Alice Munro died on May 13, 2024. She leaves behind three daughters–Sheila, Jenny and Andrea and a huge body of work. A Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Munro 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
105 Cook Street, 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.”
MUNRO’S BOOKs:
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.” The couple founded Munro’s Books, then on Yates Street.
“She has never had an office, ever,” says Sheila.
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.
rockland avenue:
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.
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.
RIP Alice
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3 comments on “Alice Munro’s B.C. Connection”
Alice had a condo in Courtenay in later years. She was a regular visitor to Powell River, where her grandsons lived.
The 1955 Vancouver City Directory lists: Munro, Jas A (Alice A) adv Eatons h 445 Kings W. N Van. It also shows: Munro, Alice clk Van Pub Lib r 445 W Kings N Van. That would have likely been the Carnegie Library at Hastings and Main. Their phone number was WI llow 1907. The house on Kings in North Van has been replaced in 2007 with a new house.
My 1958 telephone directory shows: Munro, James A r 2749 Lawsn WV . WAlnut 2-4794. The West Vancouver house on Lawson appears to be original from the 1950s, surrounded by newer homes.
I read Alice Munro’s short stories for many years in The New Yorker. In one local story she mentions Tatlow Park, pollarded trees on Dunbar Street and the Brill trolley buses in the winter. She had noticed the electric energy in the rain. I had to look up pollard in the dictionary.
So did I! I was going to say it would be fun to do a story on her BC houses and references such as you mention above, and the condo in Courtenay that Malcolm mentions below. But I bet it’s already been done