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The twenty-fourth of May, Queen Victoria's birthday, was a big event in West Vancouver, with parades, races and Maypole dancing. For many years, Mr. Mitchell, West Van High's chemistry teacher, was the Master of Ceremonies. (I am the middle rabbit in the photo) The Jones family lived next door to us and the father ran a bicycle shop at 14th and Marine ( 5 cents for an ice cream cone next door). It was a thrill to ride on his float in the parade. Fred and Harry Jones ran the Westlake Ski Lodge on Hollyburn Ridge for many years. The quiet man who next lived in the Jones' house, who I used to talk to, one day jumped off the Lions Gate Bridge. Happier times were spent picking blueberries on Hollyburn Ridge. Before and after the bridge was built, we rode the Bonabelle and Hollyburn ferries to Gastown from Ambleside for ten cents and it was a thrill sitting on the upper deck as we cut across a big riptide which made the ferry roll. Later a good friend of the family was trapped below deck and drowned when the ferry sank after colliding with a CPR boat in the fog. Another big event was the Gymkhana Day when there was a tent pegging competition. It involved a row of men riding horses and carrying lances. While riding across the Ambleside grass field at a hill gallop, they would attempt to spear pieces of wood (i.e. tent pegs) stuck in the ground and pull them out as they rode by Although dating back to the 4th century and now a sport practiced world-wide, like the ferries, it remains a distant memory in West Vancouver. When my father left university, times were very hard but he found work on the Capilano Golf Course construction. When prompted by younger workers to ask for the minimum wage, he was promptly fired. Two weeks later there was a knock on the door. It was a man selling encyclopedias, the same man who had fired him! Such were the Depression years. Mother, at the time, wrote poems for the local paper for a few extra dollars. Esquimalt Avenue was very narrow in the '30's and a bus route. As pre-schoolers, we'd stand holding out long branches that would make the bus driver stop. Perhaps that's why the buses switched to Duchess Avenue? Just east of the present West Van Library, a creek formed a large pool and in this pool Rod and I would place a large can. Small fish would hide in it and then we'd quickly pull the attached string and voila, catch of the day It was by this same pool that one day, while riding home from play school in a Model A, I saw a wheel roll by and down into the creek. It was one of ours. I was quick to tell the driver. Once my parents took me to Dundarave for a swimming lesson. This involved tying a string around my waist and telling me to dive into the cold, dark, deep water. No way, Jose! Although I don't remember ever feeling disadvantaged, we were in fact very poor. There were few books and my only toy was a crude wooden boat. But we made do in other ways. A few houses down from us was a sloping empty lot with a huge leaning alder tree. An older boy (Peanuts was his nickname, but Corbett his last) attached the hauser from a freighter high up. Two of us could stand on the large knot on the end and swing 100 feet and back. Who needed toys? When I was seven the family moved to Ottawa for five years during the war. When we returned, the area across the street was being cleared and subdivided and houses were being built. One of the first ones, directly across from our own, was built by the Johnstons, a very nice couple whose young daughter turned out to be Ann Brousson, past president of the West Vancouver Historical Society page 7