "There's mesahehee bears in there", he sd\(i."Mesalichee" is a Chinook word that means very bad. When die Indians speak of a bear as mesahehee they mean that die animal is dangerous. This, to my imagination, places on my cabin site the proper and sastisfactory seal of distinction as a remote and wild fastness. Yet it is only six hours easy hikers pace from West Vancouver." "ED. Note: nullou(;h never fully re:ilized this clreuju of a really remote cabin site .... His Grst cabin vr:is at the old lire lookout tower ne:u "The Fork.s", and his final ciibin was at First Lake, in the nuddle of Grand Nat'nl " Poliough Pogue's Camp on Hollyburn - 1925 Pogue family: Pollougft Pogue (right back). Mick>' Pogue (cxjnire Micky later became Cliief Forrester. Pnnee Rupen Disirici. Hollyburn Heritage Society Collection:No. 210-20. Mr <4 Mrs Bakei