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M E M O R I E S O F A W E ST V A N C H I L D H O O D IN T H E 30's by Richard Andersen M.D. I was born on July 4,1933 at the North Vancouver General Hospital, two years after my sister - Depression babies. My parents met at UBC, where mother starred in literature and father in football. Mother went on to library school at the University of Washington, but father had to stop UBC after two years of engineering to feed his family Initially, we lived at the top of Esquimalt Avenue, opposite what is now called Leyland Park on Sentinel Hill. We always called it Baby Mountain. In the park opposite, there was a rocky bluff with several small caves you could crawl into. VBb^ £A|p A. I was four when sliding the steep Esquimalt hill in winter. photo left) When I was very young, we moved to 1232 Esquimalt Avenue to my grandparent's small house after they moved to Quadra Island. I would spend many pre-school summers with them but that is another story I slept in the attic, where a rope was tied to the bed to be climbed down in case of fire. The house had a wood stove that remained very hot. One night when my father was heading for the bathroom in the dark, he photos supplied accidentally sat on the still hot stove-top. I can see him now, bent over while my mother applied Vaseline to his blistered bottom. On Sunday father would make waffles on an old iron contraption that sat over a hot stove opening. This antique now sits by our fireplace beside a copper bed warmer and a brass coal scuttle, reminders of a past era. Off our kitchen was a small porch, about ten feet high. One day we learned you could make a parachute by attaching a rock with strings to a paper bag. I launched it off the porch but held on and went with it, landing on my head. No damage. The area across the street was mostly all forest, from 11th Street to 13th Street and from Esquimalt to Inglewood. A friend Rodney Henriksen and I spent most of our time in these woods, climbing tall trees and building forts 20 feet up cedar trees. This alarmed the neighbours. Rod didn't finish school, but became a skilled stone mason. Sadly he died in 2013. I recall his father logging second-growth trees across the street and skidding them out with a horse. Sometimes when walking home from grade I at Hollyburn School, Rod and I would cup a bumble bee in our hands and see who would get stung first. From our house we could watch the Lions Gate Bridge being built and later hear the lookouts on the span shouting down to small boats going in circles in the fog below. No radar back then. The public was given a day to walk over the bridge before the cars were allowed on. Ambleside beach was close by and I remember sitting there and seeing a huge column of black smoke rising above Stanley Park as the C.P.R. pier burned down After the bridge was built, the family walked over Sentinel Hill and sat on the bank of Taylor Way and saw King George VI and Queen Elizabeth being driven up to see the developing British Properties. I recall their faces clearly as they sat in the big open car. page 6