Draycott statue recalls
Lynn Valley memories

SINCE IT was unveiled at Pioneer Park on Nov. 1],

1986,

the bronze statue of Lynn Valley pioneer Walter Draycott
has become an increasingly well-loved focus of the busy
traffic intersection that borders the park.

The placement of the statue at
the corner of Lynn Valley Road
and Mountain Highway is the
culmination of Draycott’s rich and
varied life in Lynn Valley, which
began in 1911.

That was the year he visited an
Irish friend on the North Shore,
following a trip across Canada.
Instead of returning to England as
planned, he was persuaded to buy
three lots in Lynn Valley for $200
each.

“At least he said I had bought
three lots, but I couldn’t find
them,’ Draycott said in a 1979 in-
terview with the North Shore
News. ‘‘They were so far back in
the bush I couldn’t get to them.”

Undaunted, Draycott cleared
trees from his property, some over
nine feet in diameter, and built his
home by hand — he didn’t use ox-
en, the way some others did at the
time, he said.

“When you are young,”’ he said
in the interview, ‘‘you are not ex-
actly foolish, but you see things in
a different light. When I think now
of making a home out of this
bush...”

During his many years in Lynn
Valley, Draycott formed six school
museums and directed the Scouts
and Cubs, a geology club, a rifle
club, an explorer’s club in which
children combed the hills for
museum specimens, and a debating
club.

He was also a botanist, local ex-
plorer, stamp collector, author of
a book on the history of Lynn
Valley and a genealogist who had
traced his family tree back to 950
A.D.

When Draycott died in 1983 at
the age of 102, he was known by
many as The Father of Lynn
Valley.

It was three years later that the
district planner called Bil! Mac-
Donald, art coordinator of the
North Vancouver District School
Board, with the idea of creating a
pioneer’s sculpture to be placed in
the Pioneer Park planned for the
Lynn Valley/Mountain Highway
intersection.

MacDonald suggested Draycott
as one obvious choice, and pro-
cured then 19-year-old North
Shore artist Kevin Head to do the
sculpture.

**He’s probably one of the most
talented art students we've had in
the district for a long iime,”’
MacDonald said at the time.

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Head, who has since graduated
from Emily Carr College of Art,
looked at photos and a video tape
of Draycott and spoke to
Draycott’s next-door neighbor,
Edna Chapman, before he started

capture Draycott’s manner and
personality.

MacDonald recently said that
Head worked hand-in-hand with
another Lynn Valley resident, Jack
Harman, who donated his time to
do the bronze casting of the statue.
“‘He was really there day by day
with Kevin,’’ said MacDonald.

MacDonald also praised district
Mayor Marilyn Baker for her

17 - Friday, May 25, 1990 - North Shore News

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