Alice Munro

Heritage Streeters from Victoria (with Patrick Dunae, Tom Hawthorn and Eve Lazarus)

by Eve Lazarus on March 25, 2017

This is an occasional series that asks people who love history and heritage to tell us their favourite existing building and the one that never should have been torn down.

603 Manchester Road in Victoria’s Burnside-Gorge neighbourhood

Patrick A. Dunae is a Victoria-born historian. A past member of the City of Victoria Heritage Advisory Panel, he is currently president of the Friends of the BC Archives.

Favourite Building:

One of my favourite houses is an unprepossessing, colonial-style bungalow on Manchester Road. The house was built in 1908 by Charles Deacon, who had emigrated from England with his family six years earlier, and became the foreman of a Rock Bay sawmill. I like the design and proportions of the house; and I applaud the current owners for painting the exterior a warm yellow, a colour that was popular when the house was built. This is an unfashionable part of Victoria and old houses like this are at risk. Kudos to City of Victoria Heritage Planners, who have recommended that the 600 block of Manchester and adjacent Dunedin Street, be designated as a Heritage Conservation Area. The proposal still needs to be approved by homeowners. Fingers crossed.

The Coburn family home at 2640 Blanshard, an Italianate-style house built in 1898.

The one that got away:

In the 1960s when “urban renewal” was popular and local authorities were eradicating “blighted areas,” Victoria City council used the program to demolish nearly 160 houses in its Rose-Blanshard Renewal Scheme. This “blighted” area consisted of houses built in the 1890s and early 1900s. Rose Street was its centre and North Ward School (1894), a four-storey brick structure, was a landmark. The school and neighbouring residences were demolished so that Blanshard Street could be widened to benefit motorists travelling from the new BC ferry terminal. Properties were expropriated, and occupants who refused to leave their homes were forcibly evicted. The Coburn family home was the last house standing when it was bulldozed in March 1969. It was replaced with Blanshard Court, a “low income housing estate,” now called Evergreen Terrace.

The Royal Bank building at 1108 Government St. in Victoria photographed in 1949 (BC Archives I-02169). The building was in disrepair when purchased by bookseller Jim Munro in 1984. The carved lettering in the granite facade above the entrance now read Munro's Books of Victoria. — The Royal Bank building at 1108 Government St. in Victoria photographed in 1949 (BC Archives I-02169). The building was in disrepair when purchased by bookseller Jim Munro in 1984. The carved lettering in the granite facade above the entrance now read Munro’s Books of Victoria.

Tom Hawthorn is a reporter, author and bookseller who lives in Victoria. His latest book The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country, will hit bookshelves this May.

Favourite Building:

My daily workplace is a magnificent former bank building. The Edwardian-era former Royal Bank of Canada at 1108 Government St. was in terrible disrepair when purchased (against his banker’s advice) by Jim Munro in 1984. He returned the structure to its former glory, notably removing a suspended ceiling added as part of a modernizing renovation in the 1950s. Today, tapered pilasters and a cast-plaster coffer ceiling attract tourists from around the globe eager to visit a bookstore co-founded in 1963 by future Nobel laureate Alice Munro. Designed in 1909 by local architect Thomas Hooper as a Temple Bank in the Classical Revival style, with an all-granite facade including two impressive Doric columns, Munro’s Books remains a temple to a commerce less pecuniary than literary.

Exhibition Building, Willows Fairgrounds, Oak Bay (Victoria) (BCArchives H-02390)

The one that got away:

In 1899, a grand exhibition hall with an adjacent horse racing track was built on farmland in Oak Bay. The roof stood 56 feet above the ground with central octagonal towers reaching to a height of 100 feet. An open cupola topped the impressive building, which dominated the Willows Fairgrounds like a manor house amid verdant lawns.

Among the visitors to the exhibition hall, which boasted 20,000 square feet of floor space surrounded by galleries, was the future King George V.

The building and the streetcar connection, that now extended from Royal Jubilee Hospital to the fairgrounds, spurred the growth of Oak Bay, which incorporated as a municipality in 1906. Alas, the building was destroyed by fire in 1907, to be replaced by a warehouse structure of little merit. The site of the fairgrounds was subdivided into housing after the Second World War with 10 acres reserved for Carnarvon Park.

Emily Carr's Oak Bay cabin on Foul Bay Road. Eve Lazarus photo, 2012 — Emily Carr’s Oak Bay cabin on Foul Bay Road. Eve Lazarus photo, 2012

Eve Lazarus is a journalist, author and blogger who has a passion for unconventional history and a fascination with murder. She is the author of Cold Case Vancouver.

Favourite Building:

Emily Carr paid $900 for a plot of land on Victoria Avenue in 1913, and according to a story built the cottage “nail by nail” with the help of “one old carpenter.” After a bit of digging it turns out the carpenter was Thomas Cattarall, who built Craigdarroch for the Dunsmuir family and worked on Hatley Castle. In 1995, new owners wanted to build a house on the property but didn’t want to destroy the little cottage. Terry Tallentire stepped in, paid the city $1.00, spent another $4,000 to move it to her house, and it now lives behind a Samuel Maclure designed house on Foul Bay Road. (The full story is in Sensational Victoria).

The Wilson mansion at 730 Burdett Avenue, Victoria

The one that got away:

There are many reasons why Victoria should have saved the Wilson Mansion, but perhaps the best one is because its social history is just so eccentric. There’s the overprotective father who surrounded it with high walls, Jane, the daughter who kept exotic birds in the attic and owned a 100 pairs of white gloves. And there’s the beneficiary of her will in 1949—Louis, a macaw parrot from South America, who was then in his eighties. Jane named Wah Wong, the Chinese gardener as trustee and parrot keeper, and the terms of the will stated that the property could not be sold while the birds were still alive. The feathered tenants managed to stave off developers until 1966, when it was bulldozed to make way for the Chateau Victoria Hotel.

For more on the series see:

Tags 1108 Government Street, 603 Manchester Road, 730 Burdett, Alice Munro, Charles Deacon, emily carr, Exhibition Buildings, Jim Munro, Louis, Munro's Books, Patrick Dunae, Samuel Maclure, Thomas Cattarall, Thomas Hooper, Tom Hawthorn, Wah Wong, Willow Fairgrounds

Jim Munro (1929-2016)

by Eve Lazarus on November 26, 2016

I was so sad to hear of Jim Munro’s death last Monday. Jim was a huge promoter and lover of books, heritage buildings, art and authors, including of course, his first wife the Nobel prize winner Alice Munro.

munro

He was also a lovely man. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim a few years back when I was researching Sensational Victoria. Because my book was about the stories of people filtered through the houses where they lived and the heritage buildings where they worked, I was fascinated by both Jim Munro’s home and Munro’s Books, the building that he turned into a destination.

munros

Jim told me that in 1966 he fell in love with a house in Rockland that was asking $33,000, and likely designed by the infamous Francis Rattenbury. The house had been turned into a duplex and was in rough shape, but Jim could see the potential, and managed to get the owners down to $20,000. Alice wrote Dance of the Happy Shades, a 1968 Governor General award winner in an upstairs room, and followed that with her bestselling Lives of Girls and Women. The Munro’s divorced in 1972 and Alice moved back to Ontario.

In 1977, Jim married textile artist Carole Sabiston in what the family called the “chapel” because of the stained-glass effect Jim had painted around the windows and for his old pump organ that still sits under the staircase. Jim played Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary on the organ before the wedding.

“I marry artists,” Jim told me “and I love heritage buildings.”

Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan, Vikram Seth, Jane Urquhart, Carol Shields and Simon Winchester, were just a few of the literary greats that have visited the house.

Carole kindly showed me through the house and garden. Both are beautiful and quirky. There is a wall of wearable art—everything from straw hats to top hats. One corner of a room has a key collection—big iron keys to tiny clock keys collected from flea markets around the world. Another corner has a collection of carpet beaters. Out in the garden, Carole created the Philosopher’s Walk for Jim with a bust of Voltaire.

jim-pump-organ

Carole added a studio that’s connected to the house by a glazed passage. It was here that she created the dramatic five-panel work of mountains and ocean that hangs in Government House, as well as perhaps her most publicly accessible work: eight large banners depicting the seasons that hang in Munro’s Books on Government Street.

In 1984, Jim bought the Royal Bank building, designed by Thomas Hooper, the same architect who designed Hycroft in Shaughnessy, the Victoria Public Library, Roger’s Chocolate building and Christina Haas’s Cook Street Brothel.

“No one wanted a used bank building except me,” he said. “People thought I was insane because in those days there weren’t huge bookstores like there are now, but people who buy books also appreciate art and beautiful buildings.”

In December 2012 Jim invited me to have a Victoria launch at Munro’s and hang out with a bunch of local authors that included Kit Pearson, Sheryl McFarlane and Bill Gaston. Two years later he retired and handed over the keys and inventory to four long-time staffers. That same year he received the Order of Canada.

RIP Jim.

Tags Alice Munro, Carole Sabiston, Francis Rattenbury, Jim Munro, Munro's Books, Sensational Victoria, Thomas Hooper

Alice Munro’s B.C. Connection

by Eve Lazarus on October 11, 2013

Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Ontario, but she lived in both North and West Vancouver, and wrote three of her most important books while living on Rockland Avenue in Victoria. She and Jim founded Munro’s Books in 1963. The following is an excerpt from Sensational Victoria.

In 1966, Sheila Munro was 13 and living with her family in a sweet little rented house at 105 Cook Street when she saw an ad for a mansion in Rockland. The asking price was $33,000.

“I guess my father and I had these dreams of grandeur,” she says. “The thing was these mansions weren’t really popular at that time. People wanted 1960s suburbia.”

Jim Munro managed to raise $20,000 and his offer was accepted by the owners of the Tudor Revival.

It was love at first sight for Jim and his daughters, but wife Alice Munro, then pregnant with Andrea, was not so enamoured.

“She adjusted to it, but it wasn’t her kind of thing. She made me promise that I would do all the vacuuming,” says Sheila. “I spent hours vacuuming every Saturday morning. It’s a big house.”

Short-story writer Alice Munro is one of Canada’s most famous authors, but her connection to Victoria is less well known. She moved to the city in 1963 with then-husband Jim Munro and their two oldest daughters, Sheila and Jenny, and set up her table and typewriter in the upstairs “workroom.”

“She has never had an office, ever,” says Sheila. “Still doesn’t have one.”

Alice wrote Dance of the Happy Shades—a 1968 Governor General’s Award winner—in the workroom. She followed that with Lives of Girls and Women. In 1973, Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You came, a year after her divorce and move back to Ontario.

Sheila remembers some amazing parties and literary figures in the house. Once Margaret Atwood dropped by. “I remember that we sat on the floor cross-legged and she did my horoscope,” she says. “She had long curly hair and dressed in a hippyish way.”

Other friends of her mother’s came by when they were in town. Audrey Thomas, Dorothy Livesay and P.K. Page all visited the house.

Although no records exist, the heritage house, built in 1894, is thought to have been designed by Francis Rattenbury. The land was split off from the Rocklands estate, owned by Henry and Clara Dumbleton. The Dumbletons then gave the house, which they named Newholme, to their son Alan Southey Dumbleton, a barrister and his wife Mabel.

Malcolm Bruce Jackson and his wife Lilian bought the house in 1908. In 1924, Jackson, a lawyer was charged with investigating the Janet Smith murder case. In one of the many bizarre turns in the case, Jackson was eventually charged with complicity in the kidnapping of Chinese servant Wong Foon Sing. Jackson died in 1947 and Lilian remained in the house until her death in 1950.

By the time the 1960s came around, the house had been turned into a duplex and was in rough shape, but Jim could see the potential. The gardens had once been beautiful. Inside, the house has five fireplaces under 3.7-metre (12-foot) ceilings, and a nanny’s quarters, which became bedrooms for the girls.

Jim married textile artist Carole Sabiston in 1977. They still live in the house and the garden is beautiful.

Tags 105 Cook Street, Alice Munro, Carole Sabiston, Dance of the Happy Shades, Jim Munro, Lives of Girls and Women, Munro's Books, Nobel Prize in Literature, Rockland Avenue, Sheila Munro, Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

House Stories

by Eve Lazarus on December 24, 2012

Robert James Parsell with Ella May and Thomas Norman ca. 1903 — 132 South Turner Street, Victoria

Ever stood in front of an old house and wondered what went on inside those walls? Who lived there, how they lived their lives and what events happened behind the front door? I admit it’s a weird kind of voyeurism, but I’ve spent a lot of the last decade skulking around in people’s hedgerows asking those questions. Because in my view, a house has a genealogy, much like a person, and comes alive through the stories and mysteries that took place inside its walls.

Taken in the front garden of the Rockland Avenue house — Alice Munro, 1968

I’m fascinated by the deep connection people have to their houses. David Foster grew up with his six sisters in a modest house in Saanich that his father built. Spoony Sundher built a house on Bellevue Road before going on to open the Hollywood Wax Museum and found a family dynasty. Alice Munro wrote two of her best selling books from her Rockland house, and Susan Musgrave’s North Saanich house has a 190-foot Douglas Fir tree growing out of the living room. Susan says she doesn’t understand people who move into “key ready houses devoid of personality.”

I’ve talked to home owners who have unearthed everything from a murder in the family kitchen, to resident ghosts and celebrities. Others have found evidence of brothels and bootlegging, and one woman found that her house was once a Chinese sausage factory.

My father’s childhood home in Ballarat, Australia had its own odd history. My eccentric grandmother physically had the bedrooms lopped off the house when her children left home. I never found out why, but at least the current owners eventually learned who left them a number of doors that led nowhere.

I’m delighted that Sensational Victoria is getting a good reception with the locals. I hoped it would, but I really wrote it with mainlanders in mind, people like me who are not from there, but love the city, love history, old houses and Victoria’s quirky characters and eccentricities.

Chester Pupkowski spent 40 years in Essondale after murdering his wife — Clarence Street, James Bay

Emily Carr figures prominently in the book. That wasn’t intentional she just kept getting in my head, and I was intrigued with her Oak Bay cabin, a tiny house that she kept to herself for all those years. It’s Emily who shows readers what James Bay would have been like in 1913 and she shares another chapter with other formidable women from Victoria’s past. There’s a chapter on madams and their brothels, another on gardens, murders that span a century, haunted houses and some of the writers, entertainers and artists who come from Victoria.

Much of the information comes from their relatives and the current owners, who are all fiercely proud of their homes. They are the custodians—sometimes for just a few years, other times for decades—who add their own stories to the homes and in turn play a vital part in the ongoing story of Victoria.

Originally the cabin was at 494 Victoria Drive — Emily Carr’s Oak Bay cabin

Tags Alice Munro, Capi Blanchet, David Foster, emily carr, Gwen Cash, Nellie McClung, Sensational Victoria, Spoony Sundher, Susan Musgrave, Sylvia Holland

The Poet and the Tree House

by Eve Lazarus on April 12, 2012

See the full story in Sensational Victoria: Bright lights, red lights, murders, ghosts and gardens

The first time I call Susan Musgrave at her home in Haida Gwaii, she can’t talk because she’s cooking dinner for John Vaillant, author of The Golden Spruce. The second time I call, she’s busy vacuuming, but is kind enough to spare a few minutes before she has to be at her bed and breakfast—the Copper Beech House.

I’m writing Sensational Victoria–a book about some of Vancouver Island’s oldest, most eccentric and quirkiest houses, and Susan’s North Saanich tree house more than qualifies. “I don’t understand people who move into key ready homes that are devoid of personality,” she tells me.

Built around a 190 foot Douglas Fir tree — Susan Musgrave’s Tree House

The internationally renowned poet’s home will nestle in between those of Bruce Hutchison and Alice Munro. This chapter, Bright Lights, also includes the childhood home so important to David Foster and his six sisters, the home that Spoony Sundher built before East Indians were allowed to own property, and the James Bay house where silent movie star Nell Shipman was born in 1892.

Tags Alice Munro, Bruce Hutchison, David Foster, emily carr, Ernest Fern, Haida Gwaii, Jeffrey Green, john vaillant, Nell Shipman, Robin Skelton, Spoony Sundher, Stephen Reid, Susan Musgrave, the Copper Beech House

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Favourite Building:

The one that got away:

Favourite Building:

The one that got away:

Favourite Building:

The one that got away:

Support

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