4- Friday, March 12, 1993 - North Shore News

IMAGINE A ghost town so
ghosily that. even the ghosts
have left.

Dispiriting, isn’t it? Heh, heh.
Little joke there.

Think of i. A town believed to
have had the first electric lights on
the West Coast north of San
Francisco. The first telegraph link
in this area to the outside world
— by Western Union cable under
Burrard Inlet, just a few years
after the laying of the transatlan-
tic cable, and therefore close to
-the cutting edge of the technology
of the day.

And a town that was an eco-
nomic powerhouse in this region
— cutting more than 14.7 million
board feet of lumber of the 30
million board feet produced each
year in the 1880s, B.C.’s biggest
export business for some 20 years.

‘A town that doriinated Burrard
Inlet years before upstart Van-
couver was more than a gleam in
its pioneers’ eye. That in fact fur-
nished much of the lumber that
built Vancouver. That was the
sanctuary to which Vancouverites
fled in the great fire of 1886 —
their shoes charred with the heat.

Not to neglect culture.. The first
library — one of the famous
Mechanics’ Institutes for work-
-ing-class people — on Burrard In-
ki.was established here. The first
Masonic Lodge ~ Mount Her-
mon, now in Vancouver. The first
school. The first teacher. The. first
museum. The first golf course —
nine holes — set up not long after
the Iegendary St. Andrew’s course
in Scotland. And perhaps the first
tennis court, croquet lawn, and
one of the first pianos.

' ‘What remains'of all this?

_A water pitcher,

A beautiful crystal water pitcher
with a silver lip.

That appears to be the only cer-
tified relic left of this ghostless
ghost town — Moodyville.

As the traveller ‘‘from an an-
tique land” poctically told Shelley
of the kingdom of the once-

mighty and haughty Ozymandias: *

‘Nothing Leside remains.’'
Moodyville, where that

‘astonishingly productive lumber

+ Mill was in operation at least as
“early.as 1863, fell into decay
around the turn of the century,
seems to have pretty well declined
by the end of the First World

. War, and disappeared forever
around 1928 — under the site of

. the present Saskatchewan Wheat
Elevators in present-day North
‘Vancouver. .

In the end, Moodyville became

i

Trevor
Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES

‘Jandfill.

All of this, supported by
precious photographs that authen-
ticate Moodyville’s existence, is
the focus of an intriguing
retrospective at North Vancouver
Museum and Archives, housed in
Presentation House and entered
frorn 333 Chesterfield.

The display is open Wednesdays
to Saturdays from noonto5
p.m., Thursdays to 9 p.m., until

* May 16.

{t’s free, it’s well worth an hour
or more of your time, and it's
frustrating that more North Shore
people — people who tight § ne
absorbed in the history of Nazi.
Germany, or the glory that was
Greece, or the American Civil .
War — don't get.out to examine a |
little of their own local history. ;
Speaking of the U.S. Civil War,
think of it: when the Moodyville
“mill was first: known to bein,
operation, ji June 1863, Abraham
Lincoln wis American president,
and the Battle of Gettysburg lay
just weeks or days aticad. -

And,'as museum curator John
Stuart so well explains in a tour of
the display, Moodyville had some

_ great and even distinguished

characters.. !

Like Hugh Nelson, who built
what was known in the town —
population 400 at its biggest — as
the Big House,’ built in 1874-75.

Pictures show a gracious house
that was the essence of the Out- |
post-of-Emnpire style. It had a
fireplace brought from Ireland
and boasted the aforementioned
piano and tennis court.

Nelson went on to become a
member of the early B.C.
legislative assembly, an MP, a
senator, and a lieutenant-governer
of B.C., his name enduring in the -

ll of

irsts
wa
city of Nelson.

The town’s economic giant was
undoubtedly Sewell Prescott
Moody, called ‘‘Suc.’*

He bought the existing mill —
there were three successive ones '
on the site, the last 300 feet long
— for $6,900,

The first, by the way, also es-
tablished a first of its own: its
waiter whicel was salvaged from an
old paddlewhcel boat, probably
the first example of industrial
recycling in British Columbia, says
Stuart.

Technologically, Sewell was
right up to date. He built the
telegraph link in order to coax
and direct ships from San Fraa-
cisco to get their lumber from
Moodyville.

He suffered an odd fate. Trav-
eHing to San Francisco on
business in 1875, his ship, the
Pacific, collided with another ship

‘in the Straits of Juan de Fuca and

quickly sank.

A month later a piece of board
— displayed at the exhibit — was
found, bearing the written words:
**S.P. Moody all lost.’"

St’s a mystery how or when he
could have written the words.

And then there was Mrs, John

Peabody Patterson. She made a

journcy to the Point Atkinson
lighthouse to look after the light-
house keeper's sick wife.

The saga is told jn a short epic
poem by Nora M. Duncan
published decades later, in
Chatelaine in $936.

As Stuart points out, the
heroism of the venture is some-
what diminished by the informa-
tion, in the last few fines of the
poem, that Mrs. Patterson had no
medicine to offer the sick woman
— only prayer and, presumably,
her comforting hand.

Such are a few of the attrac-

_ tions of the museum’s well-

thought-out display.

One Moodyville first, however,
is not being pushed.

An 1882-83 directory states that
297 “‘men”’ lived in the Burrard
Inlet area. Years later, a pioneer
was asked: And how many
women?

**Mot enough to fill a big
rowboat,’’ he chuckled.

Probably that accounts for the
shanties in some photographs in
an area delicately named ‘‘Maid-
en’s Lane.”

Which, I suspect, was the first |
red-light district on Burrard Inlet. |

Somehow, that “‘first’’ goes
unmentioned.

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