IT WAS peanut.

What T mean, dipping into the pase last week was just a teaser. and having started to look through those vellowed pages | couldn't stop. Phe haunting went on — Miss fessie Faunt and her reckless hikes up the shingle-bolt flume in the Capilano: Pete Lar- son entertaining the city toffs in his fancy hotels; Mr. Caulfeitd leading the secession movement in West) Vancouver; the plans to build the University of B.C. haif way up Grouse Mountain. All thrilling stuff.

Besides Captain Cates, another invaluable source when it came to dredging up information about the olden days in these parts was Mr. Jack Loutet, equally fertile.

He had originally been the new-born District’s surveyor, ard had extended his community ser- vice to holding office as a coun- cillor, as well as acting as Reeve for the District, and then Mayor of the City when that division came about.

He had been in the middle of the big row about whether North Vancouver should be gridded on true north or magnetic north. Lonsdale and magnetism won, and if you stand at the southwest corner of Lonsdale and Esplanade and look up at the top storey of the building on the opposite cor- ner, you'll see the line that was originally planned.

It was he who lent me the copy of the Prosperity Edition of the North Vancouver Express,

like cating one

LIFESTYLES |

Give my regards to Lonsdale

Eleanor

THE VINTAGE VEARS

published in 1912.

This paean to the North Shore marked the almost hysterical peak of the rip-snorting boom that had gripped the local people, starting in 1907. Real estate development and general industry had thrived in all four wards, to the point where otherwise sedate and responsible people were heralding North Vancouver as ‘‘the future New York of the West Coast.”’

In fact, one article in the paper smugly noted that it took New York 20 years to accumplish pop- ulation-wise what North Van- couver had done in five! And that it had all come about without a railway connection!

What, demanded the Express, cannot be expected once rail is laid across the Second Narrows and along the foreshore? There

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were alreads 7.000 residents in the city, a LO-fold inergase in five years, and 2,000) more in’ the district. Lynn Valley was said to be growing at such a rate that another two or three years would see 20,000 residents.

The prognostications regarding West Vancouver turned out to be dead on. The area had been sepa- rately incorporated as a district just before the publication of this special edition, and was planning big things in the way of roads and services, 10 accommodate the future population. The influx of residents, the paper assested, would build “tier on tier on this beautiful slope.’* The role of lux- urious bedroom community had already been assigned.

The distinct climatic advantages of the North Shore were extolled thus: ‘‘Healthy? There is always a cooling breeze fresh from the sea and ready to put one in a swect humor after a hot walk. Paradise? No, sir, it is probably very inferi- or to Paradise, but its relation to Paradise is just about that of cleanliness to godliness.*’

The same article claimed that “Spring time opens three weeks earlier than in Vancouver, we have no frogs, and the elevation gives Setter air and consequently a more salubrious climate.”

That tendency to rather precious prose was typical of the day, of course. Referring to Lynn Valley, which possessed a fine, commodious concert hall whose stage was large enough to admit the planning of a two-day music festival under the adjudication of

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Sunday, August 26. 1999 - Nortn Shor2 News - 33

an import from Dublin, there is this boasts “hsynn Valley knows not stagnanes in any one thing.”*

The key to eversthing, the fairy’s magic wand, was the Se- cond Narrows Railway Bridge, which was taking forever.

Then, when it seemed to have tevived, it was a matter of cin- ching an actual railway from amongst ae tive of six nebulous offers,

There was also speculated a bridge from Port Moody to Turtle Point,

Some of this stuff sounds not too wildly improbably when it is revealed that a lot either side of Grand Boulevard or Lonsdale sold for five thousand dollars.

There are among us many seniors with long memories who have lived all or most of our lives on the North Shore, and whose recollections would be most enter- taining and enriching. It's always the personal view that makes his- tory enchanting. We need a Barry Broadfoot, before we forget.

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