Walking tours give heritage perspective Martin Miilerchip dissistant Newsroom Editar mmillerchip@usnews.com WE are standing along- side North Vancouver's ICBC building. Your know the one: the blue building with all the pipes on the outside that covers lot of ground beoveen Esphinade and Jonsdale Quay. I truth, its a highrise chats been tipped over and lad tht because vou owt dnlt toet- ings for highrises on top of land. Not so very long ago the tide came in this far, Esplanade is called that because it used to run along the seafront -— the old North Vancouver Hotel that used to stand across the road between 1902 and 1928 (when it was dost to fire) had Water views. Things change, however. The | shoreline has gradually been filled in and extended over the course of the last 125 vears just like the fee of Lower Lonsdale continues to evolve in the face of a redevel- opment boom the like of which has not been seen for a hundred years. So it’s especially appropri- ate that the North Vancouver Museum has been running short walking tours this summer to give visitors and locals alike a reminder that while we build for the future, we build on top of the past. For the last hour the News has accompanied museum pro- gram assistant Frankie-Lou Fuller and a small handful of rourists on what she calls the Lower Lonsdale Lookabout. Straying no further than two blocks from the restored PGE (Pacific Great Eastern) railway station on Carrie Cates Court where the tour began we have been more than educated, we have been entertained. Fuller has degrees in history and archeology (“I'm a closet geek,” she laughs. “I live in the past.”) but her cheerful and exuberant presentation of a handful of existing his- torical buildings as well as photographs of others that have been lost to “progress™ brings history alive and gives us a real sense of how North Vancouver was developed. The North Shore's history is rooted in trees. The mill at Moodyville (towards the Second Narrows, approximately where the Saskatchewan grain elevator now stands) came first and a community evolved around it. ~The first shipment of raw lum- ber out of Burcard Inlec (bound for Australia) left from Moodyville in 1864. Moodyille had the first elec- tric lights north of San Francisco. It also had the first school, the first museum, the first library and the first, albeit shortlived, newspaper — the Moodyville Tickler. After Sewell — Moody’s death at sea in 1875 the mill gradually declined and became outdated and development shifted west, ‘focusing in 1901/02 around Swedish sailor Peter Larson’s -hotel. The North Vancouver Hotel was not only the community centre, it was a tourist destina- tion.“The ambitious city” was a phrase in use even before North Vancouver City was incorporated on May 13, 1907 around its centre of population, At one point it was hoped thar North Vancouver would be the western terminus of the National railway but thar went to Vancouver in 1886. North Vancouver did get a railway of its own: the aforemen- tioned PGE that was intended to open up the interior of the province to the north and was named after England's Great Eastern Railway. The inaugural run on January 1, 1914 saw a steam engine haul nwo coaches and about 150 passengers alony, the 16-minute run to Dundarave. The railroad finally arrived in Prince George 42 years later in 1956 after enduring years of polit- ical jokes made out of its PGE acronym: Provincial Government Expense; Puff, Grunt & Expire; Please Go Easy; and, of course, THE K above the Aberdeen Block’s entry- way stands for the origi- nai name: the Keith Block. THE restored PGE (Pacific Great Eastern) railway station on Carrie Cates Court sits no more than 10 feet from where it was built in the last months of 1913. Prince George Eventually. Meanwhile, another form of transportation was driving devel- opment on North Vancouver's waterfrone. Alfred Wallace began building ships in his backyard in 1894, bur with the coming of clectricity in 1906 he established Wallace Shipyards at the foot of Lonsdale, the site most people refer to as the Burrard Dry Docks. The original site was destroyed by fire in 1911, was quickly rebuilt and expanded again with the onset of the First World War, The first steel ocean-going vessel in B.C. was built here in 1907 as was the first ship to circle the North American continent, the Sz. Rach. Right in front of us is moored a ship at the centre of a heritage preservation. controversy: the Cape Bretan. Berween 1942 and 1945 Canada built 312 ships much like this one to transport men and materials across the Adantic to the war in Europe. Just over half that number were built right here in North Vancouver. The Cape Breton is the last survivor of what were collectively termed Victory ships. Although she never served in the war she’s had a useful career with the Canadian Forces but sadly has dete- riorated to the point that total preservation is not an option. She will be sunk as an artificial reef but fundraising efforts continue to try and preserve her engine, propeller and stern section before another part of our history disappears from sight. Leaving the waterfront behind us we walk up. Lonsdale Avenue, where the first street cars ran in 1906, to Esplanade. On Sunday. August 27, 2009 - North Shore News - 3 ooo SUNDAY FOCUS —— e’s past pe eee oe aay NEWS photos Julie Iversen FRANKIE-LOU Fuller chats to tourists during a Lower Lonsdale Lookabout — the walking tour she leads on behalf of the North Vancouver (Museum and Archives. Next to her is the sculpture commemorating Joe Bustemente, the logger who lost his arm in an accident and was hired by the city to blow a horn to guide ferries to North Vancouver through fogs made worse by beehive burners. the northeast corner sit’ the remains of Burrard Dry Docks glory days when the yards cov- ered owo city blocks. Across Lonsdale on the northwest corner was North Van's first commercial — block: the Syndicate Block which con- tained the city’s first grocery store, McMillan Grocers, and an upper hall that was used for dances and meetings. The Express. was also published here. Before the telephone arrived in 1906, the wharf men developed a system to alert businesses to the arrival of their goods: nwo toots on a horn for MeMiilan’s, three for Larson’s hotel, a long and short for the Expree office. The original 1903 building was torn down but the devel- opers have kept some of the original facade. Fuller, not a fan of “stick-on” heritage, admits she finds herself liking the way the new building works. Up the block ~— above Esplanade, on the east side, sits the building known as the Aberdeen Block (aiter Aberdeen, Scotland and the number of Scottish investors on the North Shore). In fact, the building was known as the Keith Block dur- ing construction in 1910/11 and you can sulf cee the K carved in the sandstone entry. The block’s most important tenant was Paine Hardware, one of B.C."s oldest continually operating, busi- nesses. As we reminisce about a business where you could buy a sin- gle washer rather than a bubble-pack of 24, development consul- tant Darryl! Inglis happens by and asks if we would like to look inside. It’s a sad experience: che fire chat killed Paine’s as a busi- ness tWo years ago destroyed much of the wooden timbers and fixtures that gave the store its character. But Inglis hopes to pre- serve the building's primary west and south facades. He hopes to tie in to the Bank of Hamilton building next door in order to pre- serve as much of the streetscape as possible. The Hamilton building stands as a monument to North Vancouver's boom years in the first decade of the 20th century. While the Aberdeen (or Keith) building is an example of Edwardian commercial design, the Hamilton’s influence is Renaissance Italian with its rounded entryway and the Greco- Roman detail on the facade and cornice. There are even nine (I think) gargoyles on the cornice that Fuller says were working See Ambitions page 13