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A Child's View of 505 West Van by Derek Grant - from his autobiography 'Is1and of Dreams". Derek Grant is the twin brother ofHistorical Society member Don Grant. His recent autobiography "Island ofDreams" recounts his personal memories of growing up in the 1950S in West Vancouver and, more importantly, the family's experiences at their cabin on Gambier Island. This article wilifocus on his recollections of West Vancouver. In the 1940 S West Vancouver was an affluent bedroom community of single-family homes that stretched along the seashore and up the slopes of the North Shore mountains. The Village, the small shopping area along Marine Drive next to Ambleside Beach, lay several blocks downhill from our home on Inglewood Avenue. Its best attractions were McNicholl's Shoe Store, which, for a time, had an x-ray machine for fitting shoes; the Hobby Shop, which had a thrilling display of lead soldiers and model warships; and the West Van stationers, where we bought Hummel figurines for Mother as well as school and art supplies... At the nearby Odeon Theatre, 15 cents bought admission to the Kids' Matinee on Saturday afternoons. Popular fare included Tarzan and his chimpanzee friend, Cheetah; Hopalong Cassidy and his horse Champion; and my favourites; the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto. When I found out that the actor who played Tonto, Jay Silverheels, was a Mohawk from Canada, I decided that he was a better hero than the Lone Ranger. Two blocks west of the Odeon was the scruffy, family-run Hollyburn theatre that offered a matinee double feature of B movies for 10 cents. Horror movies such as The Thing, The War of the Worlds, and The Beastfrom Twenty Thousand Fathoms were their specialties. Vancouver's downtown was a mere twenty minutes away, but it involved driving across Burrard Inlet via the Lions Gate Bridge and through the huge, heavily wooded Stanley Park. This created a feeling of being isolated from big-city life. North of our home was a row of quiet residential streets, but after that, steep forested slopes climbed up Hollyburn Ridge, the boundary of a vast range of rugged mountains that ran north for hundreds of miles. I had a sense of being at the edge of the civilized world, on the threshold of hidden dangers and adventures. (pages 24- 25) On foggy nights -- there were more back then owing to the burning of coal and sawdust for home heating -- fog horns would boom out their warnings to ships entering and leaving Vancouver's harbour. Listening to their deep mournful sound as e lay in our beds, I felt safe, especially from attack by long-range Russian bombers. I'd heard on the radio that they might arrive at any moment and destroy everything and everybody I knew with their deadly cargoes of atomic weapons. My parents assured me that this would never happen, but I didn't believe them. My fears had invaded my dreams. (page 32) Across the street from our home was a wood lot of several acres identified on municipal maps as Hay Park. It would have been more accurate to call it a small patch of second-growth forest. Once we were inside the dense outer ring of salmonberry and blackberry bushes, the outside 'TtCHNCGLOR page 6 continued on page 7