E.J. Hughes

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Mosquito Creek – (part 4)

by Eve Lazarus on October 12, 2018

Last week we left off at the Shipyards Coffee at Lonsdale Quay. Grab your bike and we’ll ride the Spirit Trail down Cates court, loop around Waterfront Park and enter Squamish Nation land.

The Coast Salish aboriginal people established a permanent village called Slah-ahn (also known as Ustlawn or Eslha7an), meaning “head bay” in the 1860s. The village was located along a stretch of mudflat at the mouth of Mosquito Creek.

Mission Reserve 1908. Courtesy CVA SGN 52

With the arrival of European settlers, it became known as Mission Indian Reserve No. 1—the first permanent settlement on the north shore of Burrard Inlet.

Emily Carr used to visit her friend Sophie Frank, a Squamish basket maker who lived at Mission Reserve and both she and E.J. Hughes painted the area.

Emily Carr painting, 1908. Courtesy BC Archives

In 1932, the Mission Reserve Lacrosse team won the BC Championship—they were that good. The team consisted mostly of members from the Baker, Paull, and George families, who took up the game, because as Simon Baker told a North Shore Press writer, they had nothing else to do during the Depression. “We used to practice and practice and that’s how we became famous in lacrosse. We used to pass that ball, push it in circles real fast. We were good stick handlers,” he said. The team was disbanded after the win because they couldn’t get a sponsor.

You’ll notice a vibrant community of houseboats. A diner called the High Boat Cafe, and some great art. You can also see the 1884 St. Paul’s Church with its twin spires and gothic revival style.

Over the years, the natural course of Mosquito creek has been altered by logging, landfills, and new subdivisions, destroying much of the natural habitat and salmon. Much of that is being restored and rehabilitated.

The most recent portion of the Spirit Trail was just finished this year. It runs below sea level and dips under the boat lifts at the marina. Each time we’ve been there so has a ‘haggle’ of harbour seals, sunning themselves on the wood (behind me) or swimming by the trail.

Watching the harbour seals at Mosquito Creek

With thanks to the NVMA which makes all this research possible.

Next Week: Harbourside to Norgate.

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville (part 1)

Moodyville to Lonsdale Quay (part 2)

Lonsdale Quay (part 3)

Harbourside (part 5)

Pemberton to Capilano River (part 6)

West Vancouver (part 7)

Tags E.J. Hughes, emily carr, Lonsdale Quay, Mission Indian Reserve No. 1, Mission Reserve Lacrosse Team, Shipyards Coffee, Simon Baker, Sophie Frank, Spirit Trail, Squamish Nation, St. Paul's Church, Ustlawn

Selwyn Pullan Photography: What’s Lost

by Eve Lazarus on June 9, 2018

I finally got a chance to drop by the West Vancouver Museum yesterday to check out the latest exhibition on the photography of Selwyn Pullan. Assistant curator Kiriko Watanabe has done an amazing job, not only pulling out some of Selwyn’s most interesting work, but also displaying the cameras that he used to shoot them with.

After serving in the Canadian Navy during the Second World War, Selwyn moved to Los Angeles to study photography at the Art Center School in Los Angeles where Ansel Adams taught. He worked as a news photographer at the Halifax Chronicle, and when he moved back to Vancouver in 1950 he found a new movement of artists and architects who were reinventing the house.

Selwyn reinvented architectural photography.

When he found that the Speed Graphic was inadequate for the movement needed for photographing West Coast Modern architecture, Selwyn built his own camera. Eve Lazarus photo

Several years ago, I asked him how he went about taking these photos. “I just look at the house and photograph it,” he said. “It’s a journalistic assignment not a photographic one.”

Many of his photos were taken in the 1950s and ‘60s. They evoke a sense of time, optimism for the future, and perhaps even a new way of thinking. He intuitively understood the work of the architects he photographed, emphasizing light and space and often pulling in the homeowners and their children to show how the architectural and interior design fit with family life.

His pictures show Gordon Smith painting in the studio designed by Arthur Erickson; there’s a young Erickson lounging in his own adapted garage; and Jack Shadbolt is photographed painting in his Burnaby studio. His stunning portraits of artists and sculptors include E.J. Hughes, George Norris, Bill Reid and Roy Kiyooka.

While the photos in the exhibition showcase Selwyn’s work, they are also carefully selected to show our missing heritage—building after building both residential and commercial that no longer exist. The loss is particularly apparent in West Coast Modern.

Go see this exhibition—it runs until July 14. There’s a guest talk by Donald Luxton on Saturday June 30 at 2:00 p.m. which will be well worth your time.

Selwyn died last September, after spending 65 years in his North Vancouver house, where he worked in his Fred Hollingsworth-designed studio, and where he parked his jaguar under a Hollingsworth-designed carport.

Fred Hollingsworth designed Selwyn’s North Vancouver home/studio in 1960.

Top photo caption: Birks Building. Architect Somervell and Putnam. Built 1912, demolished 1974.

Tags Arthur Erickson, Bill Reid, E.J. Hughes, Fred Hollingsworth, Geoffrey Massey, George Norris, Gordon Smith, Jack Shadbolt, Kiriko Watanabe, Roy Kiyooka Birks building, Selwyn Pullan, West Vancouver Museum

E.J. Hughes

by Eve Lazarus on June 23, 2011

Sold in May 2011 for $1.14 million — Coastal Boats Near Sidney

Last month Coastal Boats Near Sidney sold for $1.14 million, propelling E.J. Hughes into an exclusive group of 12 Canadian artists who have sold paintings for more than a million dollars.

Canadian Painter E.J. Hughes was born in North Vancouver — 621 East 8th Avenue, North Vancouver

I love his work and thought he had always lived on Vancouver Island, so I was interested in his Vancouver connection.

Edward John Hughes was born in North Vancouver in 1913, but moved to Nanaimo with his parents, Edward Samuel Daniel Hughes and Katherine (McLean) soon after. The family moved back in 1923, and according to the Street Directories, Edward Hughes was a musician with the Orpheum Theatre. For the next several years they lived at 621 East 8^th Avenue in North Van and Hughes attended North Vancouver High School and took private art classes with Mrs. Verrall at North Star School. The family disappears from the city directories in 1931 and Hughes pops up at 4675 West 4^th Avenue in 1934. By that time he would have been in the last year of a four year program at the Vancouver School of Decorative & Applied Arts studying under artists such as Fred Varley and Jock Macdonald.

One of his best known paintings—Indian Church, North Vancouver is also one of his earliest. According to a book by the Heffel Gallery (1990), Hughes did the first sketch in 1931 when he and another student were examining the vestibule of St. Pauls Indian Church on West Esplanade. Chief Andy Paul appeared and told them to join the service or leave. They left, but Hughes came back and made his first sketch. Hughes told writer Patricia Salmon “Once Lawren Harris wrote me from the east suggesting that it wouldn’t sell because it was too dark. I feel it has been successful.”

St. Paul's Indian Church — Indian Church, North Vancouver

In 1938 Hughes was one of three unknown artists commissioned to paint murals for the Malaspina Hotel in Nanaimo. The work was boarded up in the ‘50s and rediscovered during demolition of the hotel in 1996. Hughes became an official war artist. He moved to Victoria in 1946, was awarded the Emily Carr Scholarship in 1947, and eventually died in 2007 at the age of 93 after a long and highly successful career.

Tags Chief Andy Paul, Coastal Boats Near Sidney, E.J. Hughes, Emily Carr Scholarship, Frederick Varley, Heffel Gallery, Indian Church, Malaspina Hotel, Patricia Salmon, Vancouver School of Decorative Arts

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