69PaulLayard.mp3

otter.ai

Summer 2021

yes

Riley Donovan

69PaulLayard 2 - created 2003
Thu, 8/5 1:46PM • 31:02
Description: Paul Layard provides an interesting description of the Layard family, why they came to Salt Spring, the attempts of his father and uncle to build a successful boat works, the cabin business of the Layards, a description of being a schoolboy in the chicken coop school, Whittingham the teacher, and an anecdote about how the Trading Company began.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Layards, Paul Layard, boat works, cabins, pheasants, Huguenots, Bullock, Squire of Salt Spring, Salt Spring Island, farming

SPEAKERS
Paul Layard, Ruth Sandwell

Ruth Sandwell 00:00
My name is Ruth Sandwell, and today is July the 19th 1990. I'm speaking with Paul Layard, at his home at 960 Rainbow Road on Salt Spring Island. Now your family goes back a long way on the island. When did they first come here?

Paul Layard
In 1906, when my grandfather and his wife came out here.

Ruth Sandwell 00:25
What was his name?

Paul Layard
His name was Brownlow Villiers Layard. It's a L-A-Y-A-R-D, which is a different spelling than the normal scotch one.

Ruth Sandwell 00:33
That's right.

Paul Layard
Because it was French.

Ruth Sandwell 00:35
Oh really?

Paul Layard
It was originally "De Layard" I think, from where the little village that one of them once came from.

Ruth Sandwell 00:42
Ohh.

Paul Layard
They were Huguenots and they (unintelligible) the French connection, tossed out and went to England.

Ruth Sandwell 00:50
And so, your, he came here in 1906?

Paul Layard
1906, yeah.

Ruth Sandwell 00:55
Now, why did he come?

Paul Layard
Well, he was in the British Army, and he retired as a lieutenant colonel. He had served in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Malta West Indies, West Africa, and of course, England, and also in Ireland. And when he retired on a very minimal pension, he wanted to come to someplace where there will be some of the quote unquote amenities of England, namely the weather. And also, I guess he wanted to get out of England, he'd seen a lot in the world and (unintelligible) must be a good place.

Ruth Sandwell 01:34
Right. Do you know how he heard about Salt Spring?

Paul Layard
Yes, he met, according to a letter he wrote to his Aunt Fanny. He met some people in somewhere, it was Devon I think who said what a wonderful place Salt Spring was. And as a result of that, his two younger sons, my uncle Campbell, and my father Arthur Raymond came out here. Originally Campbell came out, was sent out first, to scout the land and see what, you know the lay of the land was.

Ruth Sandwell 02:07
How old would he have been at that time, your father?

Paul Layard
He was born in '88. So, this would be about 1905. So '12, 17, 16, 17 I guess, and my uncle would have been two years older. He would be 19.

Ruth Sandwell 02:27
So, your father first came?

Paul Layard
Well, my uncle came first and a year later, my father came.

Ruth Sandwell 02:33
Okay.

Paul Layard
And they scouted around, and they found this place, which is known as Riversdale. It was then 137 odd acres. And the name Riversdale came from my grandfather's home place in Ireland. He was born in Dublin, and hence the name Riversdale. And I guess they wrote back and forth, and grandfather and grandmother decided this was the place to be, and they came here. They came here in 1906, in July 1906. After a short stay in Victoria, they went up to Vesuvius and rented a cottage up there. And I have no idea where the cottage was. It may have been one of the old Bittancourt. I remember three houses Bittancourt built (unintelligible)

Ruth Sandwell 03:29
That's right, the dowry houses.

Paul Layard
It might have been one of those I don't know. And came down here by rowboat. And in the meantime, uncle and dad were clearing the land.

Ruth Sandwell 03:39
So, they'd already bought the land at the time when your father, your grandfather and grandmother had arrived.

Paul Layard
Yes, they had, they had bought it.

Ruth Sandwell 03:45
Who did they buy it from?

Paul Layard
I believe it was one of the Bittancourts, now which one I don't know. And he had been here before because back in behind the old house now which was a forest then, it was cut down, but the time they came here Mr. Bittancourt whichever one he was growing potatoes in there, and it's all cleared potato field.

Ruth Sandwell 04:07
Oh really?

Paul Layard
And I can remember it with you know (unintelligible) trees five or six feet high, and then they corkscrew up (?) and then the Stacys have cleared them off. So, they had some open land here. Anyway, they (unintelligible) a place in New Westminster. They found a prefabricated house and had it shipped over here by barge

Ruth Sandwell 04:30
Into Booth Bay?

Paul Layard
No, right where the house is now, in there, and I remember dad telling me that they had one tide in which to unload it. So, they unloaded all the material for a house.

Ruth Sandwell 04:42
Oh gee, would they've had help from others or just from the family?

Paul Layard
Sometime along there, I'm not sure when, but grandfather had two Japanese people working for him whose names I don't know. But they were here for the whole time that Grandfather was in the island.

Ruth Sandwell 05:01
Oh, really, they were working for him the whole time?

Paul Layard
Working for him, yes. And they were in effect chore boys and so on. It might be interesting to read grandfather's description of... (noise).

Paul Layard
As I mentioned earlier, he had written to his aunt Fannie who I don't know, but he talks about his life on the island. And he said, I bought this place which is referring to Riversdale. My two sons, Campbell and Raymond, my uncle, my father, he stayed in the cottage near Vesuvius, now at the present I'm afraid I'm repeating myself. We moved in the end of April 1907. And I've gone on finishing the house, building chimneys and putting up ceilings and floors etc. It is now good, comfortable, commodious, and pretty, facing west and close to about 50 feet above the water, a glorious lake like sea and (unintelligible) like mountains in front and around. They climb in a very superior Isle of Wight character and a mild winter and a fine foliage. So anyway, they lived there, they built a barn and they had chickens, cows, a pig and a horse called Robin. At that time, they had to clear a road from here to what is now known as the canal bridge on Canal road. There was no government road there at all. And I'm not sure what sort of a bridge there was there. However, their main, if you want to call it communication, was going from here across Booth inlet or Booth canal, and across what is now (unintelligible), the Bay Window, across the Bay Window property there and going up to Central. And the reason they went up there, or two reasons that they went up there. One was that the post office was at Central and in order to get their mail or send mail out, they had to go there. And secondly, that the sister of my grandmother, Evelina, had married a man called Milner Crow, and Milner Crow's daughter was Ethel Crow, obviously, but she married Norman Wilson. Son of the Reverend Wilson, and hence they had a close family tie with Barnsbury. So, there was a lot of movement back and forth between here and Barnsbury.

Ruth Sandwell 07:34
Of course, Barnsbury was right where the golf course is now.

Paul Layard
Yeah, Barnsbury is the where the present golf course, and when it was first formed, the golf course was first formed, Norman Wilson ran it. And the first clubhouse was the old Barnsbury house, but that burnt down.

Ruth Sandwell 07:40
When did that burn down, do you know?

Paul Layard
I'm not sure it was in the late '50s, early '60s.

Ruth Sandwell 07:57
So, you would remember that?

Paul Layard
Oh yes, very well, yeah. So anyway, they used to travel across there. And there's one amusing story about that. And I believe this is factual. And originally, the land across the north side of Booth canal belonged to one of the Mouats. He then sold it to Ernest Crofton, and Ernest Crofton's wife Mary actually was a Bullock. (Unintelligible) Harry Bullock's sister. And another man called Baker, a Dr. Baker, and his brother lived a little bit further East. And somewhere along the way, grandfather had a fight with them. And he had, I guess, a blazing row because they did not want him or any of them going through the property. And when the smoke of that had died away, he had signed a contract with him, and I believe it was for $1 a year to allow them walking right through the property. However, he got his own bag, or grandfather did a little bit later on, because Ernest had built a summer cottage down in what it is now, I think it's Erskine Heights, down in Cranberry Bay, down there, had built a summer cottage and, with trails all the way. And in order to get from the far side of the canal down to the summer cottage, he either had to row or come through grandfather's property. So, grandfather had him over a barrel. And I think eventually they sorted this out. They were they were friends, but should we say when it came to real estate, they were enemies. So that's just an aside from that. Anyways, as time went on my grandfather and my uncle and dad cleared the place, enough to keep a cow on it and so on. They had very little money. So, dad and uncle had to go out and work around the farms and so on. But unfortunately, grandfather was of the old school time, and he felt that the boys had to be home for tea at four o'clock. And so, you had cases where there was rain coming up, the hay was being piled, not in the barn. And dad and uncle had to say I'm sorry, we have to go home to tea. This did not make them too popular with the people they were working for.

Ruth Sandwell 10:29
I was just gonna ask what your grandfather was, did he just keep himself busy clearing the land or?

Paul Layard
Well, he was a member of the royal Geographical Society and had a great interest in weather, kept a permanent record, a barometer, temperature, prevailing winds etc. He was very interested in fishing and hunting and did a lot of mainly bird hunting. The boys used to hunt deer, I'm sorry my uncle and my father used to hunt deer, but he was interested in bird hunting and fishing.

Ruth Sandwell 11:03
What kind of birds would they hunt here?

Paul Layard
At that time, there were all sorts of grouse, Willow grouse, Blue grouse. They had some pheasants, somebody years ago started importing pheasants in the island. And I know from things I've heard, there were pheasants here, maybe not that many. Although later on, in the 30s, we had pheasant all around the place here.

Ruth Sandwell 11:27
Really? Are there any here now? I don't think I've ever seen one here.

Paul Layard
I haven't seen, the last pheasant I saw was down the Fulford road about three weeks ago. And I haven't seen, that was, one in three years or something. A big cock pheasant on the road.

Ruth Sandwell 11:39
Huh, yeah, I haven't seen one.

Paul Layard
So, he basically, and the other thing that they kept him busy with, he was what he proudly called the head of the family, the senior branch of the Layards. And as such, he kept tabs on everybody with a Layard name. And apparently wrote many, many letters and received many, many letters back and forth, keeping in touch, and so on.

Ruth Sandwell 12:04
Was the rest of the family back in, in England?

Paul Layard
Well, he was an only son, and I had one other uncle who joined the Royal Navy and stayed in England, and he never came out here. But these would be from his father's, his grandfather's children and other branches of the family, and in his diary all the way through you see references to so and so's birthday or so and so had died or so and so had children, little snippets there.

Ruth Sandwell 12:35
So, he really kept in, really kept in touch.

Paul Layard
He kept in touch, yeah. He was also a member of the Huguenot society, in England. And the first president was a, an uncle I guess once removed of his, no it wouldn't be an uncle it would be a cousin once removed of his who formed the Huguenot society. And he was then very much interested in it and wrote several papers on it. So again, that kept him busy with, interest of basically what happened to his family after they came to England, because they had spread out and of course after marriage, girls change their names and so on. But he was very interested in following it.

Ruth Sandwell 13:27
So, do you have those, those journals with the, you know, with the weather and things like that?

Paul Layard
As far as the journals are concerned all I have is one that he started in 1912 and finished in 1919. He died in '24. But the last few years, he was getting a bit shaky there.

Ruth Sandwell 13:48
What about your grandmother? Was she alive for most of?

Paul Layard
She died in 1945?

Ruth Sandwell 13:55
Oh really?

Paul Layard
That's right, and I can remember grandfather. Very vaguely, but grandmother I knew fairly well.

Ruth Sandwell 14:03
How did she like life out here? It must have been quite a change.

Paul Layard
Well, I think she enjoyed it very much because she became, she was a person who was involved in you might say social work. And she was one of the founding members of the Sunshine Guild here, which was the predecessor of the Hospital Auxiliary. And with Dr. Beech and Dr. Baker, and another group, of the names, I don't know the names, but they're a group of them. And they started the hospital up in the hill, which is now the community centre.

Ruth Sandwell 14:35
Right.

Paul Layard
And they got that built.

Ruth Sandwell 14:38
So, do you know what kind of things the Sunshine Guild would do?

Paul Layard
Well, they were like, the same as the Hospital Auxiliary. In other words, they raised money and they pushed people to get hospitals built and pushed the politicians and so on and got it built, (unintelligible) it was built basically with donated land from I believe Dr. Beech and the timber and everything else was donated, and the construction work was as a community project and I don't think very much money went into it, I think it was mostly donated.

Ruth Sandwell 15:12
What year was that? Do you remember what year the first Lady Minto was?

Paul Layard
That, I think if you go back about three years ago, they had the anniversary of it, four years ago? Maybe longer, I think about they started about 1912.

Ruth Sandwell 15:30
So that would be when you're when you're grandfather...

Paul Layard
But in, in the Driftwood then, and Ivan Mouat was responsible at that time for putting all this stuff together, they had quite a long history of it, including the first baby born, who I believe was still alive at that time. And they had some of the original, not original nurses, the nurses with nurse stuff there, back for this reunion. But again, the date escapes me.

Ruth Sandwell 15:56
Yeah, I can't remember offhand either. So, with your, what happened to your to your grandparents when the first world war came?

Paul Layard
Well just before that, my father had been back in England and got his degree in mechanical engineering. And he and my uncle Cam, the one who was out here, decided that there was nothing on Salt Spring for them, and they better start a boat works. And they moved down to the Deep Cove, not the one in over in Vancouver, the Deep Cove in the Saanich peninsula. And where the present deep cove government wharf is, they built a boat building shop, a marine railway, and so on.

Ruth Sandwell 16:38
So your, your father went back and did his degree first and then returned?

Paul Layard
Came back after, and they built this. And then of course, 1914 came. And my father and mother were married in St Mark's church in 1914, summer of '14.

Ruth Sandwell 16:55
How did they meet?

Paul Layard
Now this, again, I'm not too clear on this. But I mentioned the Barnsbury and the Wilsons in there. And through some connection, and I'm not sure what it was. They, in the back of my mind I can vaguely think of it. My mother came out to stay at Barnsbury.

Ruth Sandwell 17:16
From England?

Paul Layard
From England, yeah. And dad met her there. And then she left and went back to England. She had a (unintelligible) degree at Cambridge, or got one then, I think, during that time. She must have it before. And then, went on her, round the world trip. And dad in the meantime, had become engaged to her. And I have his letters to her. Which I've been, shall we say, deleting the warmer parts.

Ruth Sandwell 17:54
So, what did she, before she got married, she went around the world, how did she go?

Paul Layard
Well, went by steamer, obviously. But she had friends in South Africa, people who've been at Cambridge with her, went to see them. And also, she had a cousin in Australia and went out to see her. Or she went to South Africa, first of all, then Australia, and then across the Pacific, came back to Salt Spring. And they were married here. But in the meantime, these letters were, you know, going around the world. And interesting enough, even in England when she and dad were both in England at the same time. And this was after they're engaged. He would see her and because of the proprieties I guess the word is he had to sort of leave by 10 o'clock. Yeah, couldn't stay any longer than that. He'd go back to his digs, as they called them, and would write her a letter, post it in the 11 o'clock pick up at night. And she would have it by eight o'clock next morning. So anyway, they built this boat works and so on, and grandfather and grandmother moved, built a house in deep Cove, which is still there and moved down there. And then...

Ruth Sandwell 19:15
So, what did they, they just kept their property here, correct?

Paul Layard
This was just left, the door was left open. And when we came back here in 1930 there was a little bit of dirt in the house and so on, but no windows broken, no vandalism, bits and pieces of equipment had been left here. Still there.

Ruth Sandwell 19:35
Isn't that amazing. So, was the house actually empty for all those?

Paul Layard
On and off, it was rented a couple of times, but basically it was empty. It'd been used by people who got stranded or something like that. But they cleaned up afterwards. There wasn't a windowpane or anything else broken in that, or from 19 obviously 1914 I guess end of '14, yeah, 1930.

Ruth Sandwell 19:59
So, when your father was, started the boat works, what year would that have been?

Paul Layard
Well, they started in 19, looking at about 1913 finding land and so on, and then 1914 moved down there from here.

Ruth Sandwell 20:16
Right

Paul Layard
So, dad and mom were married here and went down for just about the time they married they moved down and, and dad went and mom went to England in 1915.

Ruth Sandwell 20:31
And your uncle?

Paul Layard
My uncle went to England in 1916.

Ruth Sandwell 20:35
So that was for the war obviously.

Paul Layard
So, the boat works was just sort of left, and after the war they came back and got it going again. And by 1930 they were selling a gallon of gas on credit a month. You know, that was about it, and decided there was no future in it. So, they came back up, mom and dad came back up here and established rainbow beach camp, they were putting these cabins up, and ran it as a camp, a summer camp for cabins.

Ruth Sandwell 21:05
So, did they live in the main house? So, it was over on that part of the property? And did you still have that the property was all still intact then whatever your?

Paul Layard
Well, the 30 odd acres there was intact, the rest of it had been subdivided and a few lots have been sold. Right, the next-door neighbors but one the Jenkins had borrowed a place, and two other, two other places, I guess built down there. One was Ivan Mouat's, lived there. And another one who is a, so he'd be a stepfather of En (?) McCallum's wife. You know En (?) McCallum, he (unintelligible) here. But anyway, yeah.

Ruth Sandwell 21:52
The name's familiar yeah.

Paul Layard
They had a place down there. And that was about all, and then later on my brother Don built a place a little bit further down. And my sister Louise and her husband Adrian Wolf Miller built a cabin on the point down here. Just a summer cabin basically. The main reason being he was a surveyor and he had to get away from the telephone, I guess. People would call him on the cheap rates, you know all night long. And so, he'd come down here for the summer.

Ruth Sandwell 22:28
Well, that must have been what when you had the resort and the how many cabins were there?

Paul Layard
There were eventually 10.

Ruth Sandwell 22:36
So, people would come out for holidays.

Paul Layard
Yeah.

Ruth Sandwell 22:38
Where would they come from? Mainly?

Paul Layard
Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary. Various other places, often Victoria, Vancouver.

Ruth Sandwell 22:53
Would you have the same people coming back?

Paul Layard
Year after year, in fact, the third generation.

Ruth Sandwell 22:57
Oh really.

Paul Layard
Yeah, when the Stacys had it there were third generations coming back here.

Ruth Sandwell 23:01
Wasn't that wonderful. So how long did your parents have the cabins then?

Paul Layard
Well, they came back here in 1930 and sold it in 1963, to the Stacys. And the Stacys continued to run the camp as a camp til' quite a bit later and then it was sold into a consortium of 10 people, people who had had the cabins for a while and liked it. And so now they have a communal (unintelligible) beach and the field there and then they own their own, their own little cabins. Some of them are original still, and some of them have been torn down and replaced.

Paul Layard
And there's one there I know, one called Roma. There which my mother over rented, we didn't have a cabin. And during the time she had rented this and the time the people came, we built it. And it is still there but it shouldn't be, this was 1934 or so or '33, it shouldn't still be there. The outside staircase fell off about two years ago I think they had to replace it. Because of the speed at which we had to build it we couldn't get windows, it was two-story, for upstairs we put shutters on and they're still using shutters no windows.

Ruth Sandwell 23:51
Yeah.

Ruth Sandwell 23:57
Oh, really? So, what about yourself you must have, how old were you when you came back here in the '30s, you must have been a teenager?

Paul Layard
I'd be thirteen, so I went to high school, my last year of high school was here. I was fourteen when I went to high school here.

Ruth Sandwell 24:50
So which school would that have been?

Paul Layard
Well, we only had one high school, and people don't believe me now. But it was in the old chicken coop where they used to show chickens. And as you probably know, that was the agricultural grounds there.

Ruth Sandwell 25:04
Right.

Paul Layard
And in the winter, they used chicken display box.

Ruth Sandwell 25:09
Is that done by Mahon Hall (?) down there?

Paul Layard
Right, it was almost by Mahon Hall, it's gone now. And we had one teacher, he had one leg. And he taught four grades: nine, ten, eleven, and twelve, all subjects in one room. And there were some thirty odd maybe twenty-five, thirty I guess, students there and the amazing part is we had to write the provincial government exam. And, for grade twelve, and there were seven of us in the graduating class. Six of us passed every subject and one had one supplemental.

Ruth Sandwell 25:50
That's amazing, isn't it?

Paul Layard
He was, I think he bought supplies himself. He had one of those old purple reproduction machines.

Ruth Sandwell 25:57
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Paul Layard
Jelly, jelly pads. And every morning we were given a sheaf of papers for the work we had to do, and maybe twice during the day, he would come and take whatever subject was, in the meantime we worked on our own.

Ruth Sandwell 26:14
Do you remember his name?

Paul Layard
It is Whittingham, I'm sure it was Whittingham.

Ruth Sandwell 26:19
But do you know who built, who built the hotel? Was it with the money from the Trading Company or?

Paul Layard
(recording stops for a while, then resumes) Twelve. The background on this, that time, the Mouat's had taken over the Malcolm and Purdy store and ran the Mouat's store where it presently is. Mr. Bullock, who is known as the Squire of Salt Spring was a staunch conservative, the Mouats were liberals. And although they were friends away from politics, when it came to politics, they were bitter enemies in this. However, Mr. Bullock is alleged to have gone to get something from the Mouats and he fell afoul of them. In what way I don't know. And I now quote from a letter my father wrote to my mother. He said the store, the trading company, was not open when I heard they don't seem to be able to get carpenters and everyone is starving so they can give a big order when it opens. The Trading Company was built by Bullock after we had a row with the Mouats. And as I said before, Bullock was a conservative and the Mouats were liberals. Grandfather invested $600 in it and became a director. So, that then turns up again later on when the Ganges hotel was built sometime a little bit later, and that is where now the Island credit union is. They built this Ganges hotel and there was a lot of argument going on and the Mouats, who at that time, ran a boarding house beside the Mouat store, apparently did not want it. So that when the hotel opened, the business of the hotel automatically went to the trading company which at that time had been opened. It was an interesting sidelight on Salt Spring.

Paul Layard
No, the Trading Company was built by Bullock and who built the hotel? I don't know, but it was burnt down, didn't last very long. The only other thing of interest the hotel is that grandfather and grandmother, to pay back their social responsibilities if you want to call it that decided to throw a dance there. And the exorbitant cost including sapper was 50 cents per person. And I believe that included some form of orchestra. Times have certainly changed, and dad records in his letters to my mother that he was conned into sending out invitations, writing them out and stamping them and posting them to it and he also said he recorded it was either white flannels or white tie at the dance and this was in July. So, they used to dress (unintelligible), I guess from England I'm not sure but they apparently, a lot of them had evening clothes and they used to wear them even though going down by horse and buggy in the rain. And later on, dad records going down, dressed up to one of these affairs somewhere dressed up, in his white tie and the car broke down in the rain and they had to change two tires. He must have been a very interesting individual who turned up at the dance! (unintelligible)

69_Layard-Paul.mp3

otter.ai

24.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hi. My name is Ruth Sandwell. And today is July the 19th 1990. And speaking with Paul Laird, at his home at 960 Rainbow Road on Saltspring Island.

Unknown Speaker 0:14
Now your family goes back a long way on the island. When did they first come here in 19 106 When my grandfather and his wife came up here

Unknown Speaker 0:27
his name was brown, no fillers.

Unknown Speaker 0:30
Here, the different spellings and the normal Scotch because it was French. We originally did a yard I think from a little village. One of them ones came.

Unknown Speaker 0:43
They were

Unknown Speaker 0:47
tossed out. wintering.

Unknown Speaker 0:51
And so your he came here in 1906.

Unknown Speaker 0:55
Now, why did he come?

Unknown Speaker 0:58
Well, he was in the British Army, and he retired Colonel

Unknown Speaker 1:05
Singapore,

Unknown Speaker 1:08
West Indies West African coast

Unknown Speaker 1:12
and also in Ireland. When he retired on a very minimal print.

Unknown Speaker 1:18
He wanted to come someplace where

Unknown Speaker 1:21
some of the quote unquote Amina things.

Unknown Speaker 1:25
made me aware that

Unknown Speaker 1:28
Las Vegas we want to get out of England

Unknown Speaker 1:35
you heard about Saltspring? Yes, he met

Unknown Speaker 1:42
he met some people and somebody

Unknown Speaker 1:46
said what a wonderful place sounds.

Unknown Speaker 1:49
As a result of that

Unknown Speaker 1:52
is two younger sons.

Unknown Speaker 1:55
My uncle

Unknown Speaker 1:57
and my father after Raymond came out.

Unknown Speaker 2:00
Recently Campbell first discovered the land

Unknown Speaker 2:06
with the lay of the land, how old would have been at that time.

Unknown Speaker 2:13
He was born in 88. So this would be about 1905.

Unknown Speaker 2:17
So 17 1617

Unknown Speaker 2:22
and my uncle would have been two years old.

Unknown Speaker 2:26
The 90 Day father first came from my uncle came first and a year later my father came

Unknown Speaker 2:34
and

Unknown Speaker 2:35
scouted around and they found this place which is known as Riversdale 137 Odd acres.

Unknown Speaker 2:44
The name refers to came from my grandfather's home place in Ireland.

Unknown Speaker 2:49
He was born in Dublin

Unknown Speaker 2:52
named Riversdale.

Unknown Speaker 2:54
And I guess they wrote back and forth grandfather and grandmother decided

Unknown Speaker 3:00
and they came here

Unknown Speaker 3:09
came here in

Unknown Speaker 3:11
1906 in July 1906.

Unknown Speaker 3:16
I'm sure today in Victoria, they went up to the service and rented a cottage up there. I have no idea where the cottage was

Unknown Speaker 3:28
three houses

Unknown Speaker 3:32
and came down here by rowboat.

Unknown Speaker 3:36
Meantime, uncle and dad are clearing the land. So they'd already bought the land at the time when your father and your grandfather and grandmother

Unknown Speaker 3:45
who just didn't buy it from me that is one of the bitten cards now which one I don't know. He had been here before because back in behind your house now which there was a forest and it was cut down but the time they came here

Unknown Speaker 4:01
Mr. Bittencourt whichever one he was was growing potatoes in there and it's all cleared potato fields. And I can remember

Unknown Speaker 4:10
the trees five or six feet high.

Unknown Speaker 4:14
Stacy's have cleared them off.

Unknown Speaker 4:17
So they had some open land.

Unknown Speaker 4:21
Anyway, the place in New Westminster they found a prefabricated house

Unknown Speaker 4:28
and it shipped over here by barge into

Unknown Speaker 4:32
the houses.

Unknown Speaker 4:35
And I remember dad telling you at one time in which they unloaded

Unknown Speaker 4:40
and loaded all material for house. Oh gee, would they've had help from others or just from the family?

Unknown Speaker 4:47
Sometime along I'm not sure when the grandfather had two Japanese

Unknown Speaker 4:53
people working for him.

Unknown Speaker 4:55
names I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 4:58
They were here for the whole time.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
In advance

Unknown Speaker 5:01
oh really they were working for him

Unknown Speaker 5:06
infect your boys and so on

Unknown Speaker 5:11
script

Unknown Speaker 5:19
as I mentioned earlier

Unknown Speaker 5:22
I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 5:24
He talks about his life on the island

Unknown Speaker 5:28
and he said I bought this place which is referring to Riversdale my two sons, Campbell and Raymond my uncle my dad

Unknown Speaker 5:37
stayed in the cottage is near the president I'm trading repeating myself

Unknown Speaker 5:44
removed in the end of April 1907. And I've gone on finishing the house building chimneys and putting up ceilings and floors etc. It is now good comfortable commodious and pretty facing west and close to about 50 feet above the border. A glorious lake like sea and help like mountains in front and around the climate is very superior identify character, a mild winter and find foliage.

Unknown Speaker 6:10
So anyway, they lived there, they build a barn and had chickens, cows, the pig

Unknown Speaker 6:20
and horse call robbing that time to clear roads here. What is now known as the canal bridge, canal Road,

Unknown Speaker 6:30
no government road there at all. And I'm not sure what sort of a bridge there was there. However, their main

Unknown Speaker 6:38
if you want to call it communication, where it's going from here across booth in meta booth canal and across what is now

Unknown Speaker 6:49
patience.

Unknown Speaker 6:51
They went across the bay window property there and going up to Central and the reason they went up there are two reasons they went up there. One was at the post office was in central and north to get the mail as in May love to have to go there. And secondly, that the sister of my grandmother, Evelina has married a man called Milner crew, and Milner Crowe, his daughter was f1 Crow, obviously, but she married Norman Wilson.

Unknown Speaker 7:23
Reverend Wilson and hence they had a close family tie with bounce rate. So there was a lot of movement back and forth between here and

Unknown Speaker 7:34
the quick bones group was right with the golf courses now. Bernstein has been with the president golf course. When it was first formed the golf courses first of all, Norman Wilson random

Unknown Speaker 7:45
and the first clubhouse was

Unknown Speaker 7:53
not sure it was in the late 50s or early 60s. So you would remember that? Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 8:02
So anyway, they used to travel across there. And there's one amusing story about that, and I believe this is factual.

Unknown Speaker 8:08
And originally, the land across the north side of booth canal belonged to one of the mowers.

Unknown Speaker 8:17
He then sold it to Ernest craft.

Unknown Speaker 8:20
Ernest Crawford's wife, Mary actually was a bullet,

Unknown Speaker 8:24
arable assistant

Unknown Speaker 8:26
and another man called Baker and Dr. Baker

Unknown Speaker 8:30
and his brother a little bit further east

Unknown Speaker 8:34
and summer long and my grandfather had a fight with them

Unknown Speaker 8:38
and

Unknown Speaker 8:41
I guess a blazing railroad because they did not want him or any of them going through the property.

Unknown Speaker 8:47
And when the smoke of athlete died away, he had signed a contract with him and I believe that this for $1 a year to allow them walking right through the profit

Unknown Speaker 8:57
however he got his own bag are grandfathered into a little bit later on because earnest to build a summer cottage down when it's now it's Erskine Hightstown and cranberry bay

Unknown Speaker 9:11
until the summer cottage and trails all the way and in order to get from the far side of the canal down to summer cottage you either had to row or come through grandfather's property. So grandfather had him over a barrel and I think eventually they sorted this out.

Unknown Speaker 9:27
They were they were friends but we say McCain real estate

Unknown Speaker 9:35
insider

Unknown Speaker 9:38
anyways because time when

Unknown Speaker 9:41
grandfather and

Unknown Speaker 9:45
uncle dead, cleared the place.

Unknown Speaker 9:49
Not to keep a cow on this and so on.

Unknown Speaker 9:53
There is a whole money so dad and uncle had to go out and work around the farms and so on. But

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Unfortunately, Grandfather was the old school tie. And he felt that the boys had to be home for tea at four o'clock. And so you had cases where there was rain coming up, the hay was being piled, not in the barn. And then an uncle had to say, I'm sorry, we have to go home to

Unknown Speaker 10:19
fix to find

Unknown Speaker 10:23
people who are working for

Unknown Speaker 10:27
you so

Unknown Speaker 10:29
I was just gonna ask what your grandfather was, did he just keep himself busy clearing the land or? Well, he was the member of the broad Geographical Society and had a great interest in weather kept permanent record and barometer, temperature, prevailing winds etc. He was very interesting in fishing and hunting.

Unknown Speaker 10:53
Did a lot of mainly bird hunting.

Unknown Speaker 10:56
The boys used to hunt deer.

Unknown Speaker 11:01
He was interested in bird hunting and fishing. What kind of bird would they hunt here? At that time? There were all sorts of gross Willow groves, new grounds.

Unknown Speaker 11:11
They had some pheasant somebody years ago started important pheasants in the island. And I know from things I've heard, maybe not that many. Although later on in the 30s we had pheasant

Unknown Speaker 11:27
we are there any hair care now I don't I haven't seen the last best my service down the Fulford road about three weeks ago and I haven't seen that one in three years.

Unknown Speaker 11:41
So he basically and the other thing we kept him busy with he was

Unknown Speaker 11:45
on he probably call the head of the family the senior branch. And as such, he kept

Unknown Speaker 11:53
everybody with me

Unknown Speaker 11:56
apparently wrote many many letters and received many letters back and forth. Keeping in touch the rest of the family back in a

Unknown Speaker 12:08
row he was known the son

Unknown Speaker 12:12
had one other uncle who joined Royal Navy

Unknown Speaker 12:15
and stayed and never came out.

Unknown Speaker 12:19
But these would be from

Unknown Speaker 12:23
as far as his grandfather's children and other branches the family

Unknown Speaker 12:28
and in his diary all the way through your references. So until a birthday or so and so died, so until had children

Unknown Speaker 12:39
so he really kept in really kept in touch.

Unknown Speaker 12:42
He was also a

Unknown Speaker 12:45
member of the Huguenots society

Unknown Speaker 12:48
and the first

Unknown Speaker 12:50
president was a

Unknown Speaker 12:53
an uncle I guess once removed his wouldn't be an uncle your cousin once removed

Unknown Speaker 13:00
from the humanoid society he was then very much interested in I

Unknown Speaker 13:06
wrote several papers on it.

Unknown Speaker 13:09
So again, that kept him

Unknown Speaker 13:12
interested.

Unknown Speaker 13:14
Basically what happened to this family after the game remembering it had spread out

Unknown Speaker 13:20
after marriage,

Unknown Speaker 13:22
girls change their names and so on. But he's really interesting.

Unknown Speaker 13:28
Do you have those those journals with the you know, with the weather and the things

Unknown Speaker 13:35
and all I had this one started in 1912 and finished the 1990s He died in 24. But

Unknown Speaker 13:44
last few years

Unknown Speaker 13:49
What about your grandmother?

Unknown Speaker 13:51
Was she alive?

Unknown Speaker 13:54
She died in 1945.

Unknown Speaker 13:57
Remember grandfather, very vague grandmother knew fairly well.

Unknown Speaker 14:03
How did she like like those here it must have been quite a change. She enjoyed it very much.

Unknown Speaker 14:09
She became choose person who was involved in

Unknown Speaker 14:13
MSA social work and she was one of the founding members of the sunshine guild, which is the predecessor hospital artillery.

Unknown Speaker 14:22
And with Dr. Beech and activator, and another group

Unknown Speaker 14:27
has a name tied on the veins for the group. And they started the hospital on the hill

Unknown Speaker 14:34
which is now the community center.

Unknown Speaker 14:38
What kind of things essentially and guild would do where they were like the famous hospital or jury on the wards they raise money and they push people out of hospitals build push the politicians who

Unknown Speaker 14:53
got it filled, filled basically with donated land from I believe Dr. Beech

Unknown Speaker 14:59
and

Unknown Speaker 15:01
timber and everything else was donated. And the construction work was

Unknown Speaker 15:07
a community project and I don't think very much money went into this mostly

Unknown Speaker 15:13
what year was good to remember what year the First Lady

Unknown Speaker 15:19
to go back

Unknown Speaker 15:22
three years ago, they had the anniversary for years.

Unknown Speaker 15:27
I think about they started about

Unknown Speaker 15:30
so that would be

Unknown Speaker 15:33
addressed with them. And Ivan was responsible for printing all this stuff together.

Unknown Speaker 15:39
Quite long history of it, including the first baby born, I believe, is still alive at that time.

Unknown Speaker 15:46
It had some of the original not original nurses, the nurses was nursed back to this

Unknown Speaker 15:54
again, the basis

Unknown Speaker 15:59
so with your room,

Unknown Speaker 16:02
what happened to your to your grandparents when the First World War came

Unknown Speaker 16:08
before that?

Unknown Speaker 16:11
degree in mechanical engineering.

Unknown Speaker 16:14
And he and my Uncle Ken

Unknown Speaker 16:18
decided that funding on salesmen they better start a boat works. And they moved down to the deep Cove North

Unknown Speaker 16:27
Vancouver

Unknown Speaker 16:28
Peninsula

Unknown Speaker 16:30
and where the President peak of government workers, they build both building shop, marine railway and so on. So your your thought they went back and did his degree first and then returned.

Unknown Speaker 16:45
They built this and then of course 1914

Unknown Speaker 16:51
My father and mother emeritus in Mark's Church making 14 Summer 14 How did they meet?

Unknown Speaker 16:58
Again, I'm

Unknown Speaker 17:00
not too clear on this but I mentioned the band's rate and the Wilsons

Unknown Speaker 17:06
and through some connection I'm not sure what it was

Unknown Speaker 17:11
in the back of my mind

Unknown Speaker 17:14
another came out to say advanced from England

Unknown Speaker 17:22
then she left

Unknown Speaker 17:24
went back trying

Unknown Speaker 17:27
to have a try first degree at Cambridge regardless I think

Unknown Speaker 17:33
before

Unknown Speaker 17:37
around the world trip

Unknown Speaker 17:39
that in the meantime become engaged and I have his letters to her

Unknown Speaker 17:44
retyping

Unknown Speaker 17:46
the leaking they

Unknown Speaker 17:54
did shoot before she got married she went around around the world the world how did she go

Unknown Speaker 18:01
by steamer obviously but

Unknown Speaker 18:04
she had friends and South African people have been Cambridge

Unknown Speaker 18:09
to see them. Also she had a cousin in Australia

Unknown Speaker 18:15
and went to see her

Unknown Speaker 18:18
in South Africa Festival in Australia and then across the Pacific came back to South

Unknown Speaker 18:26
America.

Unknown Speaker 18:28
In the meantime, these letters are coming around the world

Unknown Speaker 18:33
interesting season in England she and then reverse namens the same time

Unknown Speaker 18:39
and this is after engaged he would see her and because of the proprietors I guess where it is leave by 10 o'clock couldn't see me longer

Unknown Speaker 18:50
to go back to his digs that they call them right or left her posted the 11 o'clock pick up at night and he would have it by eight o'clock next morning

Unknown Speaker 19:04
so anyway, they built this Boatworks grandfather grandmother moved filter house and

Unknown Speaker 19:13
moved down there

Unknown Speaker 19:15
so what did they just kept their property here

Unknown Speaker 19:22
and when they came back here in 1930 and the settlement and dirt in the house and so on but no one was broken no vandalism

Unknown Speaker 19:32
equipment that the less

Unknown Speaker 19:34
so

Unknown Speaker 19:36
with the house actually empty for all those on and off. It was rented a couple of times.

Unknown Speaker 19:43
They've been used by people have expanded or something like that.

Unknown Speaker 19:47
Cleaned up afterwards.

Unknown Speaker 19:49
The fastener window famer in

Unknown Speaker 19:53
19 1414

Unknown Speaker 20:00
So when you further was started the boat works what you were

Unknown Speaker 20:07
looking at them at 19 Finding land

Unknown Speaker 20:12
and then 1914 moved down there from here

Unknown Speaker 20:17
from America and went down

Unknown Speaker 20:24
and embedment

Unknown Speaker 20:28
my dream in the 1960s

Unknown Speaker 20:31
And your uncle

Unknown Speaker 20:33
in the 1960s So that was

Unknown Speaker 20:37
for the record Boatworks is on the list

Unknown Speaker 20:41
and afterward he came back and got it going again. But by 1930 they were selling down on credit a month.

Unknown Speaker 20:49
That was about it

Unknown Speaker 20:54
so they came back mum and dad came back up here

Unknown Speaker 20:58
this Rainbow Beach camp Kevin

Unknown Speaker 21:03
the camp summer camp the cabins So did they live in the main house? So it was over on that part of that property?

Unknown Speaker 21:11
Did you still have that the property was all still intact

Unknown Speaker 21:16
30 Odd acres there was intact

Unknown Speaker 21:19
the rest of it hadn't been subdivided lots have been sold

Unknown Speaker 21:24
next door neighbors but when the Jenkins

Unknown Speaker 21:32
to other two other places I guess built down there one was Ivan mode

Unknown Speaker 21:39
another one who was

Unknown Speaker 21:43
a step further

Unknown Speaker 21:47
and McCallum is right here and McCown he was minister

Unknown Speaker 21:53
familiar they they had a place down there

Unknown Speaker 22:00
and then later on my brother done go to place a little bit further down.

Unknown Speaker 22:07
System read Marie's husband even

Unknown Speaker 22:10
Bill cabin points out here to summer cabin basically

Unknown Speaker 22:15
main reason being there and have your telephone

Unknown Speaker 22:20
call on the cheap rates

Unknown Speaker 22:29
when you had the resort and the company job and

Unknown Speaker 22:34
eventually

Unknown Speaker 22:36
two people would come out for holidays. Where would they come from?

Unknown Speaker 22:41
Vancouver

Unknown Speaker 22:44
Calgary

Unknown Speaker 22:53
would you have saved people coming back year after year in fact the third generation

Unknown Speaker 22:59
or third generations coming?

Unknown Speaker 23:12
So how long did your parents have to have the Kevin came back here in 1930 1963.

Unknown Speaker 23:21
Stasis stasis continued to run the camp as a camp

Unknown Speaker 23:27
quite a bit later and then sold

Unknown Speaker 23:30
10 people

Unknown Speaker 23:33
had the cabins for a while.

Unknown Speaker 23:36
So now they have a communal

Unknown Speaker 23:42
field there and then they own their own little cabinets. Some of them are original still some torn down and replaced.

Unknown Speaker 23:53
One they're

Unknown Speaker 23:55
called Roma.

Unknown Speaker 23:57
My mother over rented we didn't have a cabin.

Unknown Speaker 24:01
In the time she had rented this.

Unknown Speaker 24:04
People came we built it

Unknown Speaker 24:06
and it is still there but it shouldn't be

Unknown Speaker 24:10
34

Unknown Speaker 24:13
It shouldn't sell me there. The outside staircase fell off about two years ago I had to replace it

Unknown Speaker 24:20
because of the speed at which we had to build it. We couldn't get Windows two storey upstairs who put shutters on and they're still using shutters no windows

Unknown Speaker 24:33
so what about yourself you must have How old were you? When you came back here in the 30s You must have been 13

Unknown Speaker 24:41
So you went to high school my last year of high school was there

Unknown Speaker 24:47
14

Unknown Speaker 24:50
So which which school would that have been for we only had one high school

Unknown Speaker 24:55
people don't believe

Unknown Speaker 24:57
that it was in the old chicken coop. Check

Unknown Speaker 25:00
concern.

Unknown Speaker 25:01
As you probably know, that was the agricultural ground in

Unknown Speaker 25:06
the winter they used chicken display

Unknown Speaker 25:10
by man Hall has almost been gone now.

Unknown Speaker 25:16
And we had one teacher

Unknown Speaker 25:19
in one leg

Unknown Speaker 25:22
for grades

Unknown Speaker 25:24
910 11 and 12. All subjects in one room. There were some 30 odd, maybe 25

Unknown Speaker 25:32
students, and the amazing part is we had to write the provincial government exam. And

Unknown Speaker 25:39
for grade 12

Unknown Speaker 25:42
There were seven

Unknown Speaker 25:43
graduating class six passed every subject and one had one supplemental

Unknown Speaker 25:51
he was I think he bought supplies himself.

Unknown Speaker 25:55
For purple reproduction machines, oh, yes, jelly, jelly pads, and every morning are given a sheaf of papers

Unknown Speaker 26:03
for the work we had to do, and maybe twice during the day he would come and take on a subject class in the meantime, we work on their own.

Unknown Speaker 26:14
Do you remember Snape

Unknown Speaker 26:16
working.

Unknown Speaker 26:25
12

Unknown Speaker 26:27
background on this, that time, the moment and taken over the mountain and 30 store and ran me most story presently is Mr. Bullock, who is known as the squire of Saltzman was a staunch conservative

Unknown Speaker 26:44
and liberal and although they were friends away from politics, when it came to politics, they were bitter enemies. However, Mr. Bullock alleged to have gone to get something from them and he fell afoul of them in one way I don't know

Unknown Speaker 27:03
No quote, let him I further wrote to my mother

Unknown Speaker 27:07
store the Trading Company was not open when I heard

Unknown Speaker 27:12
they don't seem to be able to get carpenters and everyone is starving. So they can give a big order when it opens. Trading Company has built been built by Bullock has he had around at the moment

Unknown Speaker 27:23
and as I said before, Bullock was a conservative liberal grandfather invested $600 And it became a director.

Unknown Speaker 27:33
So then turns up again later on when the Ganges Hotel was built sometime Muhammad later and that is where now they I'm in credit union is

Unknown Speaker 27:45
this Ganges hotel and

Unknown Speaker 27:49
there's a lot of argument going on the mower to that time.

Unknown Speaker 27:54
Grand boarding house beside the store apparently did not want it

Unknown Speaker 28:00
so that when the hotel opened

Unknown Speaker 28:03
the business in the hotel automatically went to the trading company which at that time had been opened

Unknown Speaker 28:09
an interesting sidelight

Unknown Speaker 28:12
but you don't be able to build a hotel with it to get the money from the trading company or know the training company was built by Bullock and who built the hotel I don't know that it was burned down doesn't last very long.

Unknown Speaker 28:27
The only other thing of interest the hotel is grandfather and grandmother to pay back their

Unknown Speaker 28:34
social responsibility on call it that the signs are through a dancer

Unknown Speaker 28:41
so I've been cost including summer was 50 cents per person. I believe that included some form of orchestra times and certainly chains

Unknown Speaker 28:51
and dead records in his letters to my brother.

Unknown Speaker 28:57
He was conned into sending out invitations writing them out and stamping them and posting to it and he also said he recorded it was either white flannels or white tie at the DAT and this was in July

Unknown Speaker 29:16
they used to dress

Unknown Speaker 29:18
I guess from England I'm not sure if they apparently

Unknown Speaker 29:21
had healing clothes and used to wear them even though going down the horse and buggy in the rain.

Unknown Speaker 29:29
Later on then records going down dressed up

Unknown Speaker 29:33
one of these affairs somewhere dressed up right and the car broke down in the rain had to change two tires must have been a very interesting individuals who turned up

Unknown Speaker 29:49
think