In the early 20th century, the area east of the Seymour River was heavily forested with mostly dirt trails, horse drawn wagons, and very few residents, save those connected to logging activities and to the lumber and shingle mills in the area. It was to this “land of opportunity” that newlyweds, Jack and Christena Gillis, came in 1923, arriving by train from PEI. Jack got a job initially with the Burrard Dry Dock, and then at a shingle mill and finally with the DNV opening roads, including from Deep Cove Highway to the wharf at the foot of Strathcona Road. During this time, he scouted the area and decided to purchase four lots on Harris Ave from Strathcona Road towards the water. The price for each lot was $20! Over the next few years, in his spare time, he built a log house on lot #4. It was eventually completed in 1926. The log house became known as The Homestead and today, lives on as one of the few log homes in the DNV. Amazingly, this year, the Homestead turns 100! Read on to learn more about the construction and evolution of this house and the Gillis and Webb families, who are inextricably linked to this living piece of history in our midst!
The Milkman
Today, if we need milk, we pop down to the nearest supermarket or corner store and grab some off the shelf. Maybe we’ll check the sell-by date on the plastic container, but there’s no thought as to whether it’s pasteurised or not. That is taken for granted.
It wasn’t always like this. In days gone by, North Shore farmers supplied unpasteurised milk, cream and butter in wooden barrels or metal cans. Usually, by horse and cart. And only to their neighbours. It was impractical to transport fresh products much beyond the vicinity of the farm.
William H Wilkins, owner of North Vancouver Dairy in 1913. Photograph courtesy of MONOVA Archives, inventory number 1980. William and his wife Olive ran a 7- acre dairy farm on Marine Drive, later living at 1560 Macgowan Avenue, North Vancouver, the Wilkins Residence, a 1917 Craftsman that still stands. Anne Marie Lawrence writes about Wilkins in her North Shore Heritage blog article ‘North Shore Farm to Table Tradition’.
The emergence of milk cooperatives around the turn of the 20th century allowed producers to share the expenses and labour of producing milk. Farmers supplied the cooperatives who arranged distribution via dairy supply companies. The returns gave farmers the financial security they needed to upgrade their herds and expand their operation. From 1917, many dairy suppliers across the lower mainland obtained their milk from the Fraser Valley Milk Producer’s Association (FVMPA), one of the largest milk cooperatives in British Columbia.
It was the era of the door-to-door milkman. Usually, the horse would learn its route, plodding along and stopping automatically at houses whilst the milkman rushed from door to door with his metal containers filled with bottles. Managing a delivery route was not straightforward, however, as Frank Bradley, who worked on the North Shore, describes in a memory entitled ‘On the milk route’ quoted in Jane Watt’s excellent book on the British Columbia dairy industry, Milk Stories.
On a horse and wagon route, you arrived at the barn about half an hour before your scheduled loading time, which might be two or three o'clock in the morning. The horse would be harnessed and ready for you, except for the bridle, and you hitched him up to the wagon, lit your kerosene lamp for the tail light, then off to the loading dock. On leaving the dairy you were on your own. Whether you hustled around and finished the route in seven hours or took it easy and made it in nine hours, it was up to you. But you were expected to serve all the customers in a satisfactory manner so that there were no complaints. You had to keep in mind that some of your customers would expect you to be there before their breakfast time and all the customers liked to have a delivery time that they could rely on, particularly during the warm weather. They did not want the milk left out on the doorstep too long before being placed in the ice box. Each month you were required to write up a route book listing names, addresses, and methods of serving all your customers and this would be the book that you would mark the transactions for that customer, what products they bought, whether they paid or charged, and the number of bottles short or over - there was a five cents deposit charge for bottles. Your books had to balance when you turned the route over to a relief man on your days off, so any losses were your responsibility. For customers who were charging their purchases, it was your responsibility to write up bills and make collections. This was a very important part of the job and often it was time-consuming too because you often had to call back on some customers who would not want to leave the money on the doorstep overnight.
In the 1920s and 1930s, motorised vehicles began to replace the horses, but only gradually. Thomas (Tom) Harbottle, who had migrated from England in 1910, established in 1932 a milk delivery business in North Vancouver called Harbottle’s Jersey Products. His son, Jeff, worked with him for eight years until 1940.
Thomas & Jayne Harbottle and son Jeffery ca 1918. Photograph courtesy of MONOVA Archives, inventory number 7735.
Harbottle Jersey Products was a jobber (distributor) of Jersey Farms, a Vancouver-based dairy supply company that had started up one year previously. Jersey Farms arranged for milk to be transported by ferry across the Burrard Inlet each day for Tom and Jeff Harbottle to deliver to their customers in North Vancouver.
Picture of Jersey Farms wagon, 1948. Common domain photograph. Jersey Farms Limited began its operations in December 1931 with three milk wagons and seven employees. It was the depth of the depression and not the ideal time to start a business. One of the reasons that Jersey succeeded was its use of rubber tire wagons (over the more usual iron wheeled delivery wagons). Though this meant more flat tires than their competitors like Fraser Valley, Jersey offered a quieter delivery.
1401 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver showing Harbottle’s Jersey Products store and the Odeon Theatre ca 1950. Photograph courtesy of MONOVA Archives, inventory number 8791. Neither building has survived.
Tom Harbottle started his business with a 1931 Chevrolet truck. He also owned a 1925 Chrysler. As Jeff, his son, recalled in 1993, speaking about those times:
If a truck broke down, we would take the back seat out of the Chrysler and deliver with it, especially up North Lonsdale if there was heavy snow. The car with chains could go through snow right up to its bumper.
Harbottle’s 1931 Chevrolet truck ca 1932. Photograph courtesy of MONOVA Archives, inventory number 8793.
Harbottle’s 1925 Chrysler in the 1920s. Photograph courtesy of MONOVA Archives, inventory number 8794.
In 1938, Harbottle’s Jersey Products purchased a new Diamond T truck as a delivery vehicle. Jeff Harbottle personally travelled to Chicago to pick up the truck and drive it back to North Vancouver. When the Harbottles sold their business to Jersey Farms in 1942, the company’s Diamond T truck was included in the sale. Over time, the truck rusted up, ending up on a scrap heap where, in 1971, vintage car collector Dennis Montgomery found it. Montgomery cleaned up the vehicle and in October 1986 displayed it with other antique vehicles at Vancouver’s transport and communication fair, Expo 86, where it came to Jeff Harbottle’s attention. Dennis had discovered a set of Harbottle dairy milk bottle caps under the truck’s seats, confirming that it was the same truck Jeff had driven back from Chicago decades earlier. In 1991, Jeff acquired the truck from Montgomery, initiating a project to restore the truck to its 1938 state. This was completed in 1999. In 2003, Jeff donated the truck to MONOVA who held it until 2025 before donating it to the BC Vintage Truck Museum in Surrey where it resides today as a memory of older times.
Jeff Harbottle (left) and Frank Bradley (right) with the restored 1938 Diamond T truck in 2000. Photograph courtesy of Neil Gray Collection.
Harbottle’s Jersey Products’ restored 1938 Diamond T truck. Photograph courtesy of the BC Vintage Truck Museum.
Except where indicated, text and images Copyright @ North Shore Heritage and Paul Haston. All rights reserved. Republication in whole or in part is prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder.
References:
MONOVA, North Vancouver Museum and Archives https://monova.ca/archives/
British Columbia City Directories https://bccd.vpl.ca/
‘Milk Stories, a History of the Dairy Industry in British Columbia, 1827-2000’ by Jane Watt.
Clegg House Restoration
In February, 1929, Warren Leach Clegg, a British immigrant, received the approval to build a house at 1591 Haywood. It was completed in 5 short months for the princely sum of $3000. Warren, his wife Margaret and their 4 children moved in on July 12, 1929. Dodging the stock market crash by mere months, it is possible that had they waited to build, the house might have been a lot smaller or less ornate or might never have been built at all.
Ninety-three years later, in February, 2022, the board of North Shore Heritage stood on the front lawn with the new owners, Meghan and Darrin DeCosta, contemplating the next phase of life for this historically significant home. This would involve the restoration of the building and the addition of gentle density in the form of a garden suite and a rental above the garage. Construction took 13 months and cost just a little more (!) than the original $3000, with the end-result being the retention and legal protection of this charming Craftsman home. While this sounds easy, none of it would have happened without the vision, the persistence, the creativity and the dedication of the DeCostas to the project and their goals of retaining historically significant features while upgrading to a more environmentally sustainable home. It is a project worth sharing! And if you read beyond that, I also snuck in some Clegg family history!
A Wintery Walk through North Vancouver
Sidetracked on a Side Street
The Pacific Great Eastern Railway, despite its name, was a Western company. Incorporated in Vancouver in 1912, it was founded to create a railroad between Prince George and the docks of North Vancouver via Squamish and the Howe Sound. Decades passed before this goal was fully achieved due to a section of challenging, mountainous terrain and ongoing financial challenges. It became known as the Province’s Great Expense to Prince George Eventually. However, the story of the PGE Railway is one of ambition and perseverance that created an important, historic route along the waters of the Burrard Inlet and Howe Sound, remnants of which still exist today.
Hendry Hall – Community Builder Extraordinaire
Originally built as an Air Raid Precautionary Post, Hendry Hall has been at the centre of the Lynnmour community in one way or another for 82 years! Currently the home of the talented North Vancouver Community Players, it also served as the Hendry Community Hall for over three decades. Imagine the stories that would be told, if the walls of this tiny but mighty building could talk! But since they cannot, I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned in my research and take you on a virtual tour of this amazing building and its people through the decades!
Putting the Grand in Grand Boulevard!
The Ellis Residence at 800 Grand Boulevard is one of the nicest heritage homes I’ve ever seen! It definitely puts the “Grand” into Grand Boulevard! And this was exactly the goal of the North Vancouver Land & Improvement Company when they first proposed the Grand Boulevard development in 1906. Grand Boulevard was marketed as a high-class residential neighbourhood, with a required minimum building cost of $4000, to ensure a certain size and quality of home. The original homes were mostly built in the arts and crafts style including 800 Grand, which was designed by the architectural firm of Maclure and Fox in a traditional half-timbered Arts and Crafts style. Jenny Morgan, my fellow blog writer, and I were privileged to get a tour of this house earlier this year and after our tour, as we walked back to our cars, she told me this is her “dream” house! I then asked her how we might get ourselves adopted by the current owners, Ken and Jenny Tekano, so we could live there too! The house is stunning, from the first glimpse through the pergola and in every room throughout the house. Read on to see why we fell in love with this home, learn more about the restoration work the Tekanos did (in their own words) and learn about the 15 families who came before them.
Lynn Valley General Store…Times Two!
When you look at this snowy scene of Lynn Valley, what do you see? I immediately recognize the “Fromme Block” which sits at the corner of Lynn Valley Road and Mountain Highway. I also see the tracks of the Lynn Valley streetcar that ended at what we now know as the “End of The Line” store. But what the heck is that house doing in the middle of the block? I had to go all the way back to 1908 to answer that question. And in so doing, I learned about the two iterations of the “Lynn Valley General Store”. So, join me as we turn back the clock to do a bit of time travelling to the early days of Lynn Valley.
The Legacy of Alfred Wallace
Doubly Spectacular Heritage Project
It all started with the January 7, 2020 North Shore News article “1908 Heritage Home Offered for Free”. The “Copper Cottage”, on the CNV Heritage Register, was slated for demolition but the developer had given it a last-minute reprieve, if North Shore Heritage could find someone to take it. Two years later, Tony Dean and Yvonne Perrault, have undertaken the most mammoth job of relocating, renovating, restoring not just the Copper Cottage but also the original 1920 house that sat at the back of their lot at 532 East 10th. The outcome is Doubly Spectacular, pun intended!!!
Revitalization of the Ottawa Gardens Show Home
The distinctive heritage home that anchors the east end of Ottawa Gardens was built in 1907 as a show home by the North Vancouver Land & Improvement Company for its Ottawa Gardens development. The house is now well into its second century of life but came close to being lost due to neglect. Click here to find out how it was saved.
Ridgeway Renovation Champions
Vestiges of the Past
Heritage Development at McNair Park
The Story of Park & Tilford Gardens
How a Clever Sub-Division and a Legal Covenant saved a Grand Boulevard Gem!
The Young-Henderson Residence is a magnificent example of an architectural gem built along Grand Boulevard in the early 20th century. But when the family decided to sell it, there was a very real chance that the home, which sat on a double lot, would be demolished to make way for two new homes. Our latest Success Story outlines how the owners and the CNV worked closely to come up with a clever and long-term solution to save their beloved family home. Read more here.
