By Michael Kluckner
Michael Kluckner is a writer and artist with a list of books that includes Vanishing Vancouver and Toshiko. His most recent book is a graphic biography called Julia. He is the president of the Vancouver Historical Society and chair of the city’s Heritage Commission.
Summertime, traffic jams, and the changing city are caught in a set of previously unpublished photos taken from the front porch of a Kits Point house in 1923.
In 1923, Ogden was a corduroy road. The parkland in the background at Ogden and Maple Street which had been popular as an informal camping area in the early 1900s, was bought for the City by retired jeweller Harvey Hadden in 1928. I was given this photograph (above) a dozen years ago by Anne Terriss, who lived with her architect husband Kenneth at 1970 Ogden Avenue, and published it in Vancouver Remembered in 2006.
I was intrigued by the number of families who arrived by car rather than by the streetcar that serviced the beach from a line a few blocks away near Cornwall Avenue. Also, I noted the number of cars parked in the sun with torn-up brush covering their tires to stop the rubber from cracking in the heat.
As it turned out, there were two other photographs taken in 1923 from the front porch of 1982 Ogden, probably by a member of the Bell family. (Photos courtesy of Shirley Wheatcroft, who lives there today.) The photo (below) shows the view northward of the West End and its English Bay waterfront with the Sylvia Hotel visible near the left edge.
Anne and Ken Terriss were long-time members of the Kitsilano community and were part of the generation of volunteers and patrons who created the theatre and arts scene in Vancouver in the 1950s and 1960s. Anne was one of the handful of people in Kitsilano in the 1960s and early 1970s with a good camera and an eye for photographing the passing parade, and freely gave her photographs for publication to the Around Kitsilano community newspaper and, later, to me.
Visible on the right-hand side of the above photo, are porch posts from a cottage, actually one of three BC Mills Model J prefab cottages that faced Yew Street. At the time, this corner was part of a dense little beach community—on a 100-foot-square lot, there stood the apartment building, the three BC Mills cottages facing Yew Street, plus two more that faced onto the lane! Anne recalled that a private lending library charging 10 cents a book operated from one of the cottages.
The strategic corner tenant of the apartment building has been a Starbucks for many recent years.
Ken Terriss was an architect with a deft touch who made most of his living working independently with small residential commissions. He designed his own house on Ogden in 1971 and fitted it into the vintage streetscape. In Exploring Vancouver, Hal Kalman described the house as “exuberantly imaginative” and noted that the “angle of the plan exploits the spectacular mountain views.” “Despite the house’s explicit modernity,” he wrote, “it respects the size and scale of its older neighbours.” The house next door in the photo was one of the five “show homes” built by the CPR in 1909 to entice settlers to the area.
Ken and Anne’s house was torn down and replaced by an even more modern house—the kind of glassy box that has become the current style du jour on Kits Point, which is apparently the most expensive “detached house” real estate per square foot in Vancouver.
For more on Kitsilano see: The Kitsilano Laneway House
5 comments on “Kits Point and the Summer of ‘23”
Nice touch to epilogue this Kits Point retrospective with the obituaries of the couple who lived in harmony with the area and helped ensure we wouldn’t forget that place in time.
I distinctly remember walking past the Terriss’s wood-and-glass redesigned house in my late teen ramblings through Kitsilano.
RIP Kenneth and Anne Terriss.
Anne Terriss was one of my mum’s closest friends so we grew up spending many hours on Ogden Rd where mum and Anne would visit while my dad and Ken talked about politics and writing. I still have an interesting blk/wht photo of my brother and myself in their old apartment next to 1970. Since my mum lives with me on the ranch north of cache Creek now, one of her special pleasures was visiting Anne in YVR , moistly lately at Crofton Manor where they would spend their days visiting with each other and the other residents, perhaps snoozing a bit in the beautiful garden. Now that Anne has passed, we don’t go back to Kits or Kerrisdale as the memories are still too painful. Anne was so interesting and had so much to share both of a spiritual nature as well as practical – always a smile. I will always treasure the days spent with her both at her home and walking around Granville Island. My mum is now 97 and still talks about Anne with a smile! Thanks for sharing these old photos and the update.
Jane, so appreciated your comments here. Can you send me a copy of the photo you mention? And what was the spiritual content of your conversations with Anne?
I lived on Laburnum with my mom and dad and brother. It was a very large two bedroom apt on the third floor of a three story building. Cornwall on our right and the Billy Bishop Legion on our left. I think it was the last place I lived before I moved out on my own. At the time , I was not a big fan of Kits Point as we had always lived in the West End and Kits seemed very removed from downtown and Stanley Park. Today its a day trip destination. Siegels at Cornwall and Cyprus for lunch and a rugalatch .Probably miss spelled but if you havent tried one of those pastries you dont know what your missing. My piano roll buying pal in Edmonton likes me to buy and send (via UPS) 3 dozen of those pastries every time we go to Kits Point.
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