Elder College helps learn more about N. Shore history

IN WHAT is a nice inter-
relationship twixt archives
and college, we sperit a cou-
ple of interesting hours
recently rooting around in
our town’s past.

By Eleanor Godley
Contributing Writer

Sponsored by Elder College as a
free series, 60 or so eiders
gathered together in a room in the
colege’s new library building to
listen to North Vancouver
Museum director Robin Inglis
replicate the past with slides and
imagination.

The place you have to .start,
when you're trying to reconstruct
life as she was lived arcuad here a
couple of hundred years ago, is at
the waterfront, of course.

The sea and the many rivers and
creeks that fed it were the source
of transport, of food, of barter
and business, and thriils.

And the forest came right down
to the waterside.

The changes in the waterfront
since 1792, when Captain Van-
couver was prowling around, were
the main thrust of Inglis’ exposi-
tion, assisted with slides and
charts.

For us, now, the most signifi-
cant change lies in the extent of
filling that has taken place on the

’ foreshore.

4& The most significant change lies

in the extent of filling that has taken

place on the foreshore. 39

The old photographs show
wilderness mountainside meeting
muck, acres and acres of mudflats
that spread from the mouths of
the many streams,

That has all been transformed
with fill into building foundations,
the only area still in its natural
state preserved in Maplewood
Park beyond the Second Narrows.

The very first fill, described to
me by Capt. Charlie Cates years
ago, was the sawdust around
Moodyville mill. He played
around on it when he was a kid.

The mill workers had their
houses built on it to be handy to
work, and some of those mill
workers, he told me, came as crew
sailing from Hawaii.

The tocals called them
‘*Kanakas” — there’s a Kanaka
Bar on the old road up the Fraser
Canyon — and one of them

became our first policeman.

There was even evidence of
buried treasure.

Everyone speculated on’ the
visitors who might have come
ashore in these parts in distant
times, and when the Lower Road
was started there was a cut made
on the high shoulder of fand the
Indians called Chaith-Los.

The kids loved to slide down
this cut, though the truckers
weren't pleased. After one Icad
had been dumped, some kids
found $20 in gold pieces.

No one could say which truck,
or where its Icad had come from;
it was a once-in-a-lifetime ex-
eitement.

There are four more lectures
ahead of us every Monday
through to Dec. 6.

Call 984-4906 to nail down a
space. You'll enjoy.

. NEWS phote Cindy Goodman
AS PART of thsir winter fundraising activities, the North
Shore Museum and Archives are selling Christmas cards with
photos depicting life on the North Shore in the past. Here,
volunteers Joan Buss (left) and Margaret Lee are preparing
some of the cards for sale.

2 OFF.

reg. Price